• Bǎo Dá Gǎng Shì Chá 寶達港式茶

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  • White Vegetarian
Vegan-friendly
Lacto
Ovo
Chinese

Spacious restaurant specializing in Hong Kong style dim sum dishes. Menu indicates which items are ovo-lacto- or lacto-vegetarian; the rest are vegan or have the option to include egg. Open Mon-Sun 11:00am-2:30pm, 5:00pm-9:30pm.


Venue map for Bǎo Dá Gǎng Shì Chá 寶達港式茶
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2 Reviews

First Review by taiwanesetexan

doublespoon

Points +448

Vegetarian
20 Feb 2021

Vegetarian dim sum

Really awesome Cantonese vegetarian restaurant in Taichung. The service was great, food came out quickly and hot. Everything I had was delicious. Not the cheapest, but not crazy expensive either.

taiwanesetexan

Points +9510

Vegan
16 Sep 2019

Great food, bad service

This outing was my first time to a vegetarian dim sum restaurant, so I was really excited about going. Not only that, but I would be celebrating my birthday month with a friend and her family. They had been to Bao Da before, and none of them thought it would be a problem if we showed up without a reservation since they had never been busy before. (I had tried to reach the restaurant the day before, but they were on holiday two days in a row for Mid-Autumn Festival.)

When I arrived at 11:50am on a Saturday (the day after Mid-Autumn Festival), I asked the hostess how long the wait would be for a party of five, and she told me that it would be an hour. So we placed a reservation for 13:00 and all went to hang out elsewhere while I studied a paper copy of their menu. All the dim sum classics I was familiar with were there: BBQ "pork" buns, shaomai, salty dumplings (鹹水角), "shark fin" dumplings (魚翅餃), and rice noodle rolls stuffed with different fillings (腸粉). About half the menu items were vegan and clearly marked. So I was prepared to order by the time we returned.

But the restaurant was packed to the gills, which I guess the staff were not accustomed to and didn't handle well. The waitress who came to pour our tea almost threw it into the tea cups while huffing and puffing: not courteous at all. She asked another waitstaff member to bring out five pairs of chopsticks, but these wouldn't arrive even after asking four other waitstaff members about them. We ordered two bowls of white rice (NT$15 each), but the staff seemed to forget about them until my friend stood up and went back to the kitchen to ask for it herself.

We specifically ticked the option for no eggs with our XO sauce fried rice, but of course it came out with egg, so we sent it back for a replacement. The rice noodle rolls came with a strand of hair. They completely missed the "meat" balls that we had marked on our order sheet. And they refused to refill the self-serve condiments area even though the hot sauce was down to the last dredges. Wow, they really need to get their management in order.

But the food that we did get was pretty good, albeit smaller in portion size than I was expecting. (Perhaps I have a distorted view of how big steamed buns should be since I grew up in Texas.) I probably wouldn't order the BBQ "pork" buns again since the texture didn't even come close to the original thing. But the dumplings were all very nice. I'm willing to come back and give them another chance.

Pros: many vegan options, good dumplings, free hot tea

Cons: bad service during busy shifts, messed up our order, small portions




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