Honest Bao

The McDonald's World Menu Heist crew are back. This time they've raided China for the loot I've been waiting for: Chicken McWings . Riding along are the Paprika McShaker Fries from the Netherlands. One is a proper steal. The other I could've nicked from my own spice cupboard. All world heist menus items keep their original package Honestly? The McWings caught me off guard. They're juicy and properly flavoured, with a soy-based marinade that tastes broadly East Asian rather than strictly Chinese. Call it Chinese, Japanese or Korean and you wouldn't be wrong. Love the flavour and and also not a heavily battered chicken The best part is that there's no thick batter jacket. Most chain fried chicken comes armoured in the stuff, and frankly I'm tired of it. These let the chicken do the talking, and it's a fresh change for the tongue. The Szechuan dip (also heisted from China) is peppery and gingery. It isn't the fire I'd braced for, which is good...

Birmingham, meet your new noodle spot. (Going to have another one soon!) Tucked behind Bank Street Coffee, right beside the tram track, Gulnar Noodle brings Uyghur-style hand-pulled noodles to the city centre. Yes, I had to try it. 🍽️ Food & Drinks You can tell straight away that these noodles are hand-pulled. They're irregular, uneven and full of character, which already puts them ahead of the uniform factory stuff. I love a chewy noodle, but these were very chewy, verging on firm. I'm still not sure if that's the house style or slightly undercooked. Chew fans, brace your jaws. Clear beef broth noodle The broth is a classic beef number: rich, well-flavoured and comforting, a bit like pho (both are beef-bone broths at heart). The beef itself was nicely marinated with a familiar Chinese-style seasoning. Tasty stuff. 👋 Service I ordered takeaway, but still had a fair wait in the shop. Nothing dramatic, but not the quick grab-and-go I'd hoped for. ✨ Decor & ...

Ever read one of my reviews, then completely forgotten the name of the place the moment you're actually in town and hungry? Fifteen months, 95 reviews and 139 places later, scrolling back through the archive to find "that ramen place near New Street" isn't much fun for anyone. So I've put every restaurant, café, bakery and bubble tea spot I've reviewed onto one map: the Honest Bao Food Map . 🗺️ Same honest verdicts (still unpaid, still independent), just with a pin on them. It is a screen hot only, don't try to zoom on this static picture 🗺️ What's on the Map Everything I've reviewed since July 2025, from Birmingham's Chinese Quarter to a ski resort in Niigata. Birmingham: 48 places, from dim sum and beef noodles to two-star tasting menus Rest of the UK: London, the Lake District, the Cotswolds, Lichfield and one very good motorway services Europe: Porto, Barcelona, Madrid, Nice, Monaco, Strasbourg and Colmar Asia: Japan (Tokyo and be...

After a good meal at The Wilderness in the Jewellery Quarter, I'd had its little sister on my list for ages. Albatross Death Cult is chef Alex Claridge's stripped-back, seafood-led counter: 14 seats and ten courses, cooked right in front of you. The name comes from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner . In hindsight, that was my warning. Good starter with this industrial stainless steel table ✨ Decor & Ambience A last-minute weekday booking was easy. The restaurant is tucked inside a renovated canalside building deep among residential flats. It's raw and industrial, built around one huge stainless steel counter. The vibe is great. Decent oyster but I can't tell the jelly is the main or the oyster 👋 Service The staff are friendly and professional. They explained the sourcing: mostly Cornish seafood, plus some Japanese ingredients. Local, fresh, promising. Everything pointed to a good meal. But was it? Decent mackerel, but not the top quality you expect  🍽️ Food & ...

Fresh off a surprisingly good SushiDog run, I got bold about Japanese food in the UK again.  It was a quick dinner at Grand Central before a train. Pho was rammed (surprisingly), so I tried Tonkotsu instead. My logic: this Soho-born chain makes its noodles in-house on machines imported from Tokyo, and in Birmingham it started as a counter in Selfridges before moving to the station. Surely it's grown up since then? The quiet dining room should have been my first clue. A very very average shoyu ramen 🍽️ Food & Drinks I ordered the Tokyo and the Geki Kara. The Tokyo is a soy-based chicken broth, yet it was bland, with barely a whisper of shoyu. The noodles have improved and are much less alkaline than before. But the ends were clumped together and undercooked. Spreading your noodles evenly is a basic chef skill. The char siu was marinated but forgettable. The egg was cooked nicely but, again, short on flavour. Call me old-fashioned, but I'm not a fan of these "innovati...

Ten quid for a sushi roll in a shopping centre?  My eyebrows went up before my chopsticks did. SushiDog started in 2018 as a tiny kiosk in Westfield London. Its founders were fed up hunting for fresh sushi they could actually eat on the move. More than ten London sites later, they picked Birmingham's Bullring for their first branch outside the capital. I went in sceptical. Best case: Wasabi-level grab-and-go. Worst case: a Wagamama-style fusion mash-up so westernised it'd need a passport to get back to Japan. Spoiler: I've now been three times. Decent portion for £9 🍽️ Food & Drinks These are big, burrito-style rolls, and my go-to is the SushiDog Signature Salmon : salmon with Japanese mayo, soy, avocado, cucumber, edamame, crispy onions and sesame. The crispy onions do a lot of heavy lifting, and I'm not complaining. The real hero, though, is the rice. It's not dry and crumbly, and it's not soggy and sad. It's been just right every visit. That's h...