A Selfie That’s Good Enough to Eat?
A London restaurant is now offering bao buns printed with the eater’s own face.
This just in: The selfie stick is likely no longer the strangest accoutrement for selfie lovers hungry to gaze upon their own images from a new angle or in a new context.
That dubious honor may now rightfully be reassigned to the selfie bao bun currently on offer at Yuu Kitchen, a London Asian-fusion restaurant overseen by chef Jon de Villa, a Nobu veteran.
Yuu Kitchen’s Manga Bao is a bao bun featuring the face of the eater printed on it using rice paper, edible ink and steam. Each bun is stuffed with one of seven delicious-sounding fillings including pork belly braised in 7UP (with bbq sauce, cucumber pickles and peanuts), Wagyu beef (with mustard ketchup, roasted garlic mayo and onion rings), soy and buttermilk fried chicken (with carolina reaper chilli mayo and daikon pickle), and soft-shell crab (with wasabi mayo, lettuce, red onion and pickled radish). The bun itself is vegan and veggie fillings also include tofu served “crispy” (with kimchi and kimchi mayo), broccoli served “crispy” (with pickled red cabbage and roasted garlic aioli) and shitake mushrooms (with hoisin mayo and pickled carrot).
Biting into your own crazy mug at Yuu Kitchen requires a little advance planning and flexibility: The Manga Bao is available only via pre-order and only on Mondays. Still, Yuu Kitchen serves up about 600 of the buns each week, according to Business Insider. Cost? About $7 and up – and there’s no extra charge for the specially printed personalization.
It brings a whole different meaning to the expression “eat your face off.”