Eating Everything On the Menu at NYC’s Hottest Taiwanese Bakery

Welcome to East Williamsburg.

We are here at the Taiwanese American Bakery,

Win Won Bakery.

We're going to eat one of everything on the menu.

Joining us today is Chef Eric Sze,

who is a chef of two fantabulous Taiwanese restaurants,

Wen Wen and 886.

He's a perfect person to eat all of this food with today.

Thanks for joining me, Eric.

It's my pleasure.

I always knew you needed me.

[both laugh]

We're at a Taiwanese American bakery Win Son,

which we are not strangers to.

It's pastry and breakfast forward, but they are all day.

So there's lunch and there are plenty of things to eat

for dinner as well.

The rules are first thing,

we must eat everything on the menu.

Second, we should only take one perfect bite of everything.

It's up to us how we wanna curate this experience.

First thing I think we do is pastries

and then the savory breakfast items

with a little bit of soy milk

and then small bites, salads, into the lunch things,

fried chicken towards the end.

So it's essentially like a breakfast, lunch,

and dinner combined into one setting.

Yeah.

There's a lot of pastries in the pastry case today,

so let's do proper pastries first

and then the confectioneries afterwards.

Let's do it.

[upbeat music]

We are drinking God-fearing American drip black coffee.

Cheers.

I'll tell you what I'm most excited about: mochi donut.

Essentially they use glutenous rice flour,

which has a lot of what?

Amylose pectin, right? Yep.

Spongy.

It's salty, it's sweet.

They make 'em fresh every day.

If you can catch it when it's warm,

this is one of the best things in New York City.

We're starting off very, very strong.

You're not gonna get this texture in any other thing

on the menu.

So this is a cake donut.

See how timid and gentle I am?

Dude, I thought you said you were hungry.

It's really good.

It tastes like furu, fermented tofu,

it's because there's a red type of fermented tofu

often used for marinades that's a little bit savory,

but naturally there is those savory notes.

It's very classic Shanghainese, Fuzhounese.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dessert pairing kind of flavor profiles there.

Laminated Bolo Bao.

Bolo in Cantonese, or in Chinese, means pineapple.

But it's got nothing to do with pineapple.

It's just looks a bit like the skin of a pineapple.

But the bottom is, basically it's a laminated dough.

Very croissant or Kouign-Amann like.

So we're expecting it to be nice and light and fluffy.

So good. So buttery.

It's way airier than a croissant.

Everything good about a Kouign-Amann,

where it's sweet and caramelized and airy in the middle.

This jacks it up to another level.

I wanna do the chocolate one next.

Do you think this one has chocolate in the middle?

No.

Oh!

So this is their take on pain au chocolate.

One bite.

Delicious. So good.

I prefer the chocolate one actually,

normally I'm a purist.

Yeah.

But I think the chocolate one wins it for me.

Running a bakery is very hard.

Sometimes you don't sell all the croissants you want.

So what do they do?

Split 'em up, put filling into it,

bake it a second time.

Twice-baked.

All your almond croissants are made that way.

This is peanut butter and chocolate.

[Eric] Goodness gracious.

Salty peanut butter.

This is like a Reese's Cup!

In our shirts. In a croissant.

Chopped peanuts over the top.

I mean, first of all, it's beautiful to look at

[censored] and Jesus. your rules.

Almond red bean twice-baked Bolo Bao.

Delicious. So good.

I'm gonna call it.

This round, for me,

the Reese's Cups chocolate croissant.

I know! It's just so good.

I came into this shoot thinking that the mochi donut

was going to be still forever

the best thing they're ever gonna do.

But they've been doing this for the last four years

and this remix, it's ooey, it's gooey.

It's so good with coffee.

He said it was a recent creation.

Where's this guy?

This needs to be on the menu every single day.

If I come next week, it's not on the menu.

Riots. I'll be upset.

[upbeat music]

Now we're on to confections round two

and we also have some cocktails.

What'd you get?

I have the classic espresso martini.

And I have Michelada.

This is really nice. That's delicious.

Spicy. Switch.

Sour.

Custard toast.

Bruleed over the top.

Looks like a deep multi-brown toast on the side.

Salty, buttery.

The custard starts to split as being bruleed

so you get all that butter in there. Nice.

And if you get the right bite,

there's a slight crisp on the brulee top.

So it's like lightly crispy, creamy.

And then spongey.

Chocolate chip cookie with toffee.

One of the cool things about this

is they bake the toffee directly on the top.

Yes! So as it bakes-

Dude, I'm a sucker for chewy chocolate chip cookies.

The toffee-ness gives it that really pungent sweetness

and the chocolate kind of brings it down

and the salt just brings it over to the next level,

you know? Yeah.

I love it.

Red date cake, I think is also a reference

to the Chinese Hon Gao Gao which you see a lot in Taiwan

and all different places.

Red dates, like big goji berries.

Honey malty in the middle.

It's like banana bread made with dates

and an olive oil cake.

Yeah.

Kind of all came together.

With this sticky, beautiful glaze over the top.

Good stuff. I like.

Sun cookie.

It reminds me of like a palmier.

You think so?

Like the butterfly one. Mm.

Laminated on the side.

But it comes in waves, the flavor.

You get the butter and then you get the pine nuts.

And you get the sugar. Yeah.

And next thing you know, you're taking another bite.

Oh gosh. Pastry section,

really hard not to take a second bite.

Banana tart? Banana with whipped cream.

Malted whipped cream over the top.

That is so good. You got cream all over you.

There's so much more cream than there is banana.

But it's because the banana is so pungent and strong.

This is a well calculated balance of sweet and creamy.

Nian Gao is a traditional,

it can be both sweet and savory actually,

made with glutenous rice, again, amylose pectin.

Yeah. Hey guy, big words. Me.

It seems like this is a fig tart,

Nian Gao sort of inspiration.

[Lucas] Yeah. And the fig is baked into the tart

and not just on top.

This definitely tastes more like a mochi to me

than a Nian Gao.

Glutenous rice is a big thing

in a lot of Taiwan's cooking. Yeah.

And Taiwanese desserts.

So it makes sense that it's in the mochi donut.

It's here.

This round for me, I love that red date cake.

I think it's so special.

I can see that.

It is special.

I have to give it to the banana tart.

It's the perfect dessert for me.

[upbeat music]

Round three.

These are breakfast sandwiches,

but all made with scallion pancakes.

Scallion pancakes and raclette

are the two things that unite them.

Raclette's the big like round?

The big wheel cheese, TikTok cheese.

Somebody was on Instagram in 2019.

A lot of times when you have scallion pancakes that are bad,

it's because it's under rested

and the gluten content hasn't had the time to develop.

A key factor in determining whether or not it's well rested

is you see where it curves, it does not flake.

Oh, because the gluten strands are long enough

to wrap around the edge. Exactly!

So this is when you know it's gonna be tender and chewy.

All of these are variations on the theme.

We have the plain. Egg and cheese.

Thin, entry level, not too much other stuff going on.

Lucas, you're finally rising to my level.

Roughly same size bites now.

That is the benchmark.

Every single sandwich is built off of that one.

Yes.

This is Jiucai. Jiucai.

Which is glass noodles and chives.

This sauce is a version of Raining Cane's dipping sauce.

It's a furu, a fermented tofu-laced

all purpose mayonnaise sauce, right?

Damn, this is really good.

This shouldn't work so well.

So Jiucai, yes, it's the vegetarian one here,

but I bet it's gonna be the most flavorful.

You think it's gonna be more flavorful

than the [censored] pastrami beef combo?

Because it's all aromatics.

Chives, scallions.

Chinese chives are big garlic, deep punchy ones,

glass noodles.

It doesn't need meat for it to be so integral.

It's so odd how well raclette plays on with with chives.

'Cause raclette is strong.

It's actually chive. Right.

And then chives are also very strong.

Mortadella and pepperoncini.

I love this.

It's like an Italian breakfast sandwich,

but with a scallion pancake.

I love the pepperoncini.

Spicy, bright. It lightens up,

'cause this whole thing is so heavy otherwise, you know?

This is great. I still can't get over that Jiucai one.

Shrimp cake. Oh yeah.

This is my favorite actually.

I love that. It's so delicious.

It's subtle. It's really good with the sauce.

So good. That's good.

Bacon, egg and cheese.

A New York classic made Win Son style, Taiwanese American.

This bacon is what this one needed.

The bacon is a seasoning.

It is low key so perfect.

You can't really go wrong with your eggs.

You really can't.

Bacon, egg, and cheese normally doesn't have the crisp.

Yeah.

This is Win Son's answer

to every single bodega in New York.

Cultural statement Taiwanese style.

Taiwanese approved.

[Lucas] Pastrami beef tongue.

I think it's very adventurous, right?

I love beef tongue.

I think beef tongue has that wonderful fatty quality

so when you sear it off,

it still has fat to keep it nice and moist.

I generally think tongue is one of the best cuts ever.

It's also expensive. Deceivingly expensive, actually.

One tongue per cow.

For me it's the Jiucai. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah. That to me,

that raclette really brings out all the best characters

of the chives.

And again, I think a lot of people

when they think about dumplings or things like dumplings,

they assume that the vegetarian ones are less flavorful.

This for me is the most,

is the highest amount of flavor out of everything here.

And I can honestly say if I came to eat here,

the other ones, I might need some tea.

I might need some coffee.

But this I can scarf down in two minutes. No problem.

It starts off with a breakfast menu.

Now we're gonna move into lunch.

[upbeat music]

I am honestly stuffed.

It's way more food than I was promised.

Now we're in lunch, we're doing the lunch sandwiches.

We have a little bit of wine in front of us also.

This is a white wine from just outside Parma.

Should we just start with the fries

and get it over with?

No disrespect.

Delicious fry. Chili. Cumin.

Smash burger. What do you see?

White American cheese, shreddace.

Burger. Soft and squishy.

Milk buns.

That's actually so good. I'm getting hungry now.

I want a second bite.

The bread and butter pickles they make here,

nice and light.

And they give it the acidity that I think, honestly,

I was kind of hoping for in the scallion pancakes.

It just like balances out the whole thing

wraps your palette around it.

It's so good.

[Eric] The bun is nice and airy.

Three cup chicken scallion wrap. Sanbeiji.

I was a little bit taken aback

to see another scallion pancake, I'm not gonna lie.

Chopped cheese. There's chicken though.

Classic New York Bodega staple

usually made with a hamburger patty

that's chopped up with onions and peppers.

This is made with Sanbeiji.

So three cup chicken, Taiwanese chicken dish.

Chef was saying cook the chicken on the griddle,

hammers it with a Sanbeiji,

the three cup marinade, which is?

Soy sauce, rice wine, and?

Sesame oil. Sesame oil.

Dude, I was getting to it.

It's got that Italian sausage

and peppers kind of situation.

Sanbeiji is more subtle than you think.

Shrimp sandwich.

[censored]

Right side up, man.

I knew it was just gonna come.

You know how to eat a sandwich bro?

I knew it was gonna come apart.

It's thick.

[Eric] Salinity from the sea, salinity from the pickles.

You can see the texture on the shrimp better

than you could in the-

I think it's a thicker patty.

It is a thicker patty.

It's also a deep fried and crusted.

And you can see the farce.

It's not too fine where it's like a paste.

It's definitely still got chunks.

It's delicious.

Win Son Bakery, not skimping.

This is the chicken sandwich.

The brine is furu. This is dark meat.

And buttermilk. Looks like a bone down thigh.

Good chicken sandwich.

I don't taste the furu as much as I thought I would.

I mean once you deep fry something,

the furu flavor is like,

it becomes a little bit less apparent.

You know what it reminds me of?

In the highest possible way in terms of compliment goes,

this sandwich reminds me of KFC in Taiwan.

The crunch, the bread and butter pickle, the seasoning,

and the bun. Oh yeah.

The vegetarian burger,

which in this case is a turnip cake.

Lo Bak Go. Radish cake is Lo Bak Go.

Chinese daikon grated, steamed with starch.

A little bit bouncy.

Usually has some form of bacon or Chinese sausage in it.

This one is vegetarian.

This round for me, I love the burger.

I know it's kind of a boring, basic thing

compared to all the other ones.

But I do think the burger is great.

This round, I have to give it to the chopped chicken.

There's just no comparison.

I actually disagree with you.

I think the three cup flavor comes through so much

and then it gets rounded at the very last second.

With the peppers.

With the peppers and the cheese.

[upbeat music]

Round five, salads.

It feels like a light round.

Let's do the Caesar.

And this is their white sesame Caesar.

It's more acidic than most Caesar salad.

Also not as saucy.

I think this is perfectly dressed.

It's light. It's a little bit more acidic.

It's not like sopping wet on the bottom.

And this is like a good fried rice

where there's not like excess oil

and grease just boiling on the bottom.

[Lucas] Snow pea leaves with edamame and tofu skin.

Okay, this might be my favorite thing here.

Mhm, so good.

When I drive by, I often have to fight the urge

to get out the car and just buy a box of this

and shovel it into my face.

So good!

It's got that- I dropped an edamame,

so I'm entitled to one more.

That was part of my bite.

Very light, but still substantial.

I mean the tofu skin provides the meatiness to it

and the edamame but then like as you can tell,

it has a squish.

This is Ban Cai, which is a salad, I suppose,

is one translation or mixed vegetables.

It is of Tong Bei origin.

In this case, this is peanuts,

smashed cucumbers, red onions.

Good.

Classic Win Son flavor.

Soy sauce, sugar, cilantro, scallions.

This is the sleeper hit.

No question asked.

Every single time, I'm gonna order this.

Even if I just get a coffee,

I'm gonna be tempted to order this.

[upbeat music]

Small bites with a little bit of Taiwan beer.

This is my favorite thing that I cannot resist here.

This is Fan Tuan.

It's a wrap made of sticky rice.

In the middle is crispy You Tiao.

And they put an egg in there, which is not super standard.

One of the main flavorings in here is Cai Pu

which is sun dried daikon. Turnips.

And also Rousong which is meat floss.

It's in plastic wrap because that's how they shape.

Yeah, Japanese people have the bamboo thing

where they roll the sushi.

Yeah. We just use plastic wrap.

I have the non-vegetarian with pork floss.

The You Tiao is this breadstick.

This one is fried three times to dark bronze

to get rid of all of the moisture

so that they can wrap it without it sogging up

and provide the crisp that you need.

I don't think this is a very traditional Fan Tuan.

Traditional Fan Tuan would A, be bigger,

B would not have the egg inside,

would wrap the egg on outside

and it would be a much, much thicker layer of rice.

Yeah.

Because this is like a very economic breakfast.

In Taiwan, get it for like a dollar or less.

Right.

A lot of these breakfast items

are originally Shanghainese in origin.

They've become bigger and better

since they made it to Taiwan.

Vegetarian one.

So the vegetarian is Dougan instead of pork floss.

Right. Dougan is bean curd that's been braised,

sometimes smoked but I don't think this one smoked.

Good.

I wouldn't think of bean curd

as a substitute for pork floss.

It's a different flavor profile.

More soy. Yeah.

I really like how Win Son executes their egg.

Jammy but then it's not runny. Right?

If it were to be runny,

then it would kind of ruin the texture a little bit.

If it's too hard, it wouldn't taste like a good egg.

It wouldn't be as tender. Good job!

[Lucas] Turnip cake with the bacon and everything.

The pick up is a deep fry.

See the shreds of turnip.

It's actually really nice.

It's more turnip-y than the regular turnip cake.

'cause most like daikon turnip cake,

they adds so much starch to it.

It just becomes like a bouncy one piece of thing.

And actually this is a lot of work to make for one thing.

Yeah, because well, you gotta grate it.

You gotta blanche it.

You gotta stir fry it. Stir fry it.

You gotta set it, steam it, slice it.

Chill it, slice it.

And then cook it again.

And then the last thing here, this is what they call Ro Bao.

It's more like a Shao Bing.

Sort of similar to a scallion pancake dough

in that it's nice and stretchy.

Fried it off with pork in the middle.

Nice. Good flavor in the middle.

Typical suspects.

Ginger, soy sauce, cooking wine.

Good. Winners?

Fan Tuan.

I don't think there's any argument. Fan Tuan.

Yeah, I like the size.

I think sauce is good.

I like the crisp, I like the egg.

Yeah. Amazing.

Every single texture you want.

I actually prefer the vegetarian one.

I think vegetarian one has one added texture.

But also I'm just not a very big fan of pork floss.

Yeah.

I think it's stringy and dry.

Yeah.

It's a better usage of seasoning than the main

protein definitely. True.

[upbeat music]

Our friendship is built on this bottle.

It really is.

This is the totally incorrect vessel

with which to drink Baijiu. Specifically Kaoliang.

This is a heavy ounce, ounce and a half.

The standard pour for this is half ounce.

[upbeat music]

Fried chicken, soy glaze.

All right. Korean fried chicken at a Taiwanese bakery.

Not as sweet as I expected.

Sticky, glossy, perfectly toasted sesame seeds too.

So one of the things that's special

about this type of fried chicken

is that it needs to be fried to hold up that sauce.

If it wasn't fried properly,

it would get soggy over time.

Good fried chicken.

Good fried chicken. Five spices.

Can you name the five spices?

Oh, I think clove, cinnamon and anise

are the three classics. The musts, yeah.

And then the the other two.

[Lucas] Some do like fennel, cumin,

some people put peppercorns. You can swap out. Yeah.

Cheers. Last bite.

That's a good crisp.

[Lucas applauds]

It's like a less salty Popeye's.

That's a compliment 'cause I love Popeye's.

For me. Yeah?

My preference, this gloss is tasty.

But you can taste the crunchiness of the batter more

when it's fried and is served dry.

That's true. It's not diluted by the sauce.

[Lucas] Yeah.

For me, I like this one better

because this one tastes more like Popeye's.

Yeah. Okay. Very simple.

[upbeat music]

How do you feel? I feel surprisingly good.

I felt horrible until Baijiu.

I could visibly see you go up, you plateau,

and then you plummeted.

You're like the 2008 stock market crash.

Like 34 minutes in. And who bailed me out?

Who bailed me out? Baijiu.

Typical Kaoliang.

What I wanna find out is number one,

what is a star item on the menu?

I also wanna know what is the thing

that you have to come back for?

What makes you want to come back?

And the last one is a sleeper hit, the repeat, the regular.

That's the one that if you don't eat through the whole menu

like we did- Yeah.

You wouldn't know about its existence.

Okay. So I think we should go from the bottom up.

I think. Yeah, we agree.

The sleeper hit, we definitely agree.

Snow pea leaf salad. Yeah.

Texturally amazing. Nice and light.

Goes with literally everything else on the menu.

It's just one of those things that is very, very Taiwanese

and perfectly seasoned.

Perfectly light.

What do we come back for?

I'll come back for the three cup chicken chopped cheese.

That one shook me a little bit.

It's a tossup between that and the Jiucai.

I just think it's so special

because it's like a little bit of an improvement

on the dough, a little bit of an addition

of raclette cheese,

all these different types of chives, aromatics.

It feels like something that's very traditional

that has been taken to the next level

that can only exist here in East Williamsburg.

That's your one?

I would've said that originally,

but I can see that as a repeat also,

because I bet when people actually come here normally

they're just gonna get a scallion pancake

maybe a bacon, egg and cheese.

Yeah. Or like pastrami

or whatever it is.

And they'll neglect the vegetarian version.

Yes. And people wouldn't know

that the vegetarian version

is actually more flavorful and more interesting.

I know that your star,

your go-to, the one, is the peanut butter chocolate

twice-baked bolo bao. Oh yeah.

I'm still thinking about it.

Actually, after we wrap here, I'm gonna buy five to go

so I can bring it back home to my wife.

I love Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

and the fact that they put it into a croissant

that's also a Bolo Bao is just layers

of mind blowing ability for me.

In the pastries still for me,

maybe it's because it's maybe the first thing

I've ever eaten that Danielle made me is the mochi donut.

We can't let that go.

Mochi donut's not supposed to be good like that,

but Danielle makes it delicious.

I'm not saying that Danielle doesn't make it delicious.

Yeah, I know. It's delicious.

Superlatives are superlatives.

You just, you're sticking to the classics.

You're the guest.

I think we'll leave it at that.

Star, peanut butter chocolate.

Oh, you're giving it to me?

I'll give it to you every day.

Oh, thank you. Second, Jiucai hezi.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Third snow pea shoot salad.

Overall, we've been coming to Win Son Bakery

since they opened in 2019.

We're still constantly surprised.

Yeah, every time we come back it gets better and better.

Newer things, better food, better ingredients.

Now there's wine.

I can't wait to come back soon-ish

and not eat the entire menu.

I think we need a walk or a nap.

I need to sleep. Or to leave.

Yeah.