Eddie Huang is many things: author, chef, restaurateur, filmmaker, media personality. The list goes on, and Huang wouldn’t have it any other way. Born in Virginia to Taiwanese-Chinese parents, Huang opened his first restaurant, Baohaus, a cult-favorite Taiwanese bun shop, on New York City’s Lower East Side in 2009, later moving the shop to the East Village, where it remained until its pandemic-era closure in October 2020. Between then and now, Huang published two books, directed two films, and got married and started a family.
Nowadays, he’s got plenty more on his plate: a Substack, a podcast (which he co-hosts with his wife, Natashia Perrotti), and his first novel, Come Undone, which hits shelves on June 16. He’s currently (superstitiously) rooting on his beloved New York Knicks in the finals. Oh, and just reopened Baohaus this past March, which is where he and I met up in late May.
Huang didn’t expect to bring the restaurant back, but when he received a call—over the speakerphone in his car—from his trademark attorney asking him if he wanted to renew the Baohaus name, he dejectedly said that he didn’t. His wife, overhearing the call and sensing the pain in his voice, urged him to reconsider. “I didn’t believe her,” he tells me. “I was very down on myself. All the Hollywood stuff started to crater. The [Los Angeles] fires, the consolidation. I would never lie, I had to cook because I needed to make ends meet.” When he started cooking at the Flower Shop, he still wasn’t fulfilled. “It was a job, but I got the itch again. ‘I never fully realized Baohaus, so I’m going to go for it,’” he thought. And now, he adds, “I’m really happy.”
Over some nice dishes in the Baohaus back garden, Huang tells me about becoming a better writer, how fatherhood and Black culture have shaped his style, and why, as a Knicks superfan, he hasn’t attended a Knicks game in over a year.
GQ: There’s plenty anyone can read on the internet, but in your own words, tell me a bit about your background.
Eddie Huang: I was brought up in a way where there was a right way to do things, a fast way to do things, and a wrong way to do things. And my mom is very into [being] fast and efficient. My dad was very into the “right” way. I tend to really go with my dad, and, obviously, being Taiwanese-Chinese in America, the way we thought was right was very alien and foreign to Americans, and the way Americans thought was right was very alien and foreign to me. There’s a genuine sadness in my spirit that comes from being an outsider. Even when I’m invited in, I tend to look at things from an outside perspective. I very rarely trust anything enough to feel like I belong. I’ve always related to that Groucho Marx joke, “I would never want to be part of a club that would have me as a member.” I think the thing that defines me is that I would never believe that a club would have me as a member. I feel like the big embarrassment would come if one day I actually believe that I belong. That drives everything I do.
In the movie Heat—I don’t think it’s a great film—but there’s a line where Robert De Niro said, “I never get into anything I can’t get out of in under 90 seconds.” When I met my wife, literally within the first two or three dates, that movie came up and that line came up, and we were both like, “Yeah.” We were both emotionally unavailable. My relationship with my wife [and my son] is probably the one place I feel I belong. I’m really happy in that family and it’s kind of all I need. And everything else it’s like, “I respect you.” Film world, respect you, love you, would love to be a part of it, but would never believe it. Same with food, same with writing, same with everything. And I think people are always like, “Why are you always bouncing around?” It comes from this sense of just like, I cannot believe that anybody would fuck with me.