For well over a decade the Vietnamese restaurant, Rain, was a fixture on the Upper West Side. Earlier this year the itinerant chef Michael "Bao" Huynh entered into a "committed" partnership with Rain owners Main Street Restaurant Group (Calle Ocho, BLT Prime) and undertook a project to completely remake the space and the menu. The new space, which evokes colonial-era Vietnam, retains the same scale with overall seating for 160 people. The menu covers a wide variety of Vietnamese genres, offering chef Bao's interpretations of authentic family style dishes, street food, and fresh hand and spring rolls. The press release notes that "ingredients are seasonal and fresh-off-the-farm."
Chef Pedigree:
- In 2007 opened Mai House with Drew Nieporent and Bun (no longer affiliated).
- Named one of NY Mag's Best Chefs of 2003.
- Opened Bao 111 (now closed) in 2002, also in the East Village, and shortly after opened Bao Noodles (no longer affiliated).
- Opened Vicala (now closed) in the East Village in 2001 which featured Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian cuisine.
- Self-taught in his native Vietnam and then in the Catskills, where he worked at his foster family's Italian restaurant.
Location: 100 W 82nd St at Columbus Avenue.
Reservations: The restaurant is listed on OpenTable but is shown as "unavailable." Your best bet is to call 212-501-0776.
View the Bar Bao listing on Savory Cities.
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1 Comments
I ate at BarBao the other night and had a great experience. I love vietnamese food, alot of times i get that gut feeling that i want something light but packed full of flavor. But a profile like that isnt always the easiest thing to follow up on. However Vietnamese food answers the calling.
We tried the;
Crab Spring Rolls pork, shrimp,jicama,nuoc cham sauce 9.00 The dish came with lettuce and some pickled veg, i felt the dish was under seasoned, and could not figure out why i would use the lettuce to wrap a fried roll that already had a wrapping... As for the pickled veg, which is usually packed with flavor, tasted bland, perhaps it was not allowed to pickle long enough.
Daikon Duck Hash slow poached egg, duck bacon, sweet soy 12.00 This dish tasted fantastic, it was heavy and greasy but had immense flavor. In dim sum they have a similar dish, which is a fried dikon raddish cake, which usually has small bits of ham and dried shrimp, sometimes topped with oyster sauce. However at BarBao it was brought to a new level, with a perfectly poached duck egg? atop, crisped dikon cubes, and shredded duck? As with some of the dishes, much of the food was dark and hard to see, especially with the lack of lighting. It was sometimes hard to make out exactly what it was you were about to bite into.
Sweet Potato Shoots garlic, fish sauce 8 The pea shoots, which i found out is actually a veg dish, much like steamed pea shoots you would get in Dim Sum restaurants. This was a highlight, the dish was perfectly seasoned and was simple and fantastic.
Sticky Rice chinese sausage, crispy shallot
4.00 a bit lacking on ingredients, but it was what it was... Sticky rice with chinese sausage.
Duck Breast pan seared with spicy lemongrass sauce, sautéed water spinach and mushrooms 19 which i think may or may not be on the menu as i could not find it on one web site and it was on another... The dish was a bit overdone, there was alot going on on the plate, however much of the components tasted the same or similar. What really turned me off were the offals. Many a heart and liver was hidden well under my sliced duck breast which was medium well (much to my shagrin) There were potatoes to i think, however again it was so dark and everything on my plate was dark brown that i could not tell what was offal and what was meat, or potato. I ate almost everything but the offals which easily was twice as much as the duck breast.
And last an Osso Buco which i no longer think is on the menu, as i found it on one website and not another. The dish was very well seasoned, tasted pretty good, however was very fatty. I understand Osso Buco is a little fatty, but this dish needed to render more of it.
Overall, service was actually very well done. dishes did take a little while, but it is expected of new restaurants. Staff was attentive, and loved to tell us about the food and restaurant history. I had a pretty good experience. It should be given a try.