BAO Borough

The grill in this room was imported from Tokyo, and the beef that goes on it is 40-day aged Denver from Warren's Butchers in Cornwall, marinated overnight.

Why go

BAO began as a stall at Netil Market and now runs seven London restaurants, and this is the only one of them built as a grill house. The venue calls it "our interpretation of the late night grill house under the railway tracks" (BAO Borough), which is a real format in Taipei rather than a decorating idea. The kitchen is open, the seating faces it, and the charcoal does the work: ox heart on a skewer dipped in shacha sauce, Taiwanese sausage, yellow chilli chicken thigh, and the beef rice bowl the site calls its own. Downstairs, behind a red-lit window, is the Paris, Texas karaoke room for fourteen. It opened on 9 May 2019 as the group's third site, promised to "offer a different culinary experience to its sister sites" (Hot Dinners), and it kept that promise.

Order this / avoid

• Order: the beef rice bowl, then something off the skewers. James Cochran's pick here is the fried chicken bao, "sitting in-between two pillows of aerated bao bun with this spicy mayonnaise, hot sauce, kimchi, coriander." ref A Suntory Hi-Ball to drink.
• Avoid: ordering this room like the Soho original. The grill is what changes here.

What locals & experts say

• James Cochran, chef-patron of 12:51 and Around The Cluck, naming the branch in Trippin's fried chicken guide: "Bao is 100% on their game and their fried chicken is next level... the chicken was so juicy and nice." ref
• Catherine Hanly, Hot Dinners (April 2019), on what the site was for, ahead of the 9 May opening: BAO Borough would "offer a different culinary experience to its sister sites", with a karaoke room downstairs, a bao hatch on the street, and a Suntory Hi-Ball machine whose menu would change "seasonally depending on what fruits are available." ref
• No named critic has reviewed this address in anything reachable on 30 July 2026. Reviews of BAO Soho, Marylebone, King's Cross, City, Shoreditch and Battersea exist and are about different menus, so none of them is used here.

Good to know

• Sites: seven BAO restaurants in London. Xiao Chi House at Soho and Marylebone, Bao Eatery at King's Cross and the City, Noodle Shop at Shoreditch and Battersea Power Station, and this one, the Grill House at 13 Stoney Street SE1 9AD. Each karaoke room is named for its site; Borough's is the Paris, Texas Room.
• Timing: noon to 10pm Monday to Thursday, to 10.30pm Friday and Saturday, to 9pm Sunday.
• Booking: the group takes reservations for this site. At opening the rule was bookings for parties of five or more and walk-in for everyone else, so turning up remains a reasonable plan for two.
• Operator: expansion group. Erchen Chang, Shing Tat Chung and Wai Ting Chung founded it on a market stall, JKS Restaurants backed it from 2015, and the Singapore-based Lo and Behold Group bought JKS's position in July 2025. Group scale puts the burden of proof on edge and value; the Tokyo grill and the named butcher are the answer to it.
• Hygiene: FSA rating 4, Southwark, inspected 31 October 2024. Components 5, 10 and 5 where higher is worse. The inspection is 21 months old. ref

Jeff's take (his words)

Jeff saved BAO Borough with no note. His raw saved-places export carries an empty Note for this row, so nothing above is in his voice and no order is attributed to him.

Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)

should-visit — Worth crossing the market for, and specifically this address. BAO runs seven London rooms and Borough is the only one built as a grill house, with a charcoal grill imported from Tokyo and 40-day aged Denver beef from Warren's in Cornwall, marinated overnight and cooked over coals for the rice bowl. That is capital spent on one way of cooking, which is the craft signal to read on a group operator. James Cochran, who runs 12:51 and Around The Cluck, picked out the fried chicken bao by name: 'the chicken was so juicy and nice', 'sitting in-between two pillows of aerated bao bun'. Counter seating faces an open kitchen under the railway arches, the karaoke room downstairs is priced by the hour, and the whole thing sits at the two-dollar band. It stops short of the top rung because no named critic has judged this room and one industry pick is one.