One day whilst sitting within Ginger, the pan-Asian eating place at MGM National Harbor, Hsieh had a idea. A idea that appeared to seem out of nowhere: “‘I bet I could make the best bao shop in the area, like ever,” the financial analyst said out loud to those around him. A cousin raised immediate doubts, and not without reason: For much of his young life, Hsieh had viewed cooking as little more than a chore, not a life’s pursuit.
“He liked to take things apart and try to put them back together,” stated father Peter about his engineering-obsessed son. “He was never interested in cooking.” Dad would undoubtedly know. For a lot of his skilled existence, the elder Hsieh, a local of Taipei City in Taiwan, has labored in eating places. He’s cooked for others at outposts such because the Far East Restaurant in Rockville. He’s controlled puts such because the Ginger on the MGM. He’s even run his personal eating places in Chantilly, Va., and Louisville
Less than a yr after his declaration to the gods within a on line casino eating place, Kevin Hsieh determined to roll the cube. He created a industry, Bao Bei (a Mandarin time period of endearment, like a move between “baby” and “treasured object”), and began promoting Taiwanese gua bao, the sort of pork-stuffed buns that his father and grandmother used to arrange for the circle of relatives. The type that Hsieh used to take without any consideration as a kid. The type which can be an increasing number of not easy to search out, at the same time as extra Taiwanese bubble tea retail outlets have established footholds alongside Rockville Pike and within the Eden Center, that hub of Vietnamese culture in Falls Church.
“I understand that the food that my father and my grandma used to cook for me as a child was probably going to disappear for the rest of my life if I never learned it,” Hsieh, now 27, informed me one afternoon. “Nobody in my community or in this area, restaurant-wise, had ever seen something like it. So I kind of came to the realization that whenever the generation above me passes away, that the food that I’ve eaten as a child will forever disappear as well, which I really didn’t want to happen.”
In our common neighborhood, there are all way of filled buns for the taking. There’s the Korean-style bao at Bun’d Up. There’s the fried hen steamed bun at Toki Underground. There’s even a mambo-sauced slathered hen delicate bun on the Capitol City stand within Nationals Park. But what’s an increasing number of tricky to search out is an old-school gua bao, the Taiwanese classic filled with braised pork abdominal, pickled mustard vegetables, sweetened flooring peanuts and contemporary cilantro. This is the custom that Hsieh determined to mine, a type of hand-me-down from his father and grandmother.
Over at Farmland Commercial Kitchen, a commissary hidden in the back of a colorless brown door in a Rockville warehouse, Hsieh is a grasp craftsman within the characterless commercial area that homes his ghost kitchen, to be had for takeaway and supply best. With his father as mentor and adviser, Hsieh specializes in just a handful of pieces, each and every one home made, beginning with the steam buns. Through so much of trial and error, Hsieh has realized to hydrate, aerate, knead, roll out, leisure and steam his bao till they reach a cushy cumulus high quality. If you’ve best eaten buns pulled from the freezer and resuscitated in a microwave, you’re in for a wonder. Hsieh’s bao are past pillowy. It’s as though those bao, thru some alchemy, mix flour, water, yeast and air in some way that erases all barriers between the weather. It’s luxurious white bread, an on a regular basis luxurious for the ones with out financial institution.
The pork abdominal that Hsieh layers into his bao has been braised for no less than 90 mins in a pot with cooking wine, sesame oil, two sorts of soy sauce and a large number of different liquids. Yet the name of the game to his pork is the bouquet garni, this beneficiant period of cheesecloth that Hsieh packs with greater than 20 herbs and spices, together with superstar anise, fennel seeds and cloves, which upload a candy licorice kiss to the savory meat. The identical braise is used for the semi-firm tofu, however with one vital addition: dried shiitake mushrooms, which provide the fried bean curds a sort of umami immediacy. Die-hard carnivores gained’t pass over a factor with this veg selection.
Whether you order the normal pork model (dubbed Bao Bei Bao) or the veg variation (the Tofu-rrific Bao), your selected protein will probably be garnished with cilantro, pulverized peanuts (supplemented with sugar) and pickled mustard vegetables tempered in a sizzling wok. You can see how the structure of gua bao would attraction to the engineer in Hsieh. This boulevard meals has been designed for convenience, excitement and portability; take away any one part, and there is loss. Less than a yr into his ghost kitchen, Hsieh has already realized the right way to lock those items into position. Which might give an explanation for why I want his gua bao over his bowls, wherein the braised pork or tofu luxuriate atop white rice, a braised egg at the facet. With the bowls, the structure has been destroyed, and the toughen beam, or bao, changed. It’s a delectable however lesser enjoy.
Hsieh additionally prepares two different dough-based dishes. He sells bread squares, to be had best on Sundays, which can be made through rolling out bao dough, dusting it with five-spice powder and scallions, and then folding it a pair of occasions earlier than sprinkling sesame seeds excessive. Crackly and candy, with the sulfurous rattle of scallions slightly below the outside, the bread makes for excellent snacking. Hsieh has a dessert bao, too, his tackle mantou, wherein he rolls alternating layers of sweetened dough right into a cinnamon-bun-like pastry. His swirly bun can’t be separated alongside its seams, on the other hand, as a result of the ones layers steam into one cushiony mass. You should pull out items, as you may with West African fufu, and dunk them into condensed milk, the chewiness of the bun simply as candy because the sugar contained inside its folds.
Maybe this is going with out announcing, however I will be able to’t wait to look what Bao Bei’s 2nd act looks as if, as soon as it sheds this warehouse and reveals a spot the place Hsieh can in point of fact inform his tale of Taiwanese boulevard meals.
11910 Parklawn Dr., No. 0, within the again of the warehouse, Rockville, Md., 240-750-5618; baobei.menu. For takeout or supply thru Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub.
Hours: 11 a.m. to eight p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday; 11 a.m. to eight:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
Prices: $1 to $45 for all pieces at the menu.