The Hiro We Need: Say hello to the unique Columbus chef combining great food and anime
You might know him as Chef Hiro or the Anime Chef, but either way, Jean Claude Ba’s food truck The Chef Hiro Food Truck (and soon-to-be brick and mortar) is making a name for itself in Ohio’s capital city.
While his mostly jerk-based, creative menu delivers its promise of amazing taste, Ba himself used to deliver — packages, that is. In 2014 he worked for the United States Post Office, which he enjoyed for two years until he began to feel worn out.
“I was like, ‘I can’t do this for 30-plus years’,” Ba said. “I wouldn’t survive that. Ultimately, I needed to find something else.”
He was struggling with trying to find that perfect “something” to pursue when he happened to post a photo of his dinner on social media one day. People began commenting on it, asking if he would make extras.
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“They said, ‘We’ll pay you!’ But at first I thought there was no way people would pay for my food,” Ba said. “Eventually, too many people were asking so I made a Facebook post telling people to submit their orders and pick it up from my apartment on Sunday.”
Ba says himself he doesn’t have a culinary background or fancy skills, but he spent most of 2018 watching tutorials online, following recipes and practicing hard. He went through a few trial and errors, though, citing one particularly tricky brisket recipe.
“It was horrible,” he said, laughing. “It’s supposed to take 12 hours. I thought I did it right but apparently not. Trial and error, sure, but that was a pretty expensive error.”
Through it all, Ba has mastered many of his locally-adored recipes. One of the most popular, for example, is jerk ribeye tacos, made with red beans, rice, fresh cilantro and topped with a cinnamon pineapple slice.
Under the name Chef Hiro, Ba obtained his food truck in 2019. He was already fairly popular with his pick-up orders on Sundays, but with the food truck on the road, he was contacted by a popular television network and even several rappers in Atlanta, asking him to drive down.
Bolstered by this validation, Chef Hiro then began expanding locally even more.
“One day I was walking on my mail route and passed this vacant bar,” he recounted. “I contacted the owner and asked if the kitchen was still intact. Sure enough, it was, and I began renting it out.”
This way, he could return to his roots of “pick-up” style and deliver meals to people as they pulled up in cars. It was a smart, adaptive move that increased the Chef Hero Food Truck tenfold.
“The success felt really fast,” Bach noted. “No brakes, all gas.”
One of the reasons for the popularity of The Chef Hiro Food Truck likely stems from the fact that it’s hard to miss its branding. Ba uses his favorite anime art to wrap his food in, featuring local artists and giving them exposure across the city.
“When I first started teaching myself to cook, I’d practice a lot and have anime on while I was cooking,” Ba said. “I have too many favorite shows to name — anything from ‘Dragon Ball Z’ to the ‘Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba’.”
And today, Ba is showing no signs of slowing down. He’s renting out a kitchen at Taste Of Trini Bar & Grill on South Hamilton Road, where he continues to do Taco Tuesday pop-ups. He’s also working on revitalizing his food truck and even establishing a brick and mortar location.
For many people, going into something totally outside their skill level and comfort zone is terrifying. But for Ba, it was an opportunity.
“I don’t usually believe you can speak stuff into existence, but I do believe the universe will present opportunities to you, and you have to be able to recognize those opportunities and take them,” he said. “A lot of people get discouraged when they don’t know where they’re going. In my eyes, I wasn’t anything special, just an average Joe. One opportunity changed all that.”
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