The founders of cult-favourite Taiwanese restaurant Bao, which has seven outlets in London and helped to popularise gua bao outside Taiwan, have partnered with Singapore’s The Lo & Behold Group to officially launch their newest concept.
BFF, which stands for Bao Fast Foods, will be debuting as a two-month pop-up at New Bahru running from Nov 11 to Dec 28, with a view to opening a permanent site in the first half of 2027.
Taking over the ground-floor space previously occupied by One Prawn & Co, BFF is a hybrid of a quirky convenience store and a fast food restaurant, serving up Taiwanese eats like fried chicken and beef noodles with a fun twist, as well as BFF merchandise. Additionally, the space will also host community-oriented talks.
London-based Bao founders Shing Tat Chung and Erchen Chang started the business as an ad-hoc gua bao stall over a decade ago at London’s Netil market together with Chung’s sister, Wai Ting.
In June, the pair staged a month-long BFF pop-up in Taipei as an experimental way to research Taiwanese food and convenience store culture, developing and refining their recipes and products through talks and “design jams” with the local community.
The insights they gained through the project are being channelled into BFF in Singapore, building a format that’s new, fresh and hopefully, very crave-worthy.
"SCALDED" CHICKEN, "CUP NOODLES" WITH SPIT-ROASTED BEEF
Taking the appearance of a convenience store, BFF will have shelves stocked with snack items like Taiwanese chips and instant noodles, but its real product is its menu of elaborately playful Taiwan-inspired dishes, as well as grab-and-go offerings like egg mayo sandos and Asian salads. Think of it as a fast food joint cosplaying as a convenience store.
“We wanted to take Taiwanese culture and spread it,” Shing Tat, who's married to Chang, told CNA Lifestyle. “In terms of the global fast food players, there's no Taiwanese representation.”
Taiwan is known for its vibrant convenience store culture, with one of the highest densities in the world – and also, “the convenience store is a global language,” he said, making it an ideal trope through which to explore fun ideas in the experiential space.
In Singapore, “the magic of convenience stores in Taiwan or Japan is lacking a little bit,” he observed. As a result, Chang said, “There’s an opportunity here to bring in that culture, and I feel like people will definitely embrace it because they love to discover new things.”
So, what’s on the dine-in menu?
The must-try is the Chicken Chopper (S$6.50), cut with the bone left in so it can be eaten conveniently with your hands. The chicken, which went through around 140 R&D iterations, is dipped in a soymilk batter and coated in a tapioca starch mix, resulting in juicy meat with an airy, crackly crunch.
Choose from three different styles: Original Crispy, dusted with Taiwanese white pepper; Flame Glazed, which is brushed on one side with soy-garlic glaze or mala hot honey, then torched until charred; and Master Scalded, which is dipped in a boiling master sauce of soy sauce, star anise and cinnamon.
To develop the chicken recipes, they deep-dived into the question of “how we Asians eat fried chicken differently from, say, the West,” Chang shared. “The Master Scalded chicken is similar to the idea of a tempura where you dip it into batter, and the soy concoction’s flavour seeps into the batter and actually dries it out a little bit. It becomes really addictive.”
They also studied what gives Taiwanese fried chicken in particular its distinctive flavour, learning from F&B owners in Taipei. One of them revealed that “one of the things he does, which not many other vendors do, is to grind his spices freshly. That actually makes a massive difference,” Chang said. So, they’ve brought in an industrial-sized grinder to grind their white peppercorns, which actually cost four times as much as ground pepper, she divulged.
You can get the fried chicken as a combo set (from S$9.50) paired with cabbage slaw, buttered rice, Dan Dan Noodles or Beef Cup Noodles.
The beef noodles, inspired by the iconic Taiwanese dish, are topped with beef al pastor, carved to order from a slow-roasting spit. In Taipei, “the beef noodles sparked huge debates because there were so many opinions from everyone,” Shing Tat said. “We did tweak it.” For example, to improve the texture of the beef, they learned the traditional Chinese technique of velveting the meat, tenderising and coating it in a silky layer. “At the end, some people said it was among their top three best beef noodles in Taiwan.”
Will there be baos? Yes, but not gua baos. Instead, combos will have the options of a Bao Soupie, which is a fluffier version of a shengjian bao; and a Gravy Bao, which is deep fried and has a chicken gravy filling. Break it open and pour the gravy out, lava style, onto your fried chicken.
There’s also a free, self-serve Pickle Slushie – one of the menu items that proved the most popular at the Taipei pop-up – which works well atop the cabbage slaw.
For drinks, there will be Taiwanese craft tea served on tap, developed together with Taiwan-based SC Labs. There’s a nitro Fluffy Natural Alishan Wintermelon (S$5.95) brewed with naturally farmed black tea; and a fizzy Orange Guava Beauty (S$6.50), which blends fresh orange and guava with Oriental Beauty tea from Hsinchu and Puli.
Additionally, there’s a Peanut Oatside M*lk with oat boba and tea jelly (S$6), made in partnership with Singapore brand Oatside.
Chilled grab-and-go items include egg sandos in flavours like mala mayo and confit lemon, “fried rice” quinoa and kimchi. These were developed for the protein- and fibre-conscious.
And for dessert, there’ll be soy puddings in flavours like banoffee, sweet potato and black sesame-mango.
The menu will be a constantly evolving work-in-progress, Shing Tat said, and, Singapore-inspired items might make their way onto the list as well, like a “trashy version of laksa that’s got cheese on top”.
As for merch, they’ll have a range developed for Singapore, ranging from plushies to underwear, umbrellas, water bottles, totes, socks, toothbrushes and nail stickers; as well as items created in collaboration with Tanchen Studio.
There are also plans to hold a programme of talks co-hosted by events organiser Remedial Kids exploring themes of connection and community in an age of hyper-convenience.
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW
BFF is the duo’s first foray into Asia, and admittedly, “the thought of coming from London and opening an Asian place in an Asian country like Singapore – it's a tough thing to do,” Shing Tat said. But, “the beauty of BFF is that we want to be able to find something that has a broader market fit. Bao doesn't necessarily have that in its current form.”
And, he continued, “one of the reasons why we’re doing this in Singapore is that the idea of creating a product in Asia resonates with us. Singapore is known to be a difficult market both commercially and in customer sentiment. It’s a challenge, but also a good thing to tackle.”
On top of that, Chang said, “culturally, Singapore is very international, so understanding that is a massive thing for us, to be able to see where it can go after.”
When they first launched the BFF prototype in Taipei, “We came in very uncertain about where we sit within fast food and convenience store. I think right now it's so much clearer: It’s a fast food convenience store,” Shing Tat quipped.
At first, “everyone was like, ‘What’s that? I’m so confused.'” But, “if people don’t question it, then, you’re just creating something that they already know.”
He mused: “I think there are lots of different ways of building a new business and brand, and we chose quite an experimental way, and that came with a lot of chaos: Talks, events, a radio show. I think that kind of rawness was what we wanted, and I think people recognised that.”
In a way, building something new has brought them back to an approximation of the conditions under which, as fresh university graduates, they decided to sell baos out of a cool box. Back then, it had been all about “intuition and necessity”, Chang said. “When you look back, it was such a big defining point in our journey that without it, I don't think we would be where we are today.”
As for where BFF will go, or even how far it will travel, time will tell. For now, we’ll wait to see whether they serve BFF: the Best Fried Chicken this side of Taiwan.
BFF officially opens Nov 11 at 46 Kim Yam Road, New Bahru #01-10, Singapore 239351.
Source: CNA/my