Oct 15, 2012 8 Questions With Eddie Huang
By first impression you’d think Eddie Huang were a comedian or hip-hop mogul, or at least I did, but mostly because of his uncanny resemblance to Mr. Beyonce Knowles. Also, the man can make you laugh silly (I really hope for Jay-Z’s sake he can tell a good joke too, because otherwise all of Eddie’s fans will be in for nothing but disappointment). Like the best of today’s American chefs however, Eddie is a spokesman and a pundit in the rawest sense of the term: He is an expert on various subjects, and verses poetic, waxes opinionated. Food is just the tip of the iceberg with Eddie, who with his brother Evan opened Baohaus and “rebuilt Taiwanese-Chinese food from the ground up.”
It’s no coincidence culinary Ground Zero was founded in the hipster-fashion-vice-engine known as New York’s Lower East Side, ass-to-jowel with our immovable Chinatown, because Eddie’s also launching his first TV series “Fresh Off the Boat” on Vice today. Today Baohaus is on 14th Street but “Fresh Off The Boat” pulls its title from his eponymous blog, the source of astute political commentary right up there with pictures of him pump-faking foin ladies on their way to parties sponsored by AXE body spray. Don’t call him the darling of cuisine/NYC society/pop culture though; he can crush you with bullet-proof wit and a dose of FOB drinks.
Updated: Episode 1 of “Fresh Off the Boat”
1. What you do for a living? What are you currently working on?
Co-owner of Baohaus and writer.
2. Describe for us an average day.
I try to not have two of the same days ever.
3. What did you want to be when you were young?
I wanted to quarterback the Redskins or play point guard wherever Charles Barkley was.
A quarterback for the Redskins.
4. What do you want to be when you are old?
I would still like to quarterback the Redskins haha.
5. What’s the soundtrack of your life like? Or maybe the library of your subconscious?
When people write lists of the best albums all time, it’s the usual suspects, but if there’s only one album I get to listen to I’m taking Camp Lo “Uptown Saturday Night.”
As a kid, it was “Me Against the World,” “36 Chambers,” “Ready to Die” all those classics people love and quote, but I just want to zone these days. Killa Cam, greatest rapper of all-time.
7. What do you hate about the food/restaurants and the industry?
I never snitched in my life, but I can’t throw people down the stairs when they steal as much as I want to. The only thing I can do is turn footage over to the cops and make sure they work in Wal-Marts the rest of their lives. I’ve helped people pay child support, I’ve bought back to school clothes for my line cooks’ kids, I give them coconut ciroc and cupcakes for their birthdays and yet, there’s still 2 to 3 people a year that steal. Most of the time it’s other employees that consider me family who tell me what’s going on because they see how we invest in our people. That betrayal kills me in the restaurant business. There is so little money to go around in a restaurant and sometimes people feel squeezed in life so I get it, but it never feels good. There’s a lot of temptation to steal in restaurants because it’s easy and employees think you’re balling, but margins at most restaurants are 10 to 13% if you’re lucky.
8. What do you love about it?
Two things made it all worth it. Every day, we have Taiwanese/Chinese people come in and say” I just have to tell you… This reminds me so much of what my grandma used to make.” That’s nice.
My favorite though was about 6 months ago. Our lead line cook, Rahim has a son that got caught up with the wrong people in the neighborhood running around. He would always have to leave early to make sure he was home after school and his baby moms wasn’t holding him down one day. His son, Davonte, broke his hip and got rushed to the hospital. Rahim was tore up, took a few weeks off and started bringing Davonte to work once he could walk. He’d hang out every day, listen to the music, drink the lemonade, eat the boas and after a few weeks, he stopped me on my way into the restaurant: “Ayo Eddie, I’ma work at Baohaus with my Daddy when I grow up!”
