This up-and-coming queer-owned, gluten-free Asian bakery started with a Tinder match and a long-distance relationship

In 2018, Howe Wang and David Thai both went on Tinder looking for something casual. The two weren’t on the app for long when they matched, beginning a long-distance relationship — Wang lived in Northern Virginia, while Thai was between Philly and Vietnam. Six years later, both men have a partner in life and Philly has its latest gluten-free bakery.

Tang’s Bakery entered the city’s food scene in May with small-batch, gluten-free cookies, cakes, and other pastries that use Vietnamese, Filipino, and other East and Southeast Asian flavors — think pandan, ube, yuzu, and miso — that are sold on its Instagram page and website. It’s “an homage to blending distinct, yet very overlapping, Asian cultures and flavor profiles,” Thai said.

Now, Tang’s is stepping out into the pop-up world, officially adding its name to Philly’s growing roster of gluten-free bakeries. Their first pop-up was last month at Northern Liberties plant shop Stump; the next will be on Sept. 21 at Salt & Vinegar, a gourmet grocery in the Italian Market. They’ll be offering a limited selection of their gluten-free cookies, like salted chocolate chip with browned butter and miso paste, and bakes, like pandan pound cake.

Wang, an avid baker, went gluten-free in 2020 due to a food allergy. His sweet tooth remained fully intact, but it was hard to find the gluten-free Asian baked goods he craved. And, not knowing exactly how to bake with this new dietary restriction, he set aside his craft.

In 2021, Wang, a Northern Virginia native, moved to Philadelphia to live with Thai, who grew up in South Philly. Inside the couple’s West Poplar home kitchen, Wang returned to baking, and developed gluten-free recipes that drew on his Chinese heritage and Thai’s Vietnamese and Chinese background. By last fall, Wang had perfected his gluten-free baking, offering ube tres leches cakes, toasted black sesame cookies, and yuzu pistachio bars to friends. With their approval, the couple decided to introduce the desserts to Philadelphians at large.

“Whenever you bake and you have friends tell you that your baked goods are good, you never really believe them, so I was like, ‘Let me see if I can do something with this and see if people actually like what I’m making,’” Wang said.

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The couple debuted Tang’s Bakery — a combo of their last names, the word “sugar” in Mandarin, and Wang’s mother’s last name — in May, with Wang baking and Thai running the business side of the bakery. At first, the orders came mostly from their friends. But within two months, a collaboration with Jiggy Coffee and a surge in Instagram followers brought in orders from strangers looking to get their hands on Tang’s vibrant desserts. People were excited for gluten-free baked goods with interesting flavors, Wang said.

Those people included Jiggy Coffee owners Jacalyn Shou and Jonathan Lee. Wang and Thai initially reached out about popping up in the Washington Square West cafe, leading to a wholesale arrangement, with the ube tres leches cakes and black sesame cookies becoming crowd favorites at Jiggy, according to Wang.

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Wang and Thai plan to continue as a small-batch bakery online with preorders, wholesale, and in-person pop-ups at local small businesses. Fall menu items, which expand into South Asian flavors, will launch in October: the salted chocolate chip and strawberry matcha cookies, tiramisu cupcake, and yuzu curd bar will be replaced by an adobo chocolate chip cookie, masala chai cupcake, pumpkin five spice cookie, and a hojicha whoopie pie.

While both still have day jobs — Wang is a physical therapist and Thai is a health-care consultant — they hope that the bakery will become a household name. For now, they expect to figure out their next steps in May, which will be Tang’s first anniversary. The goal is to “bring really good tasting Asian-inspired flavors to Philadelphia that just happen to be gluten-free,” Wang said.