Eddie Huang Makes a Homecoming with Baohaus
A family, a new restaurant, and debut novel — Huang’s got a lot on his plate. In a new Shop Talk, the author-chef gives us an inside look at the revival of New York’s cult-favorite bun shop.
WORDS BY ERIN IKEUCHI
INTERVIEW & PHOTOS BY KYLE REYES
Six years is long enough to become someone else. Have a kid. Write a novel. Direct a movie. Start a podcast. Serve up an Italo-disco-inspired culinary pop-up, for the musically inspired. And if you have time, open another restaurant on top of that. Just ask Eddie Huang. The beloved multi-hyphenate has done it all, and still has more to say.
Success in one lane is rare, let alone several, and even rarer is managing it all without losing your voice. Since closing his beloved New York restaurant in 2020, the Taiwanese-American author and chef went from “fuckboy to family man,” he told Hypebeast from the new Baohaus, which he re-opened with his wife, Natashia Blanca, last March. Still, after a move to Los Angeles, to Taipei, and back to New York, a family, a new restaurant, and his debut novel, Come Undone, on shelves now, Huang’s take-it-or-leave-it bravado hasn’t gone anywhere. They say the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Huang opened the cult-favorite bun shop in the Lower East Side back in 2009. It relocated to the East Village in 2011 before rolling up the gates during the pandemic, and even set up shop in Los Angeles for a few years. A few-seater known for its no-frills menu, the first Baohaus was the spot. Where streetwear’s who’s who linked for some mean, cheap gua baos. A pioneer in the Asian American culinary cool that defined 2010s New York, the restaurant was, and still is, Huang’s love letter to his family’s roots and the scene it served.
The 2026 Baohaus is still slinging buns, but now it’s grown up. Its famed baos and beef noodle soup still headline the lunch menu, but now it’s properly “soigné,” as Huang described. The kind of place that’ll serve up wok-cooked gnocchi with ma po Iberico pork one hour, and then host a perfectly anarchic Knicks watch party the next. “We sell good food at a good price, and we want you to come in and enjoy it.”
Located at First Avenue and St. Marks Place, the new restaurant is washed in deep red hues, fitted with bistro tables, chrome detailing all over, with wood beams low overhead. “It’s kitschy, it’s funny, it’s New York,” he sums. Personality comes through the artworks peppered throughout. Photographs by Dash Snow and Robert Mapplethorpe hang above tables. Handwritten “H.N.I.C.” lyrics, gifted by Prodigy’s daughter, christen the pass-thru. One wall features a Lox and Dipset Verzuz painting by Gregory Simmons, and another by Devin Troy Strother was plucked from Huang’s son’s bedroom.
After an eclectic run as a culinary top dog, literary bad boy, and overall cultural provocateur, Huang’s back at the place that started it all. We took a trip to Baohaus in this latest Shop Talk to hear how the founder has navigated the business’s renaissance. It turns out, he is still at the top of his game.
Hypebeast: There are so many nuanced details in this restaurant. What’s the most important thing here?
Eddie Huang: The most important thing in any space is the people. The previous Baohauses were like bomb shelters. We paid a lot more attention to design this time, but still have goofy stuff that makes it feel like a beach town. At the end of the day, what’s most important is that Baohaus continues to embody what people like myself came to New York for; we’re about real community here. No one’s posing, no one’s posturing. Ten toes on the ground, cut through all the bullshit.
What’s your favorite art piece that you have at the restaurant right now?
My favorite piece has to be the Lox and Dipset Verzuz painting by Gregory Simmons because of how personal it is. I do also like the reaction people have when they sit down at table ten and Robert Mapplethorpe’s “Suck Ass” is over somebody’s head. When people ask about my mentality as a cook, I’m like, “That guy in that ass.”
What’s one dish that you can eat for the rest of your life?
Honestly? The new freaked-out chicken parm with spicy, creamy fermented chili tomato sauce. I could eat that every day; that chicken parm goes bananas. For lunch, it’s the beef noodle soup. We use prime chuck, break it down real nice, finesse it with some heirloom tomatoes and fermented chili broth. I love that dish.
What’s one lie about running a restaurant?
I hate when people perform being victims. [Restaurant owners] do the ‘woe is me, I don’t make money’ thing because, otherwise, your friends are going to ask you for mad free shit. But I just tell my friends, it is what it is. First round’s on me. You’re buying everything else. What are friends for, right?
What’s the best thing about running a business with your wife?
We get to spend more time together. I love my wife. There are people that get married, have kids, and then they’re like, ‘Wait, I didn’t want to do this.’ But I really did. I waited till I was 40 to really settle down and do the thing. If I could spend more time with her, I would, so working together is just fantastic.
What’s the hardest thing about it?
She knows where I am all the time [laughs]. I can’t say I’m at the restaurant because they’ll tell her I’m at the Russian Turkish Baths. But it’s cool. I got nothing to hide.
What’s your favorite detail when it came to designing this space?
The yellow and black checkered floor. It was already here before we came in. It feels out of place and clashes, but I do really like it. My last name means yellow, and my feng shui fortuneteller tells me that it’s a good color for me; it’s fortuitous. The floor makes it like a nice, old-school Chinese restaurant in that soigné way, like in Shanghai or Hong Kong.
The carryout places you grew up with are cool, but I want this version of Baohaus to be something we’re all really proud of. Somewhere you can have your birthday, anniversary, or wedding reception, and I feel like the checkered floor signifies ‘nice place.’
What made you pick red for the interiors?
To ward off evil spirits. It’s lucky. Chinese superstition really directs 80% of my life choices.
First timer — what are you telling them to order?
It really depends. I will sociologically profile people up in here. If we get four white girls from the West Village, I’m offering lemon spritzes, Sauvignon blanc, chicken parmesan, orecchiette all’assassina. Keep it fresh, keep it approachable.
If you come in here, I’d recommend crispy duck bao, tropical tripe crudo. We smoke the tripe, and pickle it with spicy, acidic cane vinegar. I’d do the veal chop, the T-bone tuna tataki, then I’d run the whole grilled squid, squid ink lo mein, the Cara Cara orange veal chop, and a little green tomato cucumber salad just to spritz it up.
You Filipino?
Yeah.
Yeah, I guessed right.
Are there any secret menu items?
Always. You got dietary concerns? You famous? I got you. Really depends on your level of clout in here.
LA restaurant vs. New York restaurant?
Oh man, New York. I had a restaurant in LA; I never went.
Tell us about that book over there.
This is my new novel, Come Undone. I wrote Fresh Off the Boat, I wrote Double Cup Love. I didn’t really want to write about myself anymore.
I had a third book deal for a novel, but couldn’t deliver for like eight years. Nothing. No ideas. Then, on a flight to London, I read this New York Magazine article about red flags and thought a toxic rom com would be a cool concept for a novel, where two undatable people date each other. How do these people who avoid intimacy and vulnerability do in a relationship? That’s what the novel is about.
Everybody eventually meets their match, at least I hope. Somebody that breaks down your walls, helps you open up, and realize that this is what we’re here on this planet to do.
Who did the cover?
Rodrigo Corral designed the book cover. I was never given the name for the illustrator, but they also do illustration for LOEWE, and you can see the similarity in style. Very fly, very soigné. I like it a lot.
This restaurant, this novel, these are the two things I’m most proud of. As an artist, the thing you’re always scared of is that your first hit is your greatest. I can honestly say that my work has continued to get better, and this is my best writing.
