Super Bao & Cake Girl takes over KC’s Pastries in Chinatown

There’s a new bao specialist in town, and it does not shy away from remixing traditional Chinese ingredients like pork floss and red bean with familiar American desserts and trending flavors, like Oreos and of course, matcha.

Super Bao & Cake Girl opened May 12 in the former KC’s Pastries at 109 N. 10th St. in Chinatown. Owned and operated by Cai Ban, 42, a native of Guangxi in southern China, it serves fluffy buns and pastries that are found nowhere else in Chinatown or at most other Chinese bakeries in the United States. Rather than almond flour egg tarts, Super Bao & Cake Girl serves Portuguese egg tarts with brûléed custard and dramatically crimped edges so that the layers of pastry bake up extra crispy.

And instead of straightforward bo lo bao, or “pineapple” buns (which contain no pineapple — the name refers to the texture of its crust), it sells similarly crusted buns that are tinged green with matcha. Xian Wu, 40, is Super Bao & Cake Girl’s chef and baker, and is originally from Guangdong. He is in charge of ensuring all buns meet maximum airiness and fluff when they emerge from the bakery’s deck ovens.

Ban has been so busy trying to get the bakery open that she still hasn’t gotten around to changing the signage, all of which reads KC’s Pastries, the bakery that had operated in that location for close to three decades. She took over the lease last August. The bakery sees a relentless line around lunchtime. It’s seeing “both Chinese and American customers, but mostly Chinese,” Ban said. “And there are students, but probably less now because the universities are on summer break.”

Its youthful, superhero-esque branding was designed by Ban’s boyfriend, and its quirkiness encapsulates the off-kilter flavors pervasive throughout the bakery’s breads, most of which have student-friendly prices and generally range from $1.50 to $3.

Ban comes from a family of bakers in China. “We make similar types of bread in China, and my family has been doing this for about 20 to 30 years,” she said. She immigrated to the United States 16 years ago and came to Philadelphia a decade ago. She followed the advice of her landlord, Agnes Chen, who had also been the landlord of KC’s Pastries and who had also been the owner of the now-closed House of Chen. “I talked strategy with her. I asked her to think about what else does Chinatown not have? What can she make that no one else has?” said Chen.

The answers are in Super Bao & Cake Girl’s glass cases: buns stuffed with corn and covered in crunchy flower-shaped sprinkles, oblong individually-sized breads filled with cheese and pork floss, glossy durian pastries, and buns filled with cream and coated in pork floss and seaweed. They’re savory-sweet and all totally unique.

Super Bao & Cake Girl, 109 N. 10th St., is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily. Cash and Venmo only.