A Chinese-Venezuelan restaurateur is converting his parents’ dim sum palace in Pembroke Pines into Baoshi, the city’s first food hall, specializing in pan-Asian street fare, drinks and karaoke.
The clubby emporium will host its grand opening at 11 a.m. Friday, Nov. 10, with live DJs and complimentary seltzer and beer samples on Pines Boulevard. The 6,000-square-foot food hall will feature five vendors touting crispy duck, bao buns, Korean fried chicken, bubble tea and fried doughnuts — all against a backdrop of Japanese pop-art murals.
(Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
Baoshi, a new Asian street food hall in Pembroke Pines, takes over the former Gold Marquess, a dim sum palace on Pines Boulevard. The space has been transformed with vendor stalls, a live-music stage, an indoor-outdoor liquor bar and rows of Asian snacks. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
The 148-seat Baoshi replaces the former Gold Marquess Cantonese restaurant on Pines Boulevard, which shuttered after Chinese New Year in March 2022. Owner Filbert Ip has taken over the space from his retiring parents, swapping out the cavernous dining room for a new indoor-outdoor bar, live-music stage and shelves brimming with Asian snacks.
“There’s a lack of Asian restaurants and nightlife under one roof, and I wanted this place to be fun and young and hip,” Ip, 34, tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It’ll be a shocker, but a good surprise for longtime customers. Our Gold Marquess chefs are still with us, but now we’ll have late-night crowds.”
Gold Marquess will live on as one of Baoshi’s five vendors, with a condensed menu of 25 bestsellers including steamed pork dumplings, barbecued pork buns, snow pea tips, wok-fried noodles and ginger-scallion lobster. Other vendors include the first outpost of Fort Lauderdale’s Temple Street Eatery and Gangnam Chikn, which serves Korean fried chicken and bibimbap bowls. There’s also the first Broward outpost of Miami poke-bowl chain Poke OG, offering poke and vegan bowls, sushi rolls and crispy rice; and a stall from Boca Raton’s Boba Street Cafe, serving coffee, desserts and boba tea drinks.
On Baoshi’s western end is the indoor-outdoor Zen Den, a rectangular bar aglow in blue and indigo LEDs, tastefully appointed with marble countertops, leather armchairs and liquor cages of sakes and wines. Flat-screen TVs will play local sports matches, while a roll-up window will serve customers on the 35-seat outdoor patio.
Ip, of Davie, says he was partly inspired by the success of 1-800-Lucky, an Asian-themed food hall in Wynwood, where he still operates a second Gold Marquess location. He’s also invested in Yip, his fast-casual bao bun concept, scheduled to open at the Marina Village at Bahia Mar food hall this winter.
While he’s mindful that South Florida’s food-hall fever has stumbled since the pandemic — see closings of Time Out Market and Alton Food Hall in Miami Beach and the soon-to-be-retooled Delray Beach Market — Ip remains bullish about Baoshi’s chances.
“We wanted to make this accessible for people in the suburbs who didn’t want to drive all the way to Miami or Fort Lauderdale,” he says.
Ip says his father was eager to pass the reins, retire and “happily play mah-jongg” after 45 years of operating restaurants. His parents owned a supermarket and a Chinese restaurant in Ip’s hometown of Maracaibo, Venezuela. After immigrating to South Florida in 2003 — “he took a leap of faith without knowing the language,” Ip says — his father opened Gold Marquess to serve authentic dim sum to the region’s growing Chinese-American population.
(Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
The Zen Den is Baoshi’s liquor bar, stocked with wines, sakes and cocktails, leather furniture and a roll-up window that will serve its 35-seat patio. (Carline Jean/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
At first, he didn’t share his father’s restaurant vision until the corporate sector burned him out. “A desk job wasn’t for me, and I grew up seeing my father prosper as an entrepreneur,” says Ip, a chemical engineering graduate from Florida State University who quit his job at a Fortune 100 company to work in hospitality.
As fellow Venezuelan-Chinese immigrants, Temple Street Eatery owners Diego Ng and Alex Kuk found instant kinship at Ip’s food hall. They opened their original storefront on North Federal Highway in 2014, searching for identity and belonging through Asian-Latin cuisine — but worried about whether locals would accept it.
“Asian food here (in 2014) was basically Thai-sushi and takeout, so we were taking a big gamble,” Ng recalls. “And then we met Filbert and realized we had all these mutual friends already. We just love his food and he loves ours.”
Temple Street Eatery / Courtesy
Temple Street Eatery, shown here at its Fort Lauderdale location, will open its first outpost at the new Baoshi food hall in Pembroke Pines. (Temple Street Eatery / Courtesy)
Ng and Kuk found a sense of belonging at Temple Street Eatery, and now at Baoshi, they’ve found it again.
Their Temple Street Eatery menu will include a panko-breaded katsu burger, a ground ribeye patty topped with pineapple and cabbage slaw on a Gold Marquess bao bun. There’s also the Chino Latino hot dog, a Venezuelan-style handheld topped with potato sticks, cilantro-mayo, kimchi, fried shallots and a gochujang-spiced pink sauce; and Godzilla ramen, a spicy miso bowl filled with ropa vieja and pork belly.
The food hall will debut with a happy hour and live DJs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, with karaoke- and ladies-themed nights to follow.
Baoshi, at 8525 Pines Blvd., Pembroke Pines, is expected to open Nov. 10. Go to BaoshiFoodHall.com or Instagram.com/BaoshiFoodHall.
