New Town Bakery & Restaurant

The shrimp dumplings and steamed pork buns were significantly better than the best San Diego has to offer, and also cheaper. The congee and custard tarts were at least equal and cheaper. The average service, so-​so atmosphere and cash only payment is the only reason I rate 4 instead of 5 stars.

New Town Bakery is your standing Chinese bakery, offering the staples. Prices are slightly higher than competitors, and their apple tart seems to be their claim to fame.

Buyer beware… This is a very dishonest establishment. They try to take advantage of tourists. I would pay attention to how much things are and ask them before you hand them any cash.
We went in to buy some egg tarts and buns since we were in the area just roaming. The total was only about $ 2.50… So simple math, you get about $ 7.50 back right? Well we handed them $ 10 expecting our change. They gave us back $ 4 and we were like «wait something is not right». First they said «well you have to pay tax» in Chinese since we spoke and understand fluent Chinese. So we asked them to recheck and enter the amount again on the cash register… then they gave us the correct change back … without saying sorry. They actually smirked and smiled that they got caught trying to cheat their customers.
Avoid this place at all cost! Don’t say you weren’t warned. There are so many places to eat in Vancouver… Don’t waste your time.

This review is for their bakery, not their sit down area.
Follow this sequence: Take a look at what food you want to order first, because there is a lot of goodies to eat from the bakery. Take a number by the front door once ready to order. Wait for the ladies behind the counter to call your number. If you buy 6 items, you save on tax.
Food:
Pork Asado Siopao steamed buns — their popular item on the menu. Filled with moist pork and the bao is soft!
Chicken Deluxe steamed buns — These are better than the pork steamed buns. They’re filled with lots of meat. Good for a small lunch or if you’re on the go. It’s as big as my palm. Order this!
Egg Tarts — A MUST ORDER. These are BOMB dot com. Buttery, flaky and not too sweet which is a bonus for me. Best eaten when fresh, or toast it in the oven if it’s cold.
We went to this location and their Richmond location before heading to the airport for some food to be eaten on the airplane.
Definitely coming back when I am in town again!

Muy limpio, buena comida y una excelente panadería China. Los bollos y dumplins, lo mejor

Location: On Pender street in Chinatown. It’s easy to find.
Parking: metered parking along the street
Service: It’s ok. Not a lot of staff trying to notice your needs. Once you actively grabbed their attention, they responded quickly.
Food: Went there for lunch. Their mini-​meal sets (a dish with a hot drink) are roughly $ 8-​$ 11. The portion is quite small. Hainanese chicken with rice and soup is $ 8.95. The bowl of soup is big. The portion is not bad. The chicken is ok. Oily rice did not have much flavour though. There were a lot of people at the bakery so probably their steamed buns and other baked items are better.
Price: A bit pricy for the mini-​meal sets provided the small portion. Bakery items are ok.
Ambience: Not a lot of people eating in. You had to go through the crowd of people at the bakery to get to the sitting in area. Tables are a bit close to one another. It’s good for quick eat.
Overall comment: I would recommend to go with their bakery items than the meal sets.

This place is great! Hidden treasure, not in the best area but looks are deceiving! Super yummy and inexpensive! I’ve never had a bad experience here the baos are always fresh and really tasty. I love this place !

Dim sum to go at its best. I had the breakfast set, noodle with rice roll, is below averaged. But the To-​Go counter! I wish I had 4 stomaches or have lots of friends to share. Everything. Is. Good!
Fried shrimp dumpling and the steam yellow cake, yum.

A reminder of home. Good Siopao Asado, spicy pork and bola bola. A must destination for all who craves the Ongpin goodies we all knew growing up in Manila.
The restaurant side is just steps inward the store. The infamous Mami, is priced at a whopping 6.50 a bowl. A little pricy but the flavour of the stock is authentic of its origin.
Always take a number upon walking in before anything else. The staff speaks some Tagalog, and Fookien, Mandarin and of course Cantonese.
If paying by USD, exchange rate is at par.
No parking but street metred parking available.

New Town Bakery & Restaurant
Date Visited: 03.29.2016
Will Return: Maybe
Price: $$
I have been here before and I really like there pork buns but I have not tried anything else on there menu so I decided to come today and try it out…
Seafood Tofu Soup (³⁄₅)
Recommend: Maybe
The broth itself tasted very bland but I think they made to be like this, It included Snow peas, Shrimp, Squid, Tofu, Mushrooms, and Carrots.
Deep Fried Tofu (⁴⁄₅)
Recommend: Yes
I really like this tofu nice and crispy with nice flavours to it!
Shrimp Dumplings (Har Gow) (⁴⁄₅)
Recommend: Yes
Very tasty! But I recommend with a bit of soy sauce.
Deep Fried Squid (³⁄₅)
Recommend: Maybe
Squid was very soggy and tasted like there was sugar added on it. Average
BBQ Duck (Half Order) (³⁄₅)
Recommend: Maybe
Duck was a little bit burnt and was a bit hard o chew, came with a sweet and sour sauce which was pretty good.
Maybe I will come back in the future to try the other menu items,
Food: (³⁄₅)
Service: (³⁄₅)
Atmosphere: (³⁄₅)
Overall: (³⁄₅)

The apple turnovers are award-​winning and with good reason.
I’m a huge fan.
Depending on the time a day you can get some really really fresh shrimp turnovers but you always get fresh steamed buns and after trying most of the steam buns in Chinatown I feel that New Town does it best.
There is a sit down area at the rear of the shop where you can order a sit down meal. I have orderd the hot and sour soup a few times and its an ok spot for a cheap lunch. The bakery items are $ 00.10 more per item when you sit down in the restaurant end so if you are planning on taking them to go… wait until you are leaving and get them at the counter.

It was extremely busy and for the most part disorganized but they somehow get everything to work.
The pork buns were a disappointment, they were at the same level as buying frozen pork bun at a grocery store, not fluffy and not even flavorful.
The other selections were great though. The egg tart was oily but good, the other baked good I cannot remember the names were delicious too.
Overall this was a good bakery to get some favorites on the go but not a place to go if you want to be impressed.

Enjoyed a good lunch there today. While it’s a CASH ONLY business you can’t beat the low prices for dim sum. You can tell from the crowd this appeals to the diversity that makes Vancouver great.
I enjoyed the shrimp dumplings, the Shu Mai and a spicy steamed bun. I also ordered the steamed ribs with black bean sauce. I found them to be fatty, boney and very little meat on them. I probably will try something else next time.
Service is fast and they’re nice there. If you know how to say «Please» and «Thank You» in Chinese it goes a long way.
If you’re visiting Vancouver give this place a try! It’s easy to get to on public transit (Take the 135 bus on Hastings, get off a Main Street then walk.) You can’t beat it!

A typical Asian bakery with chinese food if you go to the back. This is the best place to get your bao zhi with pork and dan ta (egg custards). I sometimes buy frozen ones to take back with me to Seattle!
This time I tried their food for dinner and it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t superb either. Tried their Hainan Chicken and their braised tofu. Very general flavor. They almost messed up our order too and kept bringing us things that definitely weren’t ours so we had to call them back to give it to the right table.
I would come back here for their bakery items but probably not for their dinner.

When you walk in make sure you grab a number. They call out the number which is great because I’ve been to too many Asian’s bakery where the customers can get unruly. We came in after lunch so we were not super hungry so we only got 2 things.
Both of them are very good
Hot Hong Kong Milk Tea
Egg tart

Decent dim sum items, but the bakery goodies are what really stood out! I loved the apple tart and it was only $ 1.20 CAD, so less than $ 1 USD. I wish that I had snagged a dozen of them to take back to the states. Highly recommended!

My husband found this on Unilocal when I wanted dim sum neat our hotel. Warning: don’t come here for the dim sum. Why 4 stars? The Baos! They were amazing. Dim sum was not their forte, but the buns were excellent. We also got HK style milk teas and everyone around us seemed to order more the noodle or rice dishes. Our bad for mis– ordering.

This place is a gem. It reminds me of an authentic Richmond restaurant and serves a plethora of awesome traditional dishes. My guest was Taiwanese and assured me of the authenticity of the surroundings.
She tore into the pork suey mai and a bowl of congee with minced pork and 1,000 Year Old egg. It was my first time trying this preserved egg and I was pleasantly surprised. I will definitely not shy away from it in the future despite sounding like something no human should consume.
I had a basic egg swirl soup which was great for what it’s worth. The broth was legit and they balanced the sodium well. There’s little to be said about an egg swirl soup.
Great little place to get awesome food from 7am onwards…

Yum yum buns! What else is there to say?
Their Apple bun was delicious!

My fiancé and I stopped here purposefully on our way out of Vancouver to drive back to Edmonton. I wanted to buy some steamed buns and other goodies for the long road trip ahead. Thankfully they open early and when we arrived, there were no other customers.
The prices here are a bit higher than other bakeries from what I hear, but their quality is very good and the baked goods are consistent.
Everything we ordered was great including the steamed chicken buns, the baked bbq pork buns, cocktail buns, egg tarts, dinner rolls, and the apple turnover thing… OMG yum!
I wanted to order some congee to go as well but they said it would be an 8 minute wait. Apparently it has to be pre-​ordered. Oh well! We had plenty of food for the long drive ahead.
I recommend this bakery if you want some delciious and fresh goodies to impress everyone with!

Staying over at the Delta Suites nearby, we came here for breakfast. The food was okay, the shrimp dumplings aka «ha gows» and beef noodles aka «choon fun», were standouts but it was rather disappointing to think that this is the best dimsum Chinatown had to offer. From the start, the server rushed us through the meal. She asked us 3 times in 5 minutes if we were ready to order, food came out at the blink of an eye, and my chopsticks barely hit the table before she started clearing the plates away and dropping the check. Considering there were 3 tables when we sat and at least 10 empty, I thought it was rather unnecessary but whatever.
We paid in cash and got about $ 7 back in change. My friend wanted a $ 5 bill to keep (since CAD is much prettier than the USD!) and asked the server for the $ 5 note instead. She quickly said «tip isn’t included you know». YES WE DID, thanks for the reminder considering it was also noted on the bill and tipping is separate in the States. Admittedly, we were a bit confused by the coins so we took an extra minute to get out enough coins for the standard 20% tip. It was then that another server thought it was necessary to rush over and deliberately CIRCLE TIP IS NOT INCLUDED ON THE CHECK as I just put the coins on the table. Needless to say, I grabbed the $ 7 bucks on the table and left them a goose egg. ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS BEHAVIOR.

The most well known Chinese bakery in Chinatown~!! I remember the old times I was here when I was a kid. My mom and I would ALWAYS come here to get bakery goods and take them home to enjoy them. I have never been here for the restaurant style food so I can’t judge that, but I love their bakery stuff here for sure!
I came here recently again with some friends. We wanted some bakery goods to head to the park to eat for lunch. One thing I love about this place, bakery goods are EXTREMELY CHEAP. Like, I can drop 10 $ worth of buns, have enough for lunch with a bunch of friends, and be full, and still have left overs for tomorrow’s lunch. That is HOW amazingly cheap it is. Another way to measure how cheap it is, buy a steamed bun, and a tea to go for less than 5 $ and still have change for the bus.
And their bakery goods are always warm out of the oven, and freshly baked for the day’s business. This place holds a lot of memories, and tons of amazing nostalgia. Will be here more often soon and I love this place a lot :)

This was supposed to be a good place for steamed BBQ pork buns. I didn’t have this on my agenda but we were in Chinatown and gave it a try anyway.
You can get steamed and baked treats including BBQ pork buns to-​go at the bakery part of the restaurant. They only take cash. But if you want to dine here and try their prepared dishes, plastic is accepted.
Steamed BBQ Pork Buns:
These are the Filipino-​Chinese pork buns aka siopao. Each bun is quite big and filling. Meaty, doughy and tasty. ⁴⁄₅
Shumai:
These shrimp and pork balls were alright. Nothing special. ³⁄₅
Shanghai Lumpia:
I was very disappointed by these egg rolls. There’s too much wrapper than filling and the filling was mostly shrimp instead of pork. ²⁄₅
We tried a few other dishes but they weren’t memorable enough to write about. We ordered soy milk and got charged for it but we never got it. Just stick with the siopao.

This is supposed to be a Chinese/​Filipino restaurant. Out of the 537 menu items (or what seemed like it), I think I only saw 4 Filipino items. But, who gives a shit (testing out Unilocal filters to see if I’m allowed to do that), the food is good!
Because I was with my family of 4, we ordered many items to share (although it’s weird that I always end up being the one to finish everything. The life of a dad, I guess). Some of the items we got were Wonton Noodle Soup, BBQ Pork Noodle Soup, Chinese Broccoli, dumpings, and Siopao (oh hey, look, a Filipino dish!). While nothing stood out, all were very good. Simple, fresh, and tasted like homemade cooking… if I grew up Chinese, that is. We also had some pastries to go, which I didn’t take pictures of, but were good (in other words, I scarfed them down in the car while my wife was sleeping).
Nothing fancy here, but really good food. The parking leaves something to be desired, but there is a paid lot behind the restaurant. Not bad if you want to walk around or do what we did, which was visit the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden a block or two down. Or, maybe it was the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese/​Filipino Garden…

Très bonne Patisserie chinoise situé dans chinatown. La spécialité est l’Apple tart dont je n’ai pas été fan par contre j’ai adoré le sesame ball, fourré aux haricots rouges. Nous avons également goûtés les brioches vapeurs au poulet et au Porc qui étaient excellentes

The bakery in the store’s front is simply a great takeout option for grabbing hot, tasty baos, sesame balls, custard tarts, moon cakes and more. There is a very informative menu display above the counter, but your eyes kinda get glued on the pastries glistening in the display cases.
Everything is reasonably priced and the service is efficient IF you grab one of the very noticeable ticket kiosk numbers directly as you enter the store. I made out like a bandit with the sheer quantity and quality of the goods here!
Remember, cash only!

Who: bf & I
When: multiple times (on vacation)
Where: Chinatown
What: various, including all of the steamed buns
Why: Sometimes, as a tourist, you don’t want a sit down experience. You might want the walking and eating experience in a cool neighborhood. Voila! Excellent to-​go dim sum at an excellent price right in the middle of historic Vancouver Chinatown. We tried all of the steamed pork buns (veggie pork, BBQ, and Mala/​Sichuan peppercorn), and they were super filling, delicious, and kept us going throughout our urban trek.

Love their Chicken Big Bun (the one that has everything) and their HK style hot milk tea. Oh yeah and their apple pies. Yummy. This place is always busy.
I usually go in get what I want and then go. Everything made fresh daily

We walked through Chinatown and somehow stumbled upon this place. We didn’t know it was a popular hangout; we just saw the huge dumpling steamer on top of the building, so figured we should check it out. When we walked in, there was a huuuge line, and saw people taking a number from one of those ticketed machines that you see at the DMV.
But I forgot about all of that when I took a bite from my steamed pork bun. It was yummy! We saw that they had huge steamers, the size of a pizza pan, which was amusing. They must really make a lot of buns!
You can also sit inside and order lunch or dinner, and will be seated by one of the waitresses. But the place is dirty — there was food all over the floor and the bathroom was not the cleanest. Plus, they only accept cash, so make sure to carry some dough when you visit New Town.

I’m Chinese and I’ve had steamed buns my whole life and I don’t know how to appreciate this «Filipino» bao bakery. I think all their baos (including their popular deluxe one, balo balo) basically taste like all the other baos I’ve had my whole life.

Their deluxe steamed chicken buns are gigantic. It isn’t just chicken in there; there’s some spam, a salted duck egg yolk, and a mix of veggies. I really wish I could have brought some home.
I also had the prawn turnover, crispy sweet egg pastry thing, and apple tarts. The prawn turnover needs more prawn in it and it is very, very greasy. I prefer the ones filled with minced pork. Their apple tarts very good — the pastry is flaky but isn’t too greasy and the apple filling is not too sweet. Yum. I thought the crispy sweet egg pastry was just OK, it was sort of bland and tasteless.
This place is definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area and can find parking.