Huang on the cross of the brand new Baohaus.
Picture: Alex Shibutani
Stick round lengthy sufficient, and what’s previous is new once more. In case you’d informed me that I’d be hanging out on St. Marks Place in 2026, slurping up road meals at an Eddie Huang restaurant, I’d hardly have believed it — that Boat had sailed. However right here we’re. Huang, whose authentic Baohaus helped inaugurate a cheap-and-cheerful Chinese language-Taiwanese street-food pattern manner again within the early aughts, has within the intervening years written a best-selling memoir, seen his life story tailored for TV, directed a film, and — in a way more predictable 2026 transfer — launched a podcast and a Substack. However the kitchen referred to as him again. He’s these days been cooking on the Flower Store on the Decrease East Aspect, and late final week, Baohaus opened its doorways once more on St. Marks and First Avenue.
It’s grown up, and it hasn’t. Hip-hop continues to be performed at rattling quantity — I watched a white man in a Penguins jersey rap alongside joyfully to Sheek Louch of the Lox — and Huang himself was nonetheless supervising the cross, in a bucket hat and Terry McLaurin jersey, pausing to dap up previous buddies. The Huang gang fuckboys of yore have develop into “streetwear uncs,” as certainly one of Eddie’s friends and an opening-night customer joked to me, but it surely’s good to keep in mind that you actually can go dwelling once more.
The baos aren’t again, but — they’ll return for lunch service, which ought to arrive within the coming weeks. However there’s loads of zippy, improved takeout staples on the opening dinner menu, and the costs, if not 2009 low-cost, are 2026 cheapish. (In one other throwback transfer, no reservations are taken.) We waved the flag over half-finished parts of stir-fried pork ($23), vegetarian ma po tofu ($21), broiled mustard greens ($16), oyster-sauce eggplant ($18), and tuna tataki ($29), washed down with $7 Taiwanese beers and $12 glasses of Feinherb Riesling from the largely all-German wine listing. The most important dish on the menu is 40 bucks.
Selection just isn’t the purpose right here. A lot of the menu’s center part is comprised of, basically, stir-fries, modularized with both pork collar or “shredded steak,” and the flavour profiles don’t fluctuate enormously — although our server was desperate to level out that Huang alchemizes every sauce individually, the same old palate of soy, vinegar, and mirin predominates. (Huang is seemingly leaning extra closely on agave nectar, in an iconoclastic contact — all the pieces was a bit sweeter than I might’ve anticipated.) You might want for a bit extra spice in most dishes, and perhaps a bit extra selection, however it could appear churlish to insist upon it. I chased each rubbled little bit of minced pork with diced black Chinese language pickles across the plate with chopsticks. Likewise the strips of pork collar tossed with lengthy flat “noodles” of cured tofu.
Have been a number of menu objects — like sticky, deep-fried cauliflower florets in house-made sweet-and-sour “mambo sauce” or blistered, collapsed eggplant bathed in oyster sauce — a bit school nosh? Certain. That’s sort of the purpose. Along with lunch, Huang hopes to deliver again late-night eating, and no accident that Baohaus 2 is within the coronary heart of NYU nation. That is perhaps its highest calling. It felt like the right tribute that the lone pair of women courageous sufficient to take a seat within the enclosed yard house in 30-degree temperatures celebrated their meal by sparking a joint.
Dishes at Baohaus.
Picture: Alex Shibutani
EAT LIKE THE EXPERTS.
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