Playa Vista resident, Linda Nguyen, is passionate about bánh baos, and the uglier the better. This summer, with the help of her mother, Ms. Kim, and her partner, Bryson Ishii, she launched The Ugly Bao, and is focusing on bringing the hand-crafted portable comfort food made with fresh, healthy and delicious ingredients to all. Never had a bánh bao before? It’s a Vietnamese bun stuffed with meat or veggies that’s steamed to soft, savory perfection. But for owner and founder Linda, aka Chief Steamer, crafting the best baos in town is just part of the plan.
With a background in business, theology and education, Linda’s goal is to use her company to make a positive impact in the local community while providing career mentorship and development to immigrant and first-generation women looking to amplify their opportunities.
Linda says she inherited her entrepreneurial spirit from her mother and her hard work ethic from her father. As refugees from Vietnam, her parents made it clear that education was extremely important. Linda took her parents’ wishes to heart and spent nearly 10 years at Loyola Marymount University, racking up three degrees, including a Doctorate in Educational Leadership for Social Justice.
“The running joke is that LMU just couldn’t get rid of me,” says Linda with a laugh.
With such a clear passion for education, Linda spent time working in various all-girl high schools throughout Los Angeles before heading a team that started a brand-new school in Orange County.
“My calling as an educator has always been to find ways to serve students that might not fit the educational system in its current form. My calling was to journey with individuals who just need an extra boost,” she says.
As much as she loved being an integral part of high school administrative teams, Linda says she faced unexpected challenges.
“While surreal in many ways, I found myself realizing that the type of impact I wanted to make could not happen through the traditional education system. My own life experiences have taught me that obtaining degrees and valuable work experience are only a part of the equation,” said Linda. “There are many soft and unspoken barriers–politically, racially, socioeconomically, culturally or gender-based–that I have observed throughout my career. I wish to reveal those barriers and share with others like me how to overcome them.”
That’s when she realized that there was another way. Linda decided to go back to her roots and reconnect with her Vietnamese family traditions to follow in her mother’s enterprising footsteps.
“As Vietnamese refugees, my parents’ families built their foundation in America by handmaking and selling Vietnamese food. It has always been in my blood, but I think I pushed it away because I truly believed that higher education was a direct path to success. Now I believe that education has many forms and is a tool for success,” she says.
Linda’s now embracing the food she grew up with as her livelihood, and is thrilled to be sharing the steamed snacks with hungry locals who purchase them through the website or at one of The Ugly Bao’s pop-ups.
“The reason I call them ugly is because all our bánh baos are hand-crafted. When it’s made by a machine, it looks perfect–neat pleats, perfectly symmetrical, bright white–it’s beautiful. But when you make it by hand and use real ingredients, it has some imperfections. And that’s sort of a metaphor for life,” Linda says.
Leaving her successful career in education to follow her dream of making The Ugly Bao a household name while uplifting others might be considered an imperfect, risky decision by some.
“People would tell me, ‘How could you leave your students? There are so many people that need you here now!’ I didn’t make the decision lightly. It was a very hard choice both professionally and personally,” says Linda. “However, I heard the calling loud and clear to help the folks I consider ‘in-betweeners’ and kept my vision in mind.”
Linda defines this group of “in-betweeners” as people who are very smart, skilled and hardworking, but just unsure of the details of how to get to the next step in their dream careers.
Equally as important as crafting delicious food, Linda is making mentoring “in-betweeners” part of her business model.
“We’ve hired our first employee who is a first [generation American]. She actually has a full-time job, but what she wants is advancement in her career. What we are focused on right now for her career development are both hard and soft skills. My focus is on understanding what these “in-betweeners” want and how I can help them get there,” says Linda.
Partnering with local businesses to host pop-up events, instead of opening a brick-and-mortar store at this point, is strategic on Linda’s part to keep overhead low while reaching as many people as possible.
“We have a commercial kitchen that we work out of, and we pop up at different places on the weekend. We do large order deliveries, and we also do catering. So that’s how people are getting their bánh bao fix right now,” she says.
Currently, they’re having fun selling at SACHI.LA, a coffee shop in Mar Vista, and Our Place, a cookware store on Abbot Kinney in Venice, but others are in the works. Linda and Bryson say it’s very rewarding to meet customers in a casual environment and watch them enjoy the bao in real time.
“We’ve applied to various farmers’ markets, and we’re excited to meet our ‘ugly’ community in other ways,” she says.
The Ugly Bao’s top sellers are pork belly, lemongrass chicken and the 15 vegetable bao. Linda’s favorite is the lemongrass chicken because she prefers lighter flavors, but for Bryson, it’s hands down the pork belly bao.
“It’s rich and bold in flavor and packs a punch. It was also the first bao that Linda and her mom created together. I have been lucky to be the primary taste tester for every iteration of the recipe. It is incredible to see the baos come to life and the evolution and passion toward perfecting the product,” he says.
But as Linda continues to experiment with the recipes handed down from her mother to craft something uniquely her own, she hopes to create flavors that appeal to everyone.
“We are working on some seasonal items. We have an apple pie bao for the holidays. It’s a sweet one. I think we learned that our customers are craving some sugar,” she says.
Sweet red bean and sweet custard baos are coming to the menu soon as well.
As The Ugly Bao team works on growing their business, they have some big aspirations for the future. A trip to Shark Tank would be amazing, and seeing their products in fridges across the country would be a dream come true that would not only enable Linda to share an important part of her heritage, but also give back to her community.
“Our big dream is to have a thriving business with physical locations in many communities that can support a fully operating nonprofit that conducts research on best practices for career development, mentorship and guidance for immigrant and first-American born folks,” said Linda.
There’s nothing ugly about that! To see when The Ugly Bao is popping up near you, visit their website at theuglybao.com or follow them on Instagram @theuglybao.
Story by Shanee Edwards. Photos by Zsuzsi Steiner.