Bao down

Meat bao: £1.50, other fillings are less.

Newport Court,
Chinatown,
London

Baozi look unappetisingly like a member of the frontbench caught with a rentboy - pale, puffy, doughy, sweaty, clammy to the touch. Of course, the resemblance is purely aesthetic, we all know that Tories taste of the babies they had for dinner last night (single mums, if they're on a diet), while baozi leak porky soup all over your hands on a cold winter's afternoon.

At the top of Newport Court in Chinatown, there are two places selling baozi. One is a shop with two impatient women behind the counter, the other is a stall (affiliated with Yang Guang Supermarket, according to their bags) with one impatient woman behind the counter. Impatience is their only similarity.  The stall's pork baozi are hefty, meaty things. A bite through the inch-thick dough reveals a large meatball, flavoured with ginger, garlic and chives. Hours of steaming in the stall's glass cases produce a thick, slightly fatty juice that collects at the bottom of the bun, imbuing the sticky dough with meat. When (not if) this juice gets on your fingers and around your mouth, the flavours seem to linger even after washing. The vegetable bun is the same, only minus the meat, and with a hefty dose of ginger that will perk you up no end. The red bean paste bun sinks sweetly into your stomach, obviating the need for a meal any time soon.

The baozi shop's pork buns are a different beast from those at the stall's. Rather than a meatball, their smaller buns contain chunks of pork sitting in a thick sauce of what tastes like soy, sugar, ginger and garlic. The sweetness seems extraneous, the meat too salty and in too-small chunks. The shop also sells skewers of various kinds that they will cook and then dip in a variety of sauces. The meat ones, especially, look like they are worth trying. Weirdly, the shop doesn't take coppers. Not the policeman, but the coins, which is why I tend to go to the stall - they'll gladly take my shrapnel.

Two baozi shops on one street (albeit in Chinatown) is, I hope, the first step towards pork buns becoming ubiquitous in London.

Wong Wong

Address: 28 Princess St, Manchester M1 4LB
Tel.: 0161 228 1717
Honey Roast Pork Bun: £1.10
Sweet and savoury buns/pastries: 50p - £1.50.

The other Chinese bakery in central Manchester.  Like Ho's, it's up a short flight of stairs.  Unlike Ho's, it's realised that people might want to hang out in a well-lit and trendy interior rather than a dingy linoleum cavern.

As you walk in, on your right there's a cabinet filled with different types of buns.  About half of these fillings are something-and-pineapple.  Including pork, hot dog, chicken, and some other bizarre combinations.  The roast pork and honey bun is a burning-hot mess of liquid yellow sugar and chunks of chewy pork and fat encased in a chewy bun.  It hits the spot for a quasi-savoury sugar rush, but little else.  The bubble teas taste like the chocolate and strawberry milkshakes you had as a kid.  The Frijj ones with the list of unpronounceable ingredients as long as your arm.  The pastry cabinet holds red bean cakes, green bean cakes, a variety of flaky pastries, and some sad looking pancakes.  There is no time to peruse, instead you are hurried by the women behind the counter as you make snap decisions.

Although Wong Wong has a better environment than Ho's (cheery yellow walls, windows that overlook Princess St) and a larger selection of sweet and savoury snacks, its rushed feel and strange ingredient choices can be off-putting.

Ho's Bakery

Address:  44-46 Faulkner St, Manchester, M1 4FH

Tel.:  0161 236 8335

Roast Pork Bun:  £1.20

Char Siu King Bun:  £1.30

Three mini buns for £1.20

Ho's is a Chinatown institution.  Up a short and grubby flight of stairs, the roomy bakery serves a variety of sweet and savoury, Chinese and Western cakes, buns, dumplings and pastries, with soups and soft drinks also available.

A helpful sign taped to one of the pillars explains why their prices have risen fairly dramatically (although they remain on a par with Wong Wong, Manchester's other Chinese bakery) in recent times - a combination of worldwide food shortages and increasing millers' costs has resulted in more expensive ingredients with the cost being passed onto the customer. 

I, for one, am still willing to pay £1.20 for a roast pork bun, or between 50-80p for a sweet pastry or dumpling.  The pork buns and redbean dumplings, especially, are worth the cost.  Roast pork and onions in a thick, but not cloying, red sauce enveloped by a densely fluffy white bun makes a tasty lunch for those who venture up the steps.  Similarly, the glutinous bite of the sesame-encrusted dumplings filled with a creamy red bean are always top of my list when I visit.  Other favourites are the custard tarts, honey buns, curry buns, and melon pastries, all of which are handed over by the cheerful staff.  The soups, while hot and satisfying, are often overstuffed with peas and contain enough MSG to make you guzzle water until bedtime.  But as every Chinese cafe and restaurant heaps on the MSG like it's going out of fashion, it's hard to hold this against Ho's.

The Farm

Address: Corner of Church St and Birchin Lane, Manchester
Tel.: N/A
Roast Pork Sandwich: £2.50
Ice cream: Small £1.50, Large £1.80

The owner is a sheep-farmer, his brother is a pig-farmer, together they have created easily the cheapest and most convenient cafe in Manchester city centre.  Round the corner from the Arndale under a corrugated roof, you can sit at a rough wooden counter and stuff your face with barms crammed with succulent roast pork, crunchy chunks of crackling, sweet apple sauce, and thick and herby stuffing.  Should you want something else, perhaps a wild boar sausage, or a bacon sandwich, or a pot of small-production chutney or jam, these are all available for incredibly reasonable prices unseen anywhere else.  The jams are two for £3 and the chutneys two for £4, all sandwiches are under £3.  You don't get that in Tesco.

After a roast pork sandwich, what better than handmade ice cream in familiar and unusual flavours. Baileys, raspberry cream, vanilla, blackcurrant-licorice - The Farm has them all.  Even when it's been cold and rainy these past few weeks, I haven't missed an ice cream yet.  The blackcurrant-licorice is my particular favourite because it balances these two strong flavours well, and the overall taste is quite wintry, an unusual characteristic in a dessert wholly associated with hot summer days.

With the cheap-cheap prices, locally-sourced produce and bucketfuls of flavour, it is imperative that people support this small cafe with irregular hours (it closes when the pork runs out), or it's back to chain restaurants and Greggs as the only affordable options within spitting distance from Market Street.