Located in the Urbanspace W 52nd food hall, Bao by Kaya sells large portions of noodle dishes, served up rice bowl style.
The food hall was fairly busy on a Thursday afternoon. My wife and I decided to get noodle bowls, so we ordered two: Dan Dan Noodles and Szechuan Beef Noodles, both priced at $14.99 each. Once paid, you would wait for a bit (5 minutes) and then pick up your tray once they call out your name.
The lunch crowd was clearing out, so we were able to find seating for 4 at the upper dining hall. Both dishes came in plastic to-go bowls, and was very generous in serving size (if I could do it again, I would have just ordered one noodle bowl and maybe got one bao to taste). The thick rice noodles are obviously fresh, and are a great conduit for the sauce to stick to.
One small issue was that the dishes had ingredients that normally would not be in the dish, if strictly following the name. I really liked the Szechuan Beef: there was 6 thicks slices of braised beef shank and liberal use of peanut sauce with pickled vegetables..but not sure why that would be considered Szechuan. The Dan Dan noodles....not really, which I think threw my wife for a loop. It used peanut sauce, plus had a lot more ingredients than mentioned on the menu (e.g. hard boiled egg, pickled vegetables like carrots and fresh veggies like kale and red cabbage), along with a white sauce I couldn't place my finger on. One bowl would have been plenty for the two of us for lunch, and since we didn't want to carry around food for the rest of the day, we sadly had to throw about half of it away. It would have been absolutely a great meal the next day (for me at least). read more