The team behind North Bethesda’s Taiwanese ghost kitchen Bao Bei is set to receive nationwide attention starting Sunday with the premiere of its participation in the Food Network’s The Great Food Truck Race.
“It’s basically a cooking competition that’s also kinda like a business competition,” Bao Bei employee Zakary Keres told MoCo360 Wednesday while working at the takeout eatery at 11910 Parklawn Drive. “You’re kinda tasked to park a food truck and at the end of the day whatever team makes the least money in sales is the one that goes home.”
The 17th season of The Great Food Truck Race, called “Games on the Gulf,” premieres at 8 p.m. Sunday on the cable TV network. The first episode takes place in Houston while subsequent episodes move to various locations along the Gulf Coast.
According to Food Network, the TV show pits nine “first-time food truckers” against each other in an elimination-style competition for the opportunity to win $50,000.
“The whole premise of the show was basically they take a bunch of people who haven’t worked on a food truck but are in the food industry and have food businesses and basically were like, ‘Here’s a food truck–compete,” Keres said. “Part of the whole fun of the show was kinda adapting and figuring out how to run a food truck with a bunch of teams that have never ran a food truck before.”
Keres works for Gaithersburg native Kevin Hsieh, his friend and the founder, owner and chef of Bao Bei who opened the eatery in 2022 in a licensed communal kitchen. Bao Bei’s website describes the eatery as “a venture in the restaurant industry that aims to preserve tradition and provide authentic Taiwanese flavors.” The eatery’s menu offers a variety of handcrafted baos as well as bowls and several side dish options.
On the website, Hsieh wrote that ‘“Bao Bei” is “a term of endearment in my native language used to describe someone or something you treasure deeply. It is a homage to my family, who have instilled in me the traditions and recipes that I hold dear. Through Bao Bei, I will share these cherished aspects of my culture with the world, one dish at a time.”
Keres said the men were approached by a Food Network representative who had seen their videos on social media and thought their personalities might be a good fit for the show. Food Network asked them to submit an audition tape if they were interested, which they did, he said.
To complete their three-person food truck team for the competition, Keres said he and Hsieh recruited their mutual friend, Cody Hoover, a sous chef in Pennsylvania.
“It was definitely fun,” Keres said. “We had to actually close down in January to go film it, so it was kind of a big decision for us on whether or not we thought, ‘Is this gonna be worth it?’ But we figured it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be on a Food Network competition.”
According to Keres, the challenges posed by operating out of a food truck required the Bao Bei team to adapt their menu for the show. He said the team wasn’t allowed to discuss any specifics about the food truck or who won the race before the show aired.
“There’s a lot of things that people will see that they haven’t seen from Bao Bei yet on the show,” he said. “So it’s gonna be super exciting for people to see things that could be potential future food menu items that we do on the show that we might be able to bring here to our menu if people want them.”
In addition to Bao Bei, this season of the show features the restaurant Fishnet from Baltimore as well as seven other eateries from Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas and New York.
Keres said the Bao Bei team may consider adding a food truck sometime in the future but he emphasized that doing so is not a top priority.
“First we want to open up a brick-and-mortar location before we even think about doing food truck stuff,” he said. “Especially after seeing the show and how much work food truck stuff takes, it’s definitely a lot to just kinda jump into.”