Ninja Bao is a small kiosk sized restaurant in the underground concourse of Philly’s Suburban Station. They have an extensive menu that serves bao, gyoza, buns, wontons, sheng jian bao, and ramen.  Ninja Bao is counter service and has seating for about a dozen people, and when I was there for lunch it was doing crazy amounts of take-out business.  Both of my dumpling orders were served in to-go boxes with little tubs of dipping sauce. This is a great place to get tasty food during duty jury lunch breaks.

The Dumplings: Ninja Bao has an extensive menu of bao, gyoza and wontons and I tried the pork wontons in chili oil and the sheng jian bao (pan fried soup dumplings).  The wonton filling does not have the usual aromatics of ginger and garlic mixed into the pork, instead they use aromatics-infused water to make the wonton skins.  They take this approach so that you get the flavor but don’t bite into pieces of garlic or ginger in the filling.  The tasty filling is also flavored their homemade soy sauce.  The wontons come doused in chili oil and adorned with chopped scallions and cilantro, but while flavorful, the chili oil is disappointingly mild.

The sheng jian bao come 6 to an order and are pan-fried golden brown on the pleated side.  The bao skins are admirably thin and the pork filling is seasoned with scallions and fresh ginger and is super flavorful.  The bao I was served only had a modest amount of soup inside, but was rich and flavorful. Ninja Bao is a tiny place so you get your soup dumplings almost directly off the fry pan, so they are really hot. Make sure you follow correct procedures for eating these buns or you will get burned.

The Location: Ninja Boa is in Suburban Station’s underground concourse near City Hall.  Use the escalators across from City Hall (directly west of City Hall) to go down to the concourse level.  At the bottom of the escalators you should see the Post Office, Ninja Bao is about 20 yards to the left of the Post Office, past the Dunkin Donuts.