Hsiang Kai Kao did not set out to build a destination restaurant. He wanted a place where people could eat well without paying for the privilege. That idea became Lao Taipei, the noodle-and-dim-sum spot he owns and runs as executive chef.
I started Lao Taipei really for people to have a place to go to that’s really affordable, with quality food,” tells Kai.
And that feels like home.”
Old Taipei, New Manila
What Kai wanted to bring with him to Manila was a memory of the specific. The unglamorous taste of the food his parents used to cook.
The name gives the intention away before the food does when Lao Taipei translates to “old Taipei.”
I want people to remember the authentic taste where I come from,” he says,
and the food that my parents cooked for me as well.”
A Recipe He Didn’t Invent
Ask Kai what makes his food distinct and he resists the question’s premise almost immediately.
Every family has their own taste,” he says.
Declining to claim originality where none is needed. But pressed further, he’ll admit that his beef noodles lean sweeter than most versions found around the city. Because that’s how his mother has always made them.
Personally, I’m not a fan of soup noodles,” he says.
But only when my mom cooks it, I have to eat another bowl.”
Beyond the Noodles
Lao Taipei has built its following on food designed to be ordered often rather than admired once.
Xiao long bao and a wider dim sum spread sit alongside a run of Taiwanese street food that regulars tend to order without consulting the menu. Their popcorn chicken, a Taiwanese-style chicken chop, braised pork rice.
None of it is positioned as an occasion. All of it is built for a table where plates get passed before anyone has finished serving themselves.
The Takeaway
There’s a version of this story that leans hard on authenticity as a selling point. Treated as a badge worth displaying rather than a habit worth maintaining. Kai’s account resists framing without seeming to try. He isn’t interested in whether the food meets anyone’s idea of what Taiwanese cuisine should be. He’s interested in whether it tastes like what his mother once put in front of him. And whether the people eating it now feel some version of what he felt then.
Everything else, the noise in the dining room, the lack of pretense, the second bowl of noodles that are sweeter than they’re supposed to be, follows from that one thing. Lao Taipei doesn’t ask its guests to understand Taiwanese food as a category. It asks them to sit down, eat something someone’s mother taught someone else to make. And lastly, to stay a while longer than they planned to.
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