Hong Kong Tea House has opened its first Maryland location at 605 Hungerford Dr. in Rockville, setting up shop in the strip between Giant and the Fitz condominiums with a menu that stretches from milk tea and boba to Philly cheesesteaks and double smashed beef cheeseburgers. The Virginia-born chain, which first opened in Centreville in 2024, is betting that a sprawling, genre-hopping menu can carve out space in one of the most tea-shop-saturated stretches of the Washington region.
The new location sits inside the Rockville City Centre strip mall, where it opened alongside Aria, a new restaurant serving halal Afghan and Persian cuisine, according to Store Reporter. Owner Youssef Takhssaiti, who still runs the original Centreville store at 5965 Centreville Crest Lane according to Uber Eats listings, designed the menu as what Store Reporter's report described as “a taste tour with something for everyone.” A Facebook post from the business confirmed the shop held its official grand opening celebration at the Hungerford Drive address during the first week of October.
A Menu That Tries to Be Everything at Once
According to The MoCo Show, Hong Kong Tea House offers Hong Kong milk tea, Taiwan brown sugar milk tea, taro and Thai milk teas, oolong varieties, ube and taro lattes, Kyoto matcha lattes, fruit teas, smoothies and cheese slushes, along with boba and other drink toppings. The food side leans just as wide: rou jia mo with slow-stewed pork or stir-fried beef, jian bing guo zi street crepes made with egg, green onion, cilantro and sauce, and both traditional and contemporary versions of that crepe.
The menu also stretches into Sichuan pickled fish, spicy mala fish, malatang, chicken skewers, popcorn chicken and wonton soup, per the same report. Rice bowls include tomato and egg over rice, Hong Kong-style minced beef rice, Japanese-style gyudon and curry dishes, some topped with fried chicken cutlets or panko shrimp. Then there's the American fusion wing: double smashed beef cheeseburgers, popcorn chicken and char siu chicken sandwiches, Philly cheesesteaks and waffle fries, plus French-style fruit crepes and hot donut cups with fruit or ice cream for dessert. Menu listings on Uber Eats put the Sichuan Pickled Fish, made with sliced snakehead fish in sour golden soup, at $16.49, with street food items like fried starch sausages running $6.49. The shop is open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., and the business describes its goal as creating a casual gathering space centered around drinks, food and hospitality.
Rockville's Asian Food Boom — and Its Churn
Rockville's Asian Food Boom — and Its Churn The opening lands in a corridor already thick with competition. Google Maps listings show a cluster of existing Asian beverage and food spots along Hungerford Drive, including Yi Fang Taiwanese Fruit Tea at 777 Hungerford Drive and Taipei Cafe at 802 Hungerford Drive, just blocks from the new shop. Rockville's draw for these concepts isn't accidental: Asian residents make up 16% of Montgomery County's population, or 170,325 residents. Washingtonian has previously called Rockville the Washington region's “unofficial Chinatown,” citing decades of Asian business growth and residential migration from D.C. into the Montgomery County suburbs.
That growth has come with volatility. Hoodline reported this week that tea shop Teas'n You moved into 838 Rockville Pike to replace Cuppa Tea, a Hong Kong-style milk tea shop that shut down in June after only a year in business. The same corridor saw Hong Kong-style dessert chain Mango Mango Dessert reopen at Congressional Plaza on Rockville Pike last month, years after closing a Gaithersburg location in 2021, and in May, a Chengdu hotpot concept opened on Montgomery Avenue downtown. Several milk tea brands have opened and closed along the Route 355 corridor in short order, underscoring just how tight the margins can be for single-concept beverage spots.
Whether Hong Kong Tea House's broad, multi-regional menu gives it staying power that narrower tea shops haven't had remains an open question, as does how it will differentiate itself from established neighbors like Yi Fang. For now, the Rockville shop joins a fast-growing list of Hong Kong-style food and drink concepts betting that Montgomery County's appetite for Asian cuisine still has room to grow.
