This is the Food Place food court, located at Pavilion Mall. The food court is located beside the Oriental Kopi Restaurant. I will introduce you to another food from another stall.
This time I ordered Pork Siew Bao from the Nan Yang Siew Bao stall for breakfast, which cost RM3.70 per piece.
The Pork Siew Bao is a famous baked bun filled with savoury-sweet barbecued pork. Unlike the more common char siu bao (叉烧包), which is usually steamed and fluffy, the siew bao is wrapped in a flaky, golden-brown pastry crust that is baked to crisp perfection.
The filling typically consists of diced pork marinated in a sweet-salty sauce made with soy, oyster sauce, sugar, and aromatics, creating a sticky and flavorful interior. The pastry itself is layered and slightly buttery, offering a texture similar to puff pastry but with a more compact consistency.
The siew bao has its roots in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia, where it became a local speciality in the 1970s. It was popularised by Empayar Seremban Siew Pow and quickly gained fame across Malaysia as a unique variant of the Chinese char siu bao. While traditional char siu bao came from Cantonese dim sum culture, the Malaysian siew bao evolved as a baked alternative, more durable for takeaway and travel.
Over time, stalls like Nan Yang Siew Bao brought the pastry into urban food courts and shopping malls, making it a nostalgic yet modern snack. Today, siew bao is enjoyed not only as a tea-time pastry but also as a travel souvenir, with many travelers stopping by Seremban specifically to buy boxes of freshly baked buns.
So, what you have here is not just a pork-filled pastry, but a piece of Malaysian food heritage that blends Chinese dim sum tradition with local innovation.
