Chinese Bakery in Chinatown: Mei Lai Wah's Pork Bun

Mei Lai Wah sells its baked roast pork bun for $2.75 and its pineapple bun with roast pork for $3.30, the two buns that built its Bayard Street line after it opened in 1968. The family business now bakes at 41 Mott Street, New York, NY 10013, between Bayard and Pell Streets in Manhattan's Chinatown, and is open every day from 8:30 am to 8 pm. For anyone typing chinese bakery near me anywhere below Canal Street, this is the counter the rest of the neighborhood gets measured against.

The bakery's own telling of its story starts with a grandfather who emigrated from Toisan, the Taishan region of Guangdong, and brought traditional baking techniques with him. In 1968 those techniques went to work behind a door on Bayard Street, and for close to sixty years the shop fed Chinatown with the flavors of Guangzhou and Toisan. The family says Mei Lai Wah is still generationally owned and run on the same principles it was founded on.

The biggest change in that history is the address. What began on Bayard Street found a new home at 41 Mott Street, a room that for decades held the Golden Fung Wong Bakery, one of the old-school Chinatown bakeries on the block between Bayard and Pell. The move gave the kitchen more space without leaving the two-block stretch where the pork buns made their reputation. The house slogan on the website sums up the approach: a tradition passed down, still rising daily.

The baked buns are the reason to come. The official menu lists the baked roast pork bun at $2.75, alongside the coconut-filled cocktail bun and the plain Famous Bun at the same $2.75. The pineapple buns, named for the cracked sugar crust rather than any fruit, are $3.30 each in three versions: custard, roast pork, or plain. The Hong Kong-style pineapple bun with a slab of butter tucked inside costs $4.40, the most expensive bun on the board.

The steamed side of the counter covers the dim sum classics. The oyster sauce steamed roast pork bun is $2.75, the chicken bun $3.58 and the Big Bun stuffed with chicken, pork and egg $4.35. Sticky rice in lotus leaves, egg yolk lava buns and red bean buns are $5.50 each, the last two sold three and four to an order. Shumai run $6.88 for four and shrimp dumplings $7.15 for four. Fried sesame balls are the cheapest snack on the menu at $2.64.

Mei Lai Wah also cooks a full coffee-shop menu. Pork and preserved egg congee is $6.05 and the fish, beef or chicken versions $7.43. Rice noodle rolls with dried shrimp or beef are $6.33, and fried fritters cost $2.75 for anyone who wants to dunk one in congee. Hot coffee and Hong Kong milk tea start at $1.75 for a small, while the specialty iced drinks, including taro, coconut, mango and Thai-style milk tea, are $6 each.

Brian Hoffman, the tour guide behind the Eat This NY blog, picked the baked roast pork bun as a Dish of the Week and called it probably the best baked pork bun in Chinatown: a warm, browned bun with a hint of sweetness wrapped around chunks of fatty roast pork in a sweet brown sauce. He liked the pineapple custard bun just as much, describing a sweet bun stuffed with custard under a generous dusting of sugar.

Here is the honest call. Hoffman found the pineapple bun with roast pork less impressive than either of those two, even though NYC Tourism notes that the shop's TikTok fame has made it just as popular as the original. If you only have room for two, take the plain baked pork bun and the custard pineapple bun. Skip the fried rice plates and chow fun at $15.40 to $17.99 too; they are fine, but a bakery line is the wrong place to wait for a wok.

NYC Tourism describes a line of locals that has been forming for more than 50 years for one thing, the baked barbecued pork bun, and says the line grew longer after the shop went viral on TikTok. The quiet window is the morning. Hoffman wrote that before 11 am the room holds a more modest group of locals with their newspapers and morning coffee, while later in the day a long line forms for baked buns and rice noodle rolls.

Doors open at 8:30 am, which makes an early bun and a $1.75 milk tea the easiest way to see the place at its most local. Weekday mornings are calmer than Saturday and Sunday afternoons, when walking tours and day-trippers converge on Mott Street. Order buns in multiples if you are feeding a group; Eat This NY warns that the roast pork buns can sell out, and buying a full bag at once beats rejoining the queue for seconds.

If the line spills well past the door or the pork bun tray is empty, walk back north toward Canal to Fay Da Bakery on Mott Street, the Chinatown branch of the Queens-born chain, which opens at 7 am and stays open until 7 pm on weekdays and 8 pm on weekends. It carries a wide range of Chinese buns, breads and cakes, so you still leave with a pineapple bun, even if it is not this one.

Ordering happens at the counter, and the buns are packed to go. The printed menu states that prices do not include New York City sales tax of 8.875 percent and that a 3 percent surcharge applies to all credit card transactions, so cash is the cheaper way to pay for a bag of buns. A $2.75 pork bun comes to just under $3 after tax, which is why so many regulars buy them by the half dozen.

The family also runs Mei Lai Wah Wonton Bar around the corner on Pell Street, a noodle-focused sibling that opens at 11 am and stays open until 9 pm on weekdays and 10 pm on weekends. The bakery itself still covers the basics, with wonton noodle soup and wonton soup at $8.25 each on its own menu, but the Pell Street room is the better choice when you want to sit down to a full bowl after buying buns.

The closest subway stop is Canal Street, served by the J, Z, N, Q, R, W and 6 trains; from the Canal and Mott corner, walk south on Mott past Bayard Street and the bakery is on the block before Pell. Driving into these streets is slow and parking is scarce, so the train is the sensible choice.

Carry the bag one block west to Columbus Park, the former Mulberry Bend that was turned into a park in 1897 after the photojournalist Jacob Riis campaigned to replace the notorious slum. Xiangqi players gather there over Chinese chess boards, and the benches are the obvious place to eat a warm bun. To the south, crooked Doyers Street holds Nom Wah Tea Parlor, which has served dim sum in Chinatown since 1920, a fitting second stop for anyone still hungry.

Mei Lai Wah Bakery, 41 Mott Street, New York, NY 10013, between Bayard and Pell Streets in Manhattan's Chinatown. Open every day 8:30 am to 8 pm. Baked roast pork bun $2.75, pineapple bun with roast pork $3.30, butter pineapple bun $4.40, small coffee or milk tea $1.75. Sales tax is added, and cards carry a 3 percent surcharge. Nearest subway: Canal Street (J, Z, N, Q, R, W, 6). The Wonton Bar on Pell Street opens at 11 am.