The last bite

Baby Cafe has a fun and creative menu filled with a lot of comfort dishes. While sometimes the cooking is straight-forward, I was struck with how when eating you can sense the expertise in the kitchen and freshness of the ingredients, making the experience satisfying.

Tried the beef stew

We tried the beef stew, which was a traditional comforting Chinese beef stew. The star, really, is the crispy rice bowl. Another dish we tried was the bamboo rice salted chicken, which is a chicken stir-fry that’s served in a bamboo bowl. (I don’t think the rice was cooked in the bamboo and it was more…

When I first visited

When I first visited, I ordered one of the classic comfort dishes, the baked pork chop rice plate ($8.50), which is a pan-fried pork chop that’s placed on top of rice (or spaghetti) and then covered with a tomato sauce with cheese. Baby Cafe’s version takes it a notch by adding a fried egg on…

New spots for a casual meal

One of my favorite new spots for a casual meal these days is Baby Cafe in Oakland’s Chinatown. The cafe, aptly named since the space is tiny, serves up westernized Chinese cuisine reflective of Hong Kong’s cha cha teng, which are like diners serving up a mix of traditional Chinese noodle soups and hybrids of Chinese-Western dishes like…