Asian food authority Bruce Cost, in partnership with Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, helped create Chicago’s enormously successful Wow Bao, opened in 2003. The 300-square-foot kiosk specializes in a dish many Chicagoans had never seen: the soft, tender Chinese steamed buns known as bao.

Concept: “It’s a kiosk, walkaway [food] mostly but with some seating, in the lobby of the Water Tower, one of the busiest buildings on Michigan Avenue. We sell steamed buns in seven flavors—six regular plus one special. I would describe it as the first [of its kind] in the U.S. You can buy bao in Chinatown in San Francisco, but this is the first place where bao is the reason for being. We sell 1,500 a day.”

The food: “The dough is a soft yeast dough. The fillings are spicy Mongolian beef, Thai-style curried chicken, kung pao chicken, teriyaki chicken, green vegetable, and barbecued pork. The fillings are traditional flavors, but not necessarily traditional to bao. Surprisingly, the teriyaki chicken is number one. We also do rice bowls topped with these fillings, and a perfumey hot-and-sour Thai chicken broth that you can buy plain or as chicken noodle soup. We sell a couple of salads, too. Pad Thai salad with rice noodles, vegetables, chicken, fresh lime juice and fish sauce sells pretty well.”

Menu misses: “We tried putting chocolate fudge in bao, but people didn’t buy it.”

The scene: “It’s a show. We’ve got these steam kettles that generate a lot of steam. We stack up these stainless steel baskets I bought in Hong Kong, and the bao steam for a few minutes. There’s always action, always a line. We’ve done over 100 people an hour. What’s fun is that it’s become a habit for people of all nationalities. There are city kids with backpacks who are there every day—black kids, Spanish kids. ‘Hey, man, give me some Mongolian beef bao.’ Kids adapt really fast.”

Lessons learned: “We sample all the time. Except for Asian customers, most people had never seen bao. They were a curiosity. We sample four times an hour, with a tray.”

Signature beverages: “Fresh ginger ale. Frozen Vietnamese coffee. Iced tea with hibiscus flowers.”

Tough call: “At first, the name seemed corny even to me. We went round and round about the word bao. But bao is the Chinese name. So we’re using that name because the product is new. It’s kind of like Starbucks that wants its own vocabulary. They own these [coffee] products because they own the language. We thought that might happen with bao.”