Mixxbao: New Taiwanese eatery offers tasty baos and wontons in Fairview

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      Merry Yang doesn’t come from a culinary background, and she’s never opened a restaurant before. But now she’s the owner of Mixxbao (1426 West 8th Avenue), one of Fairview’s newest eateries.

      As she’s originally from Taiwan, it made sense for Yang to open a Taiwanese food spot. In its kitchen, guests will usually find a group of Taiwanese aunties working hard on creating sauces and steaming bao (a Chinese bun filled with various ingredients).

      “We are Taiwanese and we are familiar with this cuisine,” Yang told the Straight in a phone interview. “We try to make most of our menu items by ourselves, [and] we use mostly local ingredients.”

      Its signature items are the gua bao, which are traditionally pork belly buns that originated in China, and have been a popular street food in Taiwan. This type of dish also has an auspicious meaning to it: because its shape resembles a wallet, eating it at the beginning of the year could supposedly bring wealth and good fortune.

      At Mixxbao, food lovers will find various meat and veggie-filled bao paired with house-made chili sauce, including stewed pork bao (with peanut powder, pickled mustard, and cilantro), chicken bao (with chicken breast, peanut, carrot, daikon, and onion), and beef bao (with stewed beef, tomato, carrot, and axillary bud).

      Besides meat options, the local food spot also offers its own version of Beyond Meat: the Bean-yond vegan bao, made with Taiwanese bean burger, peanut, apple, cucumber, pickled mustard, and cilantro.

      “Our gua bao is already modified, [so] it’s not really traditional,” explained Yang. “Normally it doesn’t have any lettuce, but we added a piece for people to feel healthier.”

      Mixxbao's homemade chili-oil wontons.
      Mixxbao

      In addition to tasty steamed buns, Mixxbao’s kitchen serves wonton soup with house-made wontons, chili-oil wontons with ground pork and egg, beef noodle soup, sesame and peanut-sauce noodle, and daily soups and panini.

      Desserts made in-house are also available, such as mung-bean pastry, sweet dates with walnuts, and the hugely popular Taiwanese treat, pineapple cake.

      The wide variety of options on the menu caters to a neighbourhood with mostly customers that don’t come from an Asian background, and Yang specifically wanted to accommodate people from different cultures.

      “I think Taiwanese eateries are very popular to many people who have had a chance to visit Taiwan,” said Yang.

      But it’s also okay to not be familiar with Taiwanese cuisine when you set foot in Mixxbao, because you’ll get to try something new.

      “Our eatery likes to mix different cultures, and in the future, we may have even more different baos to present to our customers,” Yang added.

      Mixxbao
      Follow Tammy Kwan on Twitter @ch0c0tam and Instagram @ch0c0tam.

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