In search of a traditional Asian bakery, it appeared that this is essentially the only one in…read moreChinatown, much to our surprise. The other bakeries in the area were more focused on croissants or cakes, so we decided on Emperor's since we wanted some buns!
They had exactly the types of pastries we wanted... red bean buns, char sui buns, and the like. Despite being open until 9:00P, they were running low on buns around 5:30P and didn't appear to be refilling their stock, which is understandable. They still had plenty of dim sum in the hot case along with cookies and cakes.
We took a tray and piled on nine buns which cost A$40. The woman at the front originally just grabbed a bag to put them all in, but when we asked for a box, she gladly packed them up with care at no extra cost.
I tried three different buns. The bread was nice and soft with a bit of a chew, although it was also thick and denser than expected. The filling of each one was just okay and I sadly wasn't wowed by any of them.
+ BBQ PORK BUN: This contained larger chunks of meat whereas I would have preferred more finely chopped pork. Luckily, it didn't have much fat, but the filling was more salty and savory as opposed to being sweet.
+ COCKTAIL BUN: This one was filled with a sweet coconut paste, which was somewhat gritty and had an underlying saltiness. After eating the first half, the saltiness became a bit much for me and I couldn't finish the last few bites.
+ RED BEAN BUN: Rather than a sweet red bean paste, the center had slightly mashed beans with some of them being close to whole. The flavor wasn't bad, just not the sweet red bean paste that we expected.
Since there wasn't another bakery nearby with similar buns, we weren't able to compare. Maybe our expectations just differed from what the norm is here, but sadly, we were disappointed with our selection.