Buoyed by finishing second in the 17th season of Food Network’s The Great Food Truck Race in August, chef Kevin Hsieh says he’s ready to take his food enterprise to the next level. The 28-year-old Gaithersburg resident and owner of Bao Bei, which serves Taiwanese food, is moving from a North Bethesda “ghost kitchen” to a brick-and-mortar casual restaurant in Rockville’s Montrose Crossing shopping center early in 2025 (he doesn’t operate a food truck—that was just for the TV competition).
A 2013 graduate of Gaithersburg High School with a degree in finance from University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Hsieh learned to cook by watching his dad, Peter, who is also a chef. Hsieh started Bao Bei in 2022, offering signature menu items such as the Bao Bei bao—braised pork belly, pickled greens and peanut sugar in a soft, steamed bun—and creative treats such as the pumpkin cinnabao, a seasonal take on a cinnamon roll. Despite having to shut down for January and February this year to film the Food Network show—just after The Washington Post included Bao Bei on its list of the 10 Best D.C.-area Casual Restaurants of 2023—Hsieh says the experience has paid off.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What was it really like working on a food truck? There’s definitely some rawness to it, which is great. I would prefer a harder environment to do something, as opposed to somewhere where you’re sitting in a five-star hotel and everything’s all happy. I actually appreciated that a lot. I think it helps you grow.
What’s the impact of the exposure on your business? At first, [the producers] were telling us, ‘Hey, just being on the show is winning the lottery.’ But what I realized is that nobody even cared about us that much until the finale. Once it aired, it was like a completely different story. We got 2,000 [new] followers [on Instagram] right away. So many people were saying congratulations.
When you’re tired of cooking and want to eat someone else’s food, where do you go? I’m always tired and I always want to eat somebody else’s food. I literally eat Chipotle every single day after work; five, six days a week. I’ll treat myself to Five Guys and eat a hamburger and fries on Sunday. I don’t eat that much during the workday, if any at all.
Do you do any cooking at home? I haven’t cooked at home in probably two years.
Do you listen to music while you cook? Not unless I’m completely alone. I’ll put in headphones and listen to hip-hop, Japanese music, electronic music. Music is good for setting the environment sometimes, but the amount of focus that’s required to work here when you’re dealing with fire and sharp items … it becomes dangerous.
What’s your long-term goal? I’ve always had a grandiose dream of franchising Bao Bei in every state. I don’t want to rush it. I want to make sure that the brick-and-mortar, the first one, goes very smoothly. I think after we open our second store, then it will happen very rapidly … but you need to be able to get all those foundations down.
This story appears in the November/December 2024 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
