The Best Inexpensive Bakery in Chinatown

The Molten Custard Pineapple Bun (left) and a tray of Oreo Buns at Super Bao & Cake Girl / Photography by K.C. Tinari

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My first time at Super Bao & Cake Girl, I forgot to get the Portuguese egg tarts.

I was distracted by the dozens of other shiny, fat, fluffy pastries lined up in their perfect rows inside the display cases at this pastry shop in Chinatown — lost in weighing the merits of pork buns (shredded pork stuffed inside soft dough) versus pork floss buns (sweet, golden pork pulled hair-fine and mounded on top of a long bun) versus the classic char siu bao, in deciding which style of pineapple bun (named for the texture of the surface, scored like pineapple rind) I wanted to come home with me.

The shop can be overwhelming. Analysis paralysis for the easily distracted. It has been open for just a few months now in the old KC’s Pastries on a crowded stretch of 10th Street, surrounded by tea shops and noodle houses, almost in the shadow of the arch. Cai Ban, the owner, comes from a family of bakers in Guangxi, China, and she opened Super Bao & Cake Girl — with its superhero branding and bright comic book colors — to bridge a gap in Chinatown’s pastry scene between the wealth of tradition and a kind of brightly colored cartoon modernism.

The buns here are simple, glossy, and affordable. Two or three bucks gets you a lemon-yellow long bun filled with coconut paste or a matcha-green pineapple bun or a pork bun the size of a baseball, filled with chunks of pork in a sticky sauce that’s honestly a bit too sweet and one-note, even when balanced against the soft bread that contains it — but still scratches that itch when you want something sweetly savory that you can eat walking. There are buns covered with Oreo crumbles sitting alongside others filled with durian; slabs of sweet, soft, perfect milk bread next to buns the size of a Wawa Shorti, covered in sesame seeds and split longways so that a lettuce-wrapped hot dog fits inside. It’s fast-food fusion, only handmade. Chinese American convenience store cuisine turned into something finer and smoother and more thoughtful.

Every time I go (and I go whenever I’m in the neighborhood), I forget what I came for and leave with something else. If I remember the egg tarts (custardy in the middle, with a million-fold pastry cup as crisp as anything when they first hit the display cases), I’ll leave before grabbing a slice of the plastic-wrapped milk bread from the corner by the counter. If I go back for the milk bread, I’ll leave with pork floss buns and a fat, weighty bao the size of a doughnut stuffed with chicken and topped with flower sprinkles, too.

It’s different every time I go, a small adventure that can be had for a few dollars. And no matter what you think you’re going for, you never know exactly what delightful treat you’re going to discover.
2 Stars — Come if you’re in the neighborhood

Rating Key

0 stars: stay away
★: come if you have no other options
★★: come if you’re in the neighborhood
★★★: come from anywhere in Philly
★★★★: come from anywhere in America

Published as “Bao Down in Chinatown” in the October 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.