Lovely Pao

Freshly made siopao (steamed bun)!

This place is popular for their siopao’s so we got a pork siopao, chicken siopao and turon! The siopao is a pillowy soft bun with a sweet pulled chicken or pulled pork filling and half an egg (similar to a Chinese char siu bao). It comes with a dip that you can dip the bun in. It gets messy but it’s worth the try! We enjoyed the pork a little more than the chicken. The fresh turon was the highlight of it all though!! It’s a crispy spring roll with caramel drizzled on top, instead of a meat or vegetable filling, it’s a sweet banana inside! It’s a delicious place to hit for an afternoon snack!

This place came highly recommended to me by a fellow Filipino. I live in Durham so it's quite a ways drive. Even then my family is a repeat customer. Their siopao is the best I've had. Our favorite is the Pork Asado. With a perfect ratio of filling to bread. The filling is so good complimented by the great tasting bread. I'm glad I found this quality establishment. We'll be back for sure.

We had the pork siopao. It was good. Highly recommend.

For takeout:

Sio pao translates from Tagalog as “hot bun” and are essentially big fluffy baos filled with a sweet and savoury filling made with pork ($12.75 for 6 buns) or chicken ($14 for 6 buns). Both have the meat cut in large chunks and are tender and flavourful thanks to the asado glaze. The sauce isn’t as sweet as what’s found in Chinese barbeque pork buns, but it also doesn’t need to be as flavourful as the bread, despite the bun’s size, is also thinner – especially the bottom, it almost melts into the sauce.

Slice into them and you’ll see there’s also half a hard-boiled egg in the middle. This isn’t traditional, rather a twist Lovely Pao made to their recipe. In fact, the business started off as a way to make ends meet, when the owner was unemployed and facing financial difficulties. She made the buns in her kitchen, selling them to friends and family, and worked at perfecting the recipe. Instead of making them too runny, she offered a thicker sauce on the side for people to add themselves.