Weaknesses come in all shapes and sizes: one of my biggest takes the form of an inability to walk past a new Chinese bakery without stopping in for a treat or two (or seven). Worse, HungryMan is my enabler, holding the door open for me, plopping buns and sticky desserts on my tray, and even sometimes ushering me to a table while he pays the bill. So it was this past week when we walked past the Golden King Bakery Inc. on the corner of Bowery and Hester Street. We had a moment of déja-vu when we realized that this same spot housed another, very different-looking bakery, as recently as six months ago, but the proprietors of the Golden King have redesigned the interior, installing steel tables and benches, modern hanging lamps, and an all-metal bakery case that gives the restaurant a very 21st Century feel. The food, on the other hand, is traditional Chinese pastry–light spongey cakes, vegetable and meat buns, and a variety of sweet-ish rolls. Chinese baked goods, like their Mexican cousins, tend to be less sweet than most European-style pastries, which can be a bit of a surprise if you’re not prepared for it.

While I normally find the tempered sweetness of Chinese bakery items to be very pleasant, the lemon custard cake I ordered was even less sweet and quite a bit firmer than I had imagined it would be. This might have been a disaster, had I not been carrying a still-hot cup of milky java, and had I not been inspired to dunk. The result was a gorgeous combination–perfect for a quick pre-work nibble. Golden King does sell its own coffee (something I did not know) so if you don’t happen to have a cup on you, you can grab some here. Interestingly, you can also order an unappetizing-sounding ‘coffee and tea mixed’ drink, but I’d recommend picking a side and sticking with it for the duration of your snack, at the very least.

HungryMan chose a savory item from the bun steamer, a shredded pork bao zi bun. This, I am sorry to say, was not very good, mostly because the pork was seriously under-seasoned. In a bun where the soft, pillowy exterior does not shoulder much of the flavor burden, the filling is key, and here, it just could not do enough to rescue the bun. HungryMan abandoned half of it uneaten.

In the end, we left a little bit disappointed by Golden King Bakery. The space is certainly much sleeker and attractive after its recent renovations, but the quality of the food is not as high as it ought to be, especially in a neighborhood with so many stellar Chinese bakeries. When we did a little research into the restaurant, we uncovered another fact about the building at 92 Bowery: it is where the founder of the Hare Krishna sect, Swami Prabhupada, lived in the mid-1960s. Come to think of it, perhaps it is his lingering, herbivorous presence that cast its shadow over our pork bun experience. I wonder, would a vegan cardamom tofu bao zi fare better?