Panda Bao Bao: A Hole-In-The-Wall Dimsum Café
- Nicholette
- Jul 8, 2017
- 3 min read
One of the many things I really miss from home is Chinese food, the kind that will leave you satisfied (and a little constipated) for days.
On those rare occasions I ate out in Chinese restaurants here, I was left disappointed.
Maybe I was eating in the wrong places, or maybe I just don’t appreciate “Indianized” Chinese food. Either way, I was on the point of resigning to frozen dumplings from the supermarket until Adam made a serendipitous discovery.
A stone’s throw away from his flat was a newly opened panda-themed café.
He got a kick out of it (mostly because he has joked that I am more panda than human for over a year now).
Spider pandas!
He sent me a photo of Panda Bao Bao, and that was the story of how we ended up in Abu Dhabi’s newest hole-in-the-wall dimsum café last Thursday night.
So many spider pandas on the wall!
Adam and I had already eaten kebab and chicken panne (Egyptian breaded chicken) sandwiches for dinner, but I still ordered preserved egg chicken porridge at Panda’s, while he ordered avocado juice (“I’m not hungry,” said the Egyptian, with a fearful glance at the menu).
Adam just isn’t an adventurous foodie. It took me months to get him to try authentic Filipino fried chicken – Jollibee Chickenjoy.
By the time he finally tried it, he wouldn’t shut up about it – or the old Serena Dalrymple advert jingle, “Isa pa, isa pang Chickenjoy!”
Our server was a young Chinese man who didn’t understand English very well. Even my “Filipinized” English was met with a blank face, so the best I could do was point at the Chinese-English menu, while he wrote down our order in Chinese script.
If the server’s Chinglish was any indication, Panda’s food might just be the closest I could get to authentic Chinese food in the land of biryanis and shawarmas.
And disappointed I was not. My porridge was served on a big panda bowl and panda Chinese soup spoon to match.
It looked and tasted like something my Angkong would approve: just the right porridge consistency, just the right flavor of chicken (without the saltiness of artificial chicken flavoring), and a generous serving of beautiful century egg in the middle.
Happy Kid
Now the century egg takes me back to my childhood rivalry with my cousins. Every time there was a family function in a Chinese restaurant, my cousins and I would fight tooth and nail for the Lazy Susan to turn in our direction and serve us the century egg first.
It’s an acquired taste. First-time eaters would probably not appreciate the century egg’s strong flavor and creamy yoke – that is, if they can get past its odd dark green-greyish color.
I know Adam didn’t, because he wouldn’t even lay a finger in my bowl.
I added in spoonfuls of soy sauce and chili sauce, which only made me hungrier.
Not halfway through my now-spicy chicken porridge, I called the server and pointed to the steamed chicken feet on the menu.
It came on a small porcelain saucer sitting on top of a bamboo steamer paired with chopsticks-on-a-panda.
The serving, considering the price, certainly raised an eyebrow, but the taste quickly made up for it.
The chicken feet meat was so tender it easily fell off as I rolled them inside my mouth. The “kicking” spicy sauce took me back to my dimsum runs in Cebu, but the boiled peanuts were a surprising addition to an all-time favorite.
“In Egypt, only the poorest of the poor would eat that,” Adam commented pretentiously between sips of avocado shake.
He didn’t know what he was missing, and I was happy enough to have my spicy chicken porridge and chicken feet all to myself – not that I could finish them. The servings looked child-friendly enough, but the taste packed a punch.
I asked our nice quiet server to pack them for us. Afterwards, he opened the door and bowed on our way out, at which point Adam tried to impress him by saying, “Bu yong xie.” I waited until we were safely out of earshot to tell him he mixed up “Thank you” and “You’re welcome” in Mandarin again.
The poor guy blushed like the human tomato he is.
In the end, panda girl got the last laugh.
Panda Bao Bao
Address: Near ADNOC Petrol Station, Airport Road, Al Karamah, Abu Dhabi
Phone Number: 02 3048151
Opening Hours: 11:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. daily
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