Jingle Bao: High Tea Dim Sum in West End Vancouver
We were invited to eat at Jingle Bao in downtown west end Vancouver. They are a Chinese restaurant specializing in pork soup buns in a fun and hipster space.
I am Chinese and I have eaten a lot of soup dumplings in my life. So I was intrigued to check out Jingle Bao because based on their social media, I’ve seen a lot of fun but suspicious menu items. 🤔 Suspicious in the sense of: does it actually taste good or is it more of a gimmick?
What are some of these “suspicious” items? Well, they are all in this review – a giant XLB with straws, high tea dim sum featuring colourful soup dumplings and fillings like chocolate and truffle. We were recommended to try some of Jingle Bao’s signature items as well as their regular Chinese dishes – here is what we think about our experience.
Jingle Bao
774 Denman St, Vancouver, BC V6G 2L5
The vibe
Jingle Bao is located on Denman Street so it’s really close to a lot of cool areas like Stanley Park, the beach, and the downtown Safeway.
Inside, it is a very casual vibe – different from the standard Chinese dim sum restaurants with the sparkling chandeliers and white tablecloths. The walls are painted a bright and sunny yellow, giving it a fun and youthful vibe despite the rainy night we arrived. 🌞
There are a few bar and counter seating, but most tables have a wall of booth seating and black Patio-looking chairs. The windows here also seem like you are inside a garage and the garage door can be opened up.
A lot of wooden accents and cute decor, like a toy light bao that changes colours.
Near the entrance when you first come in, you can see a lady making the soup dumplings live. She has a big plate of pork filling and stuffs them into neatly wrapped dumplings and into steamer baskets. It is pretty cool to see her make it and she is very skilled.
Food and drink review
Disclaimer: As part of an Instagram collab, we got to try everything featured in this post for free. I’ve included prices in this review for your reference, priced in CAD and rounded to the nearest dollar for simplicity.
HK Lemon iced tea ($4)
We were both craving something sour to drink so we ordered the HK-style lemon tea. This really hit the spot – a little sour, a little sweet – and it tasted the same as if we would order this at a HK Cafe.
High tea dim sum ($58)
This was one of their signature menu items that we got to try. Simply put – it is a fusion between British high tea and the Chinese equivalent – dim sum.
A very impressive 3-tier tower arrived with a lot of different items to share (good for 2 people). The bottom tier had an assortment of dim sum items including a BBQ pork bun, pandan bun, shrimp spring rolls, siu mai (steamed dumpling with pork), crystal shrimp dumplings, and har gow (steamed shrimp dumplings).
I have eaten a lot of these over the years at all the dim sums spots. I would say overall, the items are authentic with some additional thoughts:
- BBQ pork bun was soft and hot inside with yummy BBQ pork
- Pandan bun was just ok – it had some sort of ball of meat inside.
- Shrimp spring rolls – crunchy and good
- Siu mai – decent
- har gow – the wrapper was a little thick for my liking
- Crystal shrimp dumplings – similarly, wrapper was a little thick but the presentation was pretty
The second tier had a variety of the famous soup dumplings including the classic pork flavour, crab flavour, 2x mushroom truffle, and 2x spicy soup.
Usually in high tea, you eat from the bottom up but if you order this, I suggest you go straight to the second tier for the soup dumplings and eat them while they are hot. They definitely taste much better because of the soup inside – you don’t want it to get cold!
I really enjoyed all the flavours and the soup dumplings here. The classic pork one was good and authentic. The spicy one had a kick to it and a nice explosion in my mouth. The mushroom and truffle flavour also paired along quite well, and the crab had some umami to it. Overall, I would say all of these flavours worked together even though they are not the conventional or traditional pork soup dumpling 👍. I also liked the different colours of the dumpling wrapper – these colours are made naturally with different ingredients like spinach, beet, etc. So I thought that was pretty cool.
The top tier had 2 chocolate mochi dumplings and a small bowl of wakame (seaweed salad). I was hesitant to try the chocolate dumpling because I lowkey think it’s an abomination 😅, but I surprisingly liked it. Inside had a very decadent and sweet chocolate filling that was runny and there was also more of a mochi texture to the skin, unlike the other soup dumplings. I think one was good because if I had more than one, it would be too sweet for me.
Supersize xiao long bao ($14)
If the high tea wasn’t already an abomination, this next item certainly is. I have never seen a xiao long bao of this size… it’s huge 😳! It took up an entire steamer and it literally bobbed and waved as it was placed onto our table like a water bed. They even present it with straws for you to drink the soup out of.
For this item, you can choose between the classic pork soup flavour or the spicy soup. We opted for the classic.
The presentation of this was very fun and unique. I liked seeing it jiggle and I was most definitely nervous to poke holes into this XLB. Somehow, I was able to to lightly poke my straw in and I took my first slurp of the soup.
I have to say, this was really weird and I don’t know if I liked eating it this way 😕. Again, the soup inside tastes fine and authentic, but I just didn’t enjoy eating it this way. Sometimes, the meat inside would also get stuck in my straw.
Once we slurped up some of the soup, we really wondered how to actually eat the XLB. We tried picking it up but it did end up ripping/tearing one part of the skin and a flood of remaining soup pooled out. I would say the difficulty in eating this like a lady ended up in the XLB looking like quite a mess after we tried to get a spoonful of it. It wasn’t the most appetizing appearance after that 💀.
Deep fried prawns ($25)
Apart from the soup dumplings, Jingle Bao has a lot of other Chinese dishes and mains on the menu. From this list, we tried their deep fried prawns and wow they were so good 😍!
They looked so delicious when they arrived and the shrimps were also jumbo size. They are fried really well – not oily or greasy – and have that subtle salty peppery seasoning.
Seafood and egg fried rice ($24)
We ended our meal with their seafood fried rice, which for the price, is quite reasonable! You get a giant portion of fried rice that has that “wok hay” 👍. There is also quite a lot of seafood in here including squid, small shrimp, clams, and more.
We quite liked this fried rice and it is as good as the chicken nugget fried rice from The One or Myst.
Final thoughts
Loewe’s rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
I would give Jingle Bao a 3.5-4 star rating given our experience.
Food-wise, I was pleasantly surprised 😯. I thought the food would be gimmicky or an abomination, but most of the items we tried were really delicious and authentic. And even some of their more “fusion” flavours weren’t too crazy like the spicy soup, truffle, chocolate, etc.
Out of everything we ate, I would come back to eat their regular pork soup dumplings + the 3 flavours I tried (truffle and mushroom, spicy, crab), the deep fried prawns, and seafood fried rice. The portions and flavour for the main dishes were awesome.
The high tea dimsum set is not bad if you share with another person and kind of fun. At $58, you get a lot of food actually and that is cheaper compared to a lot of British high tea sets downtown that will cost you $60 per person.
What I wouldn’t order or try again is the giant XLB – it was just too difficult to eat and I think that one may be more of a gimmick.
Sincerely, Loewe