Ten years have passed since local restaurateur Tai Lee–better known as “Chef Tai” to his immense legion of fans–won the Food Network’s “America’s Favorite Food Truck” competition, in large part because of his immense legion of fans.

Much has changed in the ensuing decade, save for the truck, or rather, the “Chef Tai Mobile Bistro.”
“It’s the same vehicle which earned me the “Favorite Food Truck” title,” Tai says today. “If you recall, it was the first food truck in the Bryan/College Station area back in 2010.”

Sixty thousand miles later, its still carting great food to good people.

In fact, during the last year, the Chef Tai Mobile Bistro has been constantly on the go.  When a global pandemic strikes, Tai learned, you do what you can to get your product to your customers.

COVID-19 took a heavy toll on humanity’s day-to-day existence. Maintaining mandated social-distancing protocols stymied–and for a while eliminated–the pleasures of dining out. Not surprisingly, a number of Brazos Valley restaurants went forced to close their doors.

Two of those establishments belonged to Chef Tai.

Tai started Veritas restaurant in 2007, just five years after graduating from Texas A&M University with a degree from the Mays School of Business. Growing up in South Korea, Tai was regularly exposed to his mother’s and grandmother’s restaurant businesses. While the Korean culture back then typically dictated a man’s place was anywhere but in the kitchen, Tai watched and learned from his matriarchs.

Given his own success in the restaurant business in his adopted home town, it’s obvious Chef Tai learned well.

After Veritas became a success, the Chef Tai food truck added to his burgeoning culinary empire. In the 2010s, Paolo’s Italian Kitchen, Madden’s Casual Gourmet and Urban Table were added to the roster of what became the “Chef Tai Food Group/“. Tai was on a fabulous run: earning loyal customers, making good friends, giving back to the community and serving the gang on-air during an ESPN College Game Day visit to Kyle Field (see photo above).

Then, in early 2020, Tai feared the good times might be coming to an end given events unfolding on the other side of the world.

“When stories of the coronavirus in China began to circulate,” Tai says, “my friends and family still in South Korea suggested that it could be an event on par with the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s.” “Well before COVID arrived here, I was already concerned how it might affect my business.”

Like so many other entrepreneurs in so many other places, the scale and severity of the pandemic had Tai hemorrhaging money. He and his wife, Christina, saw their life savings dwindle and credit card balances soar. He worked almost non-stop to try and stay ahead of the steepening curve. Not only did he want to keep his businesses open, but also, and more importantly, he wanted to keep his employees safe. At first, Texas Governor Greg Abbott mandated restaurants reduce to 50 percent occupancy, which provided a glimmer of hope for Tai, but when that proved insufficient to stem the pandemic tide, restaurants were ordered to eliminate in-house dining.

By the summer of 2020, Tai was forced to close Veritas. At year’s end, Madden’s ceased operations as well.

To know Chef Tai is to like him immensely. His friends and followers understand Tai is ever the optimist: upbeat, a creative thinker and not afraid of hard work.

Tai’s loyal following was also affected by the pandemic. For many, takeout, curbside pickup or even a trip to the Mobile Bistro was a daunting proposition. But what COVID couldn’t do was stem the community’s demand for Chef Tai Lee.

In the time before COVID, rare was the local charity event that didn’t feature a live or silent auction item from the Chef Tai Food Group: dinner for two at Veritas, an in-person cooking lesson, or a catered in-home dinner for ten. Tai is passionate about giving back, and not even a deadly coronavirus could damper that enthusiasm.

“We quickly learned to make adjustments,” Tai says with a smile. “If someone paid $4,000 at a charity event for us to provide a catered meal in their home, we had to deliver.”

And deliver they did, with Chef Tai on hand to lead the proceedings–Zoom-style.

“People were surprisingly open to letting me help them prepare their meals via an online connection,” Tai says. “We would send out the food in a chef’s or butcher’s pack, then I would get with the customer via Zoom and give them instructions for preparing the meal. They’d be cooking in their own kitchen at their own pace and I’d be there on their laptop screen guiding them through the process.
“It was a little time consuming, yes, but it was also a lot of fun.”

Tai used video-conferencing technology to come to the rescue in other ways, too.

“There was a study abroad group on the Texas A&M campus that had a trip to Russia cancelled,” Tai says. “So to replicate the experience of being in another country, they hired a chef in Moscow to do a live online cooking class featuring Russian cuisine.”

Given his longstanding relationship with A&M’s study-abroad program, Chef Tai offered to pitch in. He invited the 12 Aggie students whose foreign travel plans had been cancelled to host their virtual cooking class at his Urban Table restaurant.

“I was the Russian chef’s ‘avatar,’” Tai laughs. “I had gotten the recipe ahead of time so I had everything ready to go. Good thing her English was a lot better than my Russian. All of us had.a very memorable experience that day.”

The success of that endeavor got Tai to thinking: What if he took advantage of streaming video technology to bring the Chef Tai experience to others? And so, the Chef Tai YouTube channel was born…right about the time that Winter Storm Uri paralyzed much of Texas in February of this year.

“If it’s not one thing, its another,” Tai says with surprisingly good humor.

Chef Tai’s YouTube channel is still in its infancy. He continues to experiment with the idea. In each episode available for online viewing, you’ll see Tai trying out different locations–including his own kitchen at home–different lighting configurations and, most noticeably, you’ll see him looking to find his groove in front of the camera.

“My first video on YouTube was pretty hideous,” Tai offers. “The lighting was too dim and I was like rambling on and on. But I wasn’t discouraged. I figured I had more of these coming, so I’d better get used to how to present myself on camera. So, I started to do a lot more practicing. I practiced a lot using my cell phone, and sure enough, I got better. I showed some of my clips to other people and they were very encouraging.”

As for the Chef Tai Food Group’s future, the Veritas brand is gone, but the space is now home to his newest restaurant called Sôlt. It’s a completely reimagined space, designed to be more informal, but with a menu crafted in the same casual spirit, and with a plentiful offering of “comfort food”–Chef Tai style. The community’s response to the new venture has been positive and Tai’s financial burden is beginning to lift.

“Curb-side take out isn’t going to go away,” Tai says. “As we move forward, we will continue to keep more space between tables. As we expand, our dining rooms will be smaller.”

Likely to grow in size are the number of followers on the Chef Tai YouTube channel.

“I have all sorts of plans for YouTube,” Tai says. “I think we’ve always done a good job promoting our brand via social media, and YouTube is another way for us to do that. I envision offering cooking lessons and how-to advice on subjects like cleaning pots and pans and sharpening knives.”

A series of video recipes is also in the works, a Chef Tai “streaming video cookbook.”

“I think people are going to love that,” he says.

And, might all this lead, someday, to his own show on the Food Network?

“I never watch the Food Network,” Tai admits. “I tried, but I”m too critical of what I see and too busy to be spending time in front of a television.”

Winning “America’s Favorite Food Truck” came with a handsome financial windfall for Chef Tai Lee, some of which he used to “fix up the food truck to be interstate-travel ready.” The winner was scheduled to be featured on the following season of The Great Food Truck Race series, and Tai wanted to be ready.

Sadly, that opportunity never presented itself, but Chef Tai thinks he has found a home in front of a camera.

“I’m giving myself a full year to take the YouTube idea as far as I can,” Tai says. Right now, he has more than 300 subscribers. As he formalizes the effort and begins to promote it via both his social media and Aggie networks , that number undoubtedly will grow.

“But even if I have only one viewer, even if my mother back in Seoul is the only person watching, that’s okay. If I shoot a video of me cooking something and my mom enjoys it, that’s great because I don’t see her that often. And if my mom can share it with my grandma, well, that’s cool, too.

“The last year has been pretty stressful,” Chef Tai admits. “Right now, I’m still working on once again enjoying what I do.”