On Thursday 26th September, cult Taiwanese restaurant BAO is opening the doors to BAO City in the heart of London’s Square Mile, a new restaurant and flagship KTV (Taiwanese ‘karaoke TV’) experience.
Located in Bloomberg Arcade, BAO City will serve sharing plates for big groups looking to feast, along with a menu featuring the very best of BAO’s much-loved Taiwanese classics, with a selection of BAOs and hot xiao chi hits. New large sharing specials will be chalked up on a blackboard and crossed off when they run out, including grilled Taiwanese pork neck with a soy glaze and a side of pickled garlic and daikon; grilled whole fish with a yu-shiang sauce; and a fermented plum sauce-glazed duck breast. Frosty beer towers will be available for guests to order directly to the table so they can pour their own glasses at leisure, and BAO City will also feature a whisky cabinet, lined with regular guests’ personal bottles.
Interiors throughout BAO City have been designed by BAO’s internal creative department MATHs to create a warm and intimate space. Lit by a glowing standalone lightbox, the dining room features elegant cherrywood veneer panelling, dark red satin-finished walls, and geometric, burgundy leather-clad banquette seating, along with individual lamps placed on each white stone table.
The dining room is flanked by two private KTV rooms, allowing the vibrant karaoke energy to spill into the restaurant. One room offers an intimate setting for up to 10 people while the other one can host a group of up to 22. Here, visitors can take their pick from a catalogue of over 300,000 songs and each room is designed with sleek banquette seating along each side, complete with tables for cocktails and snacks. Platters laden with mini BAOs can be ordered to the KTV rooms, as well as fried chicken buckets topped with caviar, and fries drizzled with BAO’s much-loved curry sauce. Guests can also order bottles of spirits, sake bombs and rotating cocktail specials to keep the party going late into the night.
Taking their cues from the ‘Lonely Man’ BAO world, the KTV rooms are inspired by ‘Lonely Man’ films, where the characters experience a sense of isolation. The larger KTV room is modelled on Edward Yang’s Taipei Story, a 1985 film set against a backdrop of a rapidly modernising Taipei, with the protagonists meeting beneath a huge Fujifilm billboard.
This is mirrored by the brightly-lit LED screen that wraps around the room, displaying snippets of the billboard with Fujifilm’s graphic logo so that guests feel like they’re recreating the scene themselves. The smaller KTV room is inspired by Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, in a nod to BAO City’s location in London’s traditional financial centre.
The design references 1980s office décor, with LED light panels that flood the room in red light during ‘KTV mode’, and the space can also be adapted for use as a private dining room.
Creative director Erchen Chang says, “We’re really excited to open BAO City, where we can realise our dream of recreating a Taiwanese karaoke bar right in the centre of the city’s financial district. The space feels very different to our other BAO restaurants, inspired by the neon-lit Taiwan of the 1980s and 1990s that I grew up in.”
BAO City will open in Bloomberg Arcade on Thursday 26th September. Bookings available to BAO newsletter subscribers from Tuesday 3rd September, and to the general public from Friday 6th September at baolondon.com.
BAO City,
2 -8 Bloomberg Arcade, London,
EC4N 8AR.
Opening hours:
Monday – Saturday: 11.30am – 11.00pm
Sunday: 11.30am – 6.00pm