I had heard of Wow Bao, an online Chinese food pickup and delivery service, but didn’t know they were in Los Angeles. So when I stumbled across the fact that they had a dozen Los Angeles area locations, including one near me on Los Feliz Blvd., it was a shock. It was also a puzzle since I knew the area of the pickup location for the online order and couldn’t imagine where it might be. When I arrived the address was a Sizzler location, so I thought there might be a ghost kitchen in an adjacent structure, but no, Sizzler was indeed the pickup spot.
It turns out that Wow Bao’s operational plan is to send frozen products to their “locations” which means anyplace with a commercial kitchen, including an existing operating restaurant, can be a Wow Bao outlet and several Sizzler locations have signed up. Other locations are at ghost kitchens and other random locations. Wow Bao has a limited number of items on the menu including five varieties of bao, potstickers, and orange chicken, kung pao chicken and teriyaki chicken bowls. Two small, below average tasting bao for $8 is no deal, though the other prices aren’t as outrageous. As far as whether we can say you can now get Chinese food at Sizzler, I wonder if you’re already dining there and you decide to submit an online takeout order, whether they would let you eat it there. Maybe they would.