I woke up at noon on a sunny Monday… the start to my weird restaurant schedule weekend. I was starving after all those hours of sleep, so began searching on the Chairman Bao Truck twitter page to see where I could get me a pork belly Chinese bun.
Finding the Chairman Bao Truck is an adventure in and of itself. Unlike many of the food trucks around this city, the Chairman Bao Truck is a moving vehicle. The only way to find the truck’s current location is by going onto its twitter page that very day.
When I looked on the twitter page at one pm, a very excited and enthusiastic post told me that, “Chairman Bao’s Chinese Bun Truck is in Emmeryville at Hollis and 53rd until 1:30pm!!! Hurry up and get your bao buns!!!”
I threw on some pants, hopped onto the back of a friend’s motorcycle, and we sped in the sunshine, across the Bay Bridge, over the sparkling salty bay waters, into Emmeryville, and zoomed around the curvy neighborhood lanes, until… there it was!!! The most beautiful, communist red truck adorned with murals of panda bears and lord knows what else, sitting on the side of a quiet residential street.
That day, the bun options were braised chicken with pickled carrots and spicy mayonnaise, braised pork with pickled cabbage, and number thirty-two on my must eat or die list, pork belly with pickled daikon.
My motorcycle man and I ordered one of each. They come in a white compostable container, each one as big as a White Castle hamburger (with ingredients about two hundred percent better quality than White Castle food). The bun is like a fluffy taco soaking up the juices of the sweet and salty pork belly, which melted in my mouth with crispy outer bits. I was shocked to see that the neon yellow of the pickled daikon is a color that can exist in nature without carcinogenic chemicals. It contributed a refreshing crunch to the fatty belly.
After the first round, we ordered two more. I had to have another pork belly bun. I can’t imagine that would have been my last time at Chairman Bao’s Truck. I will search the Chairman out again in the near future.
