Restaurant Review: Bao Casual in Lviv, Ukraine

If you are in love with Hong Kong cuisine and live in Lviv, Ukraine there is good news. A new dim sum restaurant has just opened in the city center. This is not the only restaurant in Lviv that offers dim sum (there are YOKI and Split), but Bao Casual has the widest selection. 

Here is my restaurant review with all the pluses and minuses that you need to know about.

Location

Bao Casual has a great location. They are located in the center of the old town where most of the famous Lviv restaurants are. This is also a very convenient location for tourists, since many of the must do things in Lviv are located in the old town.

Address: Staroievreiska str. 25/27, Lviv

Atmosphere

Bao Casual has 4 different sitting rooms with completely different vibes. There is a red room that has a dim light and creates a very romantic, intimate atmosphere. There is also a bar zone with DJ area, a mirror room that looks a bit like a nightclub, and a private velvet room that has just one big table. 

Besides all of those rooms, Bao Casual has a cute outside terrace decorated with big plants. This is also the most crowded area during warm weather. 

Service

You have to remember that I visited the Bao Casual restaurant just a month after it opened. Therefore, my experience with service can be completely different to yours. 

Overall the service was decent. Our waiter was friendly and tried to help us as much as he could. However, you can feel that he is a newbie and isn’t sure about the menu. 

There is also another problem with an English menu. It does not exist! I hope by the time you decide to visit this restaurant this problem will be fixed. 

The menu had English names for dishes, but no explanation whatsoever, which I found very… hm “not smart”. You either do a fully Ukrainian menu, or add English description, since the name of the dish or drink sometimes doesn’t tell you anything. 

The owners of Bao Casual restaurant have another Chinese restaurant in Kyiv where they have an English menu, therefore we were shown that one, but the prices and some of the choices were different. Very inconvenient!

Menu

Well, I already talked about the menu a bit. Now, let me tell you about the food itself. 

Since we specifically went to Bao Casual to try their dim sums, that is what we ordered. Overall it was pretty good, except for two choices which I found far from what it should be. 

Note: I want to warn you right away, do not expect to get dim sum as good as in Hong Kong or Singapore. It is a pretty new dish for Ukraine and of course it is bound to taste a bit different. 

Now about what I didn’t like: dim sum with chicken and calamari, xiao long bao with duck. The reason I didn’t like it was because it had the toughest dough I ever tried, and I’ve lived in China and Hong Kong for three years, and ate tons of different dumplings. 

Other than those two pretty, but tough dishes, everything else was quite good, full of flavor and somewhat close to what I ate in China. 

Prices

The prices at Bao Casual restaurant are a bit excessive in my honest opinion, but dim sum is always quite an expensive dish in Ukraine. Partly because it is a very new thing and just a few restaurants have it on their menu.

However, for those who lived in Asia and ate dim sum on a regular basis, Bao Casual would seem to be wildly overpriced and unnecessarily fancy. 

Disclaimer: Jet Set Together was not paid by “Bao Casual” restaurant in Lviv, Ukraine and did not accept any payment for a good review. The words expressed in this article are my honest opinion.

Restaurant Review: Bao Casual in Lviv, Ukraine