Take a Bao

Others have said it’s not your average food court food, which is true, but it is your average food court food in the Century City Mall (especially since you are paying a premium compared to other food courts). With so many great options in this fine food court, the bar is higher, and Take a Bao is just okay.
I had a brown rice bowl with spicy sesame citrus chicken and wok tossed veggies, which was a great combo and a generous serving size. It looked absolutely delicious, but something was a bit off — I think maybe the flavor was too strong, making it hard to eat all of the bowl. It also didn’t sit well with my stomach later on. My bf had food envy when he saw my bowl — he had the panang curry noodle bowl — and it was probably better than what he had, but still not great.

Most mediocre bao place I’ve ever been to. You can find better bao in a frozen bag at the grocery store.
I had the BBQ pork bao in a wheat bao and it barely tasted like anything. It was also cold when I got it, I thought it would be warm at the very least. I also got the s’mores bao for dessert and I hated it. It was so dry and took forever to chew. I’ll pretty much eat any version of s’mores but I couldn’t even finish this one.
The only saving grace of this place is the spiced sweet potato fries, which were very good but probably nothing you couldn’t find at any other restaurant.

This review is only for their 8 Veggie Salad and sumac steak fries, since that’s what I always get from here…
Having watched «Cowspiracy» recently, I’ve renewed my efforts to eschew animal products, which means a lot more 8 Veggie salads from Take a Bao when I need a takeout meal. It is filling and contains salad ingredients that I generally don’t buy when at the grocery store since I can’t use it all before it goes bad (sugar snap peas, radish sprouts). There’s a great variety of textures from the lettuce, cucumber shreds, edamame, roasted corn, tomatoes, avocado and aforementioned sugar snap peas and radish sprouts. Love the healthy fat from avocado and gomasio (sesame seeds).
I generally get the dressing on the side, because the vinaigrette is wonderfully tangy and delicious, meaning probably plenty of sugar calories that I don’t need.
My only gripe is that I get this salad pretty frequently, and about half the time, I wind up with a smattering of «pick out» pieces, like the core of a lettuce head, brown hard ends of a sugar snap pea, gray overripe avocado bits, etc.
Note to management: Please instruct the prep team that you’re supposed to remove the hard, inedible core of the lettuce head before shredding…
The sumac fries are great if you like thick cut, seasoned white potato fries! They might be some of the best fries I’ve had, actually. (I do not like sweet potatoes, so can’t speak to those.)
Workers, including the cashier, always appear to be efficient.
Overall, a solid takeout place for me.

Never again!
The century city mall doesn’t have much to offer when it comes to good food (unless you don’t mind a traditional sit-​down restaurant), but when it comes to quick food, there’s not many good options.
I’ve had take a bao before, but at one of their actual locations, not a mall-​type fast food situations, and they were pretty decent, so I figured this would be the same. It wasn’t.
I had 3 bites of my chinese chicken salad, threw the whole bowl away, and headed over to Chipotle to get a burrito bowl instead.
The veggies weren’t fresh/​crisp and the chicken had an almost rubbery texture, with no taste.
Lesson of the day, stick to basics when it comes to food court options. Things that don’t disappoint like chipotle and fat burger.