Ho's Bakery

Last Friday I had twenty minutes to nip out of work and grab food to bring back to the kitchen so I could carry on working. So Roman the Russian and I headed to Chinatown to chow down on buns and tarts from Ho’s Bakery in Chinatown.

Located on the corner of Faulkner Street Ho’s is a Hong Kong bakery that bakes savoury pastries, buns, cakes and puddings. The website brags that the family has been professionally baking for twenty-five years. The food is simple and tastes fantastic while having the presentation style of the food paraded around at the beginning of the film American Psycho.

So Roman and me bought a pork chop bun, sweet pork bun and an egg custard each. The pork chop bun is essentially pork schnitzel served with a tangy mayonnaise and jalapeño peppers that gives a sharp flavour with the succulent shallow fried pork. The selections of roasted buns are beef, pork and chicken all in a variety of different flavours, ranging from curry to five spice. The main food that has kept me returning to Ho’s regularly for the past two years, man and boy, is the amazing Portuguese tarts. Portuguese tarts are a variety of the egg custard, but far superior in my opinion. Unlike the cop-outs with short crust pastry that are mass-produced then sold for 89p at M&S with your mum’s discount cards these are a real treat. The tarts have a fantastic flaky pastry with a gold baked egg custard filling that reminds me of a childhood holiday to Portugal where me and my brothers ate these everyday then the entire family had diarrhoea on the final night.

Since we took our baked loot back to the kitchen I have been harangued by colleagues to take them to Ho’s and I have no problem with this because it is great value for money and there is still loads that I want to eat like the swiss rolls, black forest gateaux, Japanese cheese cake and custard buns. Next time you are peckish in town go to Ho’s.