Chinatown

My first time at Super Bao and 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.

I was lost in weighing the merits of pork buns versus pork floss buns versus the classic char siu bao, deciding which style of pineapple bun I wanted to come home with me.

The shop can be overwhelming.

Analysis paralysis for the easily distracted.

It's 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.

Kai Ban, the owner, comes from a family of bakers in Guangxi, China, and she opened Super Bow and 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.

My first time at Super Bao and 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.

I was lost in weighing the merits of pork buns versus pork floss buns versus the classic char siu bao, deciding which style of pineapple bun I wanted to come home with me.

The shop can be overwhelming, analysis paralysis for the easily distracted.

It's 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.

Kai Ban, the owner, comes from a family of bakers in Guangxi, China, and she opened Super Bao and 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.

Like, if it was a social experiment, Keith, okay, this would be off the charts.

There is no way LeBron James ordered Chinese food from Chinatown in Philadelphia while he was in Boston.

Like, I know he's got access to a helicopter and whatnot, okay? But there's no way he's coming...

I think it was, what, Saturday they played and then Sunday afternoon? So he'd be back in...

New York after the game in Boston.

There's no way, okay? Somebody ordered Chinese food from an establishment in Chinatown, Philadelphia, and their name was LeBron J that they put for the name on the order, okay? Yet somehow this became a viral story, Keith.

that's the impact of lebron j like i know people are looking at like season ticket prices or tickets and ticket prices in general not as bad if you use the game time at plug plug but anyway uh people are looking at it like that and be like everything's expensive everyone's making more money off it but just a name on the receipt of a chinese food order key had the power to go viral.

Do people understand what we're dealing with here in the global sensation, away from the basketball court, by the way, that is LeBron James?

So why would you run? And what do you say about your opponents?

So, you know, my why is really my family, but not just my family, which started with my great grandfather who co-founded Chinatown here in Philadelphia.

But all the other families I grew up with, the folks that I've known for literally 50 years.

And really what's happened the last, I'll call it, you know, 10 to 20 years is is that there's been a subtle shift in Chester County of all places, a place where the brand is a great place to raise a family, where it's now very hard to raise a family in Chester County.

So I know a lot about how the government does business.

And so for you, I was reading, you know, about your bio and your background.

You have a fascinating background as well because you mentioned the roots in Philadelphia in Chinatown.

And so your grandparents, could you talk a little bit about the roots? You know, what happened here in, you know, in Philadelphia, Chinatown? But so your your your mom or your grandma, your mom.