All throughout May, WTOP is celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with stories about the people and places shaping the D.C. region.
Rosie Nguyen, the owner and chef behind Rose Ave Bakery in Woodley Park, always wanted to be an artist. Instead, she became a nurse.
But finding a way to express her creativity continued to call to her. Deep down, she wanted to make more people happy. So five years ago, she left nursing and launched Rose Ave Bakery, first in a food hall, and now in its own stand-alone store in the Woodley Park neighborhood in D.C.
Even at 5 a.m., hours before her bakery opened, she was all smiles as she iced a cake and got ready for the day.
“This is the bakery of my dreams. It’s combining my life and my palate as Asian American, and putting it into the most yummy, delicious, fun products,” Nguyen said. “I’m just doing what I love and doing something new and just creating from the heart.”
Most people associate bakeries with French-inspired dishes, whether it be croissants or muffins or cakes; but she was the first one in D.C. to take Asian flavors and mix them in.
“I’m Vietnamese, and my husband’s Filipino, and my business partner is Filipino, so we’re fusing a lot of Southeast Asian flavors,” she said.
That includes an ube cake — which is a chiffon cake common in Asian bakeries, mixed with the purple yam commonly found in Filipino desserts.
“We create something that is not too sweet and pretty sweet and we come to the middle and it’s just right,” Nguyen said. She describes it as a bridge between Asian and American baking.
“We’re doing things that are familiar but quite different,” she explained.
The diversity of the D.C. region, where so many people have come from many different backgrounds, has helped Rose Ave take off since 2020.
“Now, we see more Asian-inspired pastries from small businesses, from people doing markets,” Nguyen said. “We’re seeing that more, and it’s becoming actually very trendy.”
That doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Nguyen admitted she puts pressure on herself to deliver the best baked goods she can. While she’s found fancy gadgets and machines lack the same delicate touch that human hands do, she said one of the hardest parts is when she can’t make food for people — either because they’ve run out or they’re closed.
“I hate that people come to the door and I’m working and we’re closed that day, and I come out and I talk to them and I apologize, but they’re just like, ‘we came from so far,’” Nguyen said. “So I hate that I make people disappointed. I didn’t really think about that when I opened up this business.”
She also cited the times someone has bought “the last product on the stand” and a customer right behind them was going to order the same thing.
“We do a lot of apologizing,” she admitted with a laugh.
But it isn’t hurting her popularity. Recently, Yelp listed Rose Ave Bakery in its top 100 local businesses — not just for the D.C. region, but for the entire country. It was one of only four food-related businesses east of the Mississippi River to make the list.
“This is where I belong, and I feel that I’m doing something worthwhile,” she said. “Totally worth it.”
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