My photos of Mee Sum Pastry turned out poorly, so here is one linked in from Seattle Bloggers

Mee Sum Pastry in Seattle’s Pike Place Market sells Andre the Giant fist sized, meat stuffed buns known as Hom Bow. They claim to sell the largest buns in Washington State and have baked BBQ Pork, Curry Beef, and Chicken Hom Bow, and steamed BBQ Pork and Chicken Hom Bow. They also sell Crab Rangoon and Pot Sticker dumplings.  Mee Sum Pastry is a take-out only storefront with no dedicated seating so there are always little knots of people standing on the sidewalk eating buns out of waxed paper bags.

The Dumplings:  I tried the baked BBQ Pork Hom Bow which had a crispy outer surface, an inner layer of slightly chewy bread dough and shredded barbecue pork and onion filling.  The filling was sweet tasting, high quality char siu pork, not the mystery off-cuts of pork you find in some buns.  These BBQ Pork buns are really good.

The bun engineering at Mee Sum is really quite amazing.  The bun’s bready dough outer layer are thin, so these monster sized buns pack a  lot of filling, maybe 3/4 of cup of BBQ Pork.   When I bit into the bun the outer crispy layer did not feel thick enough to contain the pork filling.  I kept expecting the pork and onions to squirt out the back of the bun, like jelly coming out of a overstuffed doughnut.  But surprisingly the bun dough kept its integrity the whole time and my shoes were saved from BBQ sauce.

The Location: Mee Sum Pastry is just across the street from the covered produce/meat/seafood market area of Seattle’s Pike Place Market.  It is at 1526 Pike Place, near the excellent Piroshky Piroshky (reviewed here).