by Eddie Huang
Baohaus Hiring Multi-Tasking Nice People Who
Listen to Ghostface
Surprisingly, we got an avalanche of resumes with subject lines like:
“I FUX WITH GHOSTFACE”
“I love multi-tasking AND Ghostface”
“RE: Baohaus hiring Ghostface listeners Tony Starks Pretty Toney n all of that …”
Our first hire was Asa Stella, an ex–Whole Foods cashier, bar mitzvah DJ, and Philly kid. He was exactly what we were looking for. Kid came in with fucked-up Adidas high-tops, random Japanese baseball jerseys from thrift shops, and a Phillies cap. We hired him on the spot. The second hire, and to this day my favorite Baohaus employee of all time, was Kate Francis. This was her cover letter:
Hello,
I am writing in response to your Craigslist ad posted on February 4th. My name is Kate and I’m a recent art history graduate from NYU. I also have a degree in Shaolin shadow-boxing aka I can go back and forth on the Wu and Killa Cam in his best years (IMO the pink-fur wearing image I saw on your blog ~ the time of Purple Haze). I live nearby on the LES and although I don’t have experience in food service, I do love food in a very genuine, this tastes good and I like it way. I think Baohaus looks delicious. Pork is always great, and I’m stoked to see some Niman Ranch meat on the menu.
Since that ad, we’ve had others like these:
Are you the same one cryin’ for that Billie Jean Jacket?
Date: 2010-10-18, 1:57PM EDT
Replay to: [email protected]
Cream still stack it
If the fiends still crack it
You the same one cryin’ for that Billie Jean jacket?
If you like stackin’ cream and fux wit Billie Jean, Baohaus is hiring.
137 Rivington St. Reply by email with resume. thanks.
Baohaus Hiring People Who Like Pyrex and Cavalli Furs (Lower East Side)
Date: 2010-04-06, 2:35PM EDT
Replay to: [email protected]
OK, we get it, yeah you, too… … I know, I know, yeah you, too … We ain’t looking for Mr. Me Too … We like people who like breakin’ down belly into buns and sell ’em like gobstoppers. Line resume in the belly of the email. No attachments. Research Baohaus so you know what you are getting into. No bum shit.
Strickly for My Astronauts (Lower East Side)
Date: 2010-12-10. 1:06PM EST
Reply to: [email protected]
Are you futuristic like puffy vests and moon boots? Do you like rollin’ like a big shot? Chevy tuned up like a NASCAR pit stop? Ice cream, Ice cream, Ice cream paint job.
If you are cooler than a polar bear’s toenails and want money stacks bigger than mail order brides, Baohaus is for you. We are hiring. Holla back. 137 Rivington St. Include resume in the body of the email. Part of being an astronaut is that you get shit done and show up on time, so, if you want puffy vests without putting in work, you should probably stand alone, gettin’ dome from a thick chick in sandals. #choncletas
To this day, my favorite ad was the one titled “Wanna Play Nintendo with Caesar-Leo? Pick up the phone, deliver baos to your home.” From the overwhelming responses to the ads, it was becoming abundantly clear that we were right all along. Despite my parents, other people’s parents, and an industry of copycats, there was a genuine workforce and customer base that grew up on the ethos of golden-era hip-hop and wanted to do something positive in an honest, real, socially progressive way. We were a generation of people that listened to Ghostface, tried to impeach the president, and wanted all-natural, hormone- and antibiotic-free pork. Among the biggest influences on Baohaus were Food, Inc. and the Bauhaus school of design itself. I chose the name Baohaus because my favorite movement in architecture and design was Bauhaus. It stuck with me ’cause shit was simple, clean, masculine, and conscious. It wasn’t aesthetically driven design; there was a mind to it, just like our Baohaus. We didn’t have the money to design shit like Bauhaus, but just out of brokenness, the shit was undoubtedly simple if not clean.
Food, Inc. is one of the best documentaries ever made and really drove the ingredients at Baohaus. Food bloggers sometimes write that we’re “Alice Waters disciples,” but I ain’t never ate her food. All I know is that she annoys the living shit out of the big homie, Tony Bourdain. We aren’t “locavore chefs” or “farm to table” assholes trying to charge you a premium because we got ramps from some dickhead in a pickup truck. The reason we use all natural, hormone-free, antibiotic-free Berkshire pork belly, beef, and chicken is that it’s the right thing to do. There are a lot of independent farms in the game and with restaurants like Baohaus and the aforementioned locavore joints, the food system is changing. I don’t believe you need to shout out the farm, the name of the chicken, or all that other bullshit on the menu because it should simply be the standard that we serve all-natural meat. I hope that one day it will be economically feasible that we serve free-range chicken and grass-fed beef, but until customers vote with their dollars and support business models that can afford to use those ingredients, we can’t. Customers feel like it’s the restaurant’s job to do these things, but it’s a two-way street; as customers, we’re enablers. Without us, it doesn’t matter if the chef’s heart is in the right place. Someone has to support the vision.
One of the biggest challenges we faced came from cheap-ass Taiwanese people. I remember one chick came up to me and said, “You know, these baos are a lot more expensive than Taiwan. In Taipei, they are much bigger and cost less than a dollar!”
“Well, why don’t you buy a nine-hundred-dollar plane ticket and go buy yourself a one-dollar bao.”
I had the ill flashback working at Baohaus. It was like Chinese school all over again with the small-minded, conservative Asians that couldn’t understand shit if it wasn’t in an SAT prep packet.
Evan, Asa, Kate, and I made a few decisions. Instead of appeasing customers or playing into their bullshit, we consulted Bill Cosby, who famously said, “I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.” We refused to carry hot sauce in the restaurant because it fucked up the flavor. We stuck to using all-natural meat and kept our prices right where they were. If people told us their grandmothers made it better, we’d tell them to set up shop across the street. At one point, people kept going on Yelp to complain about the no-hot-sauce policy and gave us one star for not accommodating customers. I decided one night to go online and respond by parodying the user and rating my “hot dick.”
The comment: “OMFG, I fucking hate Baohaus and their hot sauce policy, but when I complained the owner hit me in the face with a hot dick. That shit was so delicious. 5 stars!”
That became the model for the Baohaus style of service: the Anti–Danny Meyer.
Music was also a huge part of the Baohaus experience. All of us made playlists, and numerous employees were either DJs, rappers, producers, or former street team kids. We almost never hired experienced cooks, because the goal was to create a team of artists who just happened to work at Baohaus while pursuing other dreams. It was a revolving door, but I wanted it that way. I hated growing up working at places like Boston Market that expected you to treat the job like it was your life. I’m cleaning chicken butts, motherfucker, this ain’t a lifestyle, this is a cot damn problem! I wanted people to want more for themselves; I wasn’t delusional and expected people to move on. If someone wanted to be a career cook, that was cool with me, too. I’d teach them what I knew, give them more responsibility, and they could stay as long as they liked. We’ve hired, fired, and reconciled, but over two years, we’ve tried our best to make the Haus a fun place to work.
That was another thing the neighborhood seemed to like. Late one night in the summer of 2010, Tyler, Jesse, myself, and some shawties from South Street Seaport stumbled into Baohaus around 10 P.M. on a Thursday. Usually, we waited till midnight to blaze, but we were so twisted, we posted up on the right side and just lit up. I remember this c
ouple eating baos across from us who couldn’t fucking believe it, but once we passed, they were down, too.
People started rolling up and it ended up two or three blunts being passed around. Downtown, a lot of people are up on papers, but Tyler and I being from the field, we really fucked with Phillies, shit got stank. As customers started walking in, we just told them, “We blazing so you can either get down or get it to go.” Within minutes, the restaurant filled up and we had to lock the door. Mad people were out partying ’cause it was the summer and everyone tried to get in ’cause we had a glass storefront all hot-boxed. People took photos and by then it was a done deal. Baohaus was unlike any restaurant anyone had ever seen. We came in the game like NWA busting through the “I Have a Dream” banner and never listened to the haters. We don’t wear chef coats, we wear Nikes, and Dipset is the anthem.
At the end of February, about two months after opening, we started getting reviews from every paper: The Village Voice, Serious Eats (what up, Joe DiStefano?), Time Out, etc. Shit was on and when New York magazine dropped their Best Cheap Eats issue, we won Best Bun 2010. In the battle for pork buns, Baohaus took it. The restaurant started getting really packed those days with lines fifteen or twenty deep on random Monday and Tuesday nights. Just when we thought things couldn’t get better, they did.
In the first two weeks we opened, this white guy named Ahrin had come into the restaurant. One of my favorite customers all-time, he proved my assumptions about ex-pats wrong and it made me happy. This dude spent a lifetime traveling all across China, loved the food, culture, but most important, he understood that the people themselves were cultural artifacts. The last hundred years were the worst in Chinese history and Ahrin had met a lot of people who still remembered the pain despite all the growth and change currently happening. He spoke good conversational Chinese and we talked for at least an hour about food in Beijing. A while after Ahrin got there, his wife joined with their newborn. I didn’t catch her name at the time, but they ordered everything on the menu. I sent them an order of Beijing Vinegar Peanuts on the house, but they insisted on paying. His wife was really nice, but ended up breastfeeding in the restaurant and didn’t talk as much. I figure by this point, Baohaus has seen it all from breastfeeding to hot-boxing to freebasing out of a Mountain Dew can. You want it we got it. I didn’t think anything of their visit beyond what it was: a nice family coming in for lunch and some milk.
A month later, we got a call. It was The New York Times. They were sending down a photographer because we were being featured in their $25 and Under column. We couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what Serious Eats, Time Out, or Eater was at the time, but I knew what the motherfucking New York Times was. I made sure to have my “T-Bone Steak Cheese Eggs and Welsh’s Grape” shirt cleaned, pressed, got a skin to one-and-a-half fade, and threw on my Jordan V Fire Reds. How many times you gonna be in the Times, right? If this was the first and last, I was goin’ out in J-Vs no doubt. All red everythang, just like Mao. The day the review came out, I realized it was Ahrin and his wife, Ligaya, all along! To this day, that $25 and Under review has been our biggest moment. You can go online and see the article now. Ning is chewing food, Steve is in a scully, and Simon has glasses on. The review came out February 22, eight days after Chinese New Year 2010. We shut the shop down early, drank some Moutai, and called my parents.
“Dad! We’re in The New York Times!”
“New York what?”
“The Times, Dad! It’s the biggest newspaper in the world.”
“It’s not the biggest!”
“Whatever, maybe it’s not the biggest, but it’s pretty big. Just get The New York Times tomorrow, Dad. It’s gonna be good.”
Evan and I woke up late for work on the twenty-third like a bunch of assholes. We rolled up to 137 and there was already a line outside. Luckily, I had made the braise the night before so once it got heated up, we were ready to go.‡ Usually we just had two people on each shift, but it was a shitshow. The line just kept getting longer and longer. We called everyone in: Asa, Simon, Kate, any of our friends who were unemployed. It was all hands. At one point the line wrapped around the block thirty-some people deep. From 11 A.M. to 3 P.M., we had the whole block full, and around 3:30 P.M. it finally died down. I was still making baos for the customers in the shop, Evan was organizing receipts, and Kate was mopping up by the fridge. It was the craziest shift any of us had ever worked. People had taken Town Cars from work to eat baos and head back to Midtown, Brooklyn, Chelsea, etc. I’ll never forget it. Kate leaned against the fridge. Blond hair flying everywhere, mop in hand, then turned to Evan and me. I had no idea what she had to say, but everything kinda stopped for a second.
“Guys! You realize what just happened?”
“What?”
She smiled at us with this funny look, nose wrinkled, freckles on front street, and said the nicest thing I’ve ever heard come out of a white woman’s mouth.
“You fucking made it!”
Kate was right. Five days from my twenty-eighth birthday, I made it my way.
I told my parents the story, but they just shook me off like they always did. Even on that day, nothing impressed them and it hurt. I started to feel like I’d never make them happy, but I let it go. I had done everything I could. I found myself. I rehabilitated myself. I took every bit of Taiwanese-Chinese culture I’d mustered in twenty-seven years, three hundred and sixty days, and threw it into four hundred square feet of Lower East Side basement. It wasn’t a palace, it wasn’t even a dim sum parlor, but it was the best I could do and it made me happy even if my parents didn’t get it. I realized that night that Cosby’s line about pleasing people didn’t just apply to strangers, but family, too. You only owe them so much and as Asian Americans we have to break away at some point. For a lot of our parents, the World is not enough, but sometimes the World Journal is …
About two months after the New York Times article came out, I got a call from my mom at around 11 P.M. on a Wednesday night.
“EDDDIIIIEEEE! It’s your mom!”
“Ha, ha, hey Mom! What’s up?”
“What’s up! Ha, ha, ha!!!”
“Mom, are you drunk?”
“I’m drunk!”
“What’s going on!?!?! When’d you start drinking?”
“Your father opened EVERY bottle of wine and champagne in the house tonight!”
“Why, what happened?”
Dead silence …
“What? You don’t know?”
“No, what happened? You won the lottery?”
“No, you dumb ass! You’re in the WORLD JOURNAL!”§
MY PARENTS WERE Fresh Off the Boat, I’m a chinkstronaut, and my kids will be on spaceships. I didn’t allow America to sell me in a box with presets and neither should you. Take the things from America that speak to you, that excite you, that inspire you, and be the Americans we all want to know; then cook it up and sell it back to them for $28.99. Cue Funk Flex to drop bombs on this. All my peoples from the boat, let ’em know: WEOUTCHEA.
* New York magazine 2010 Best Bun, New York Times flawless $25 and Under Review, and nine out of ten Asians with taste buds and an IQ over 80 like us better.
† Important distinction. Note that I say “a voice” not “the voice.” I don’t speak for all Asian Americans, I speak for a few rotten bananas like me.
‡ For the record, braises are best done the night before and eaten the next day.
§ The World Journal is the preeminent newspaper for overseas Chinese people. It is distributed all around the world in Chinese groceries or bookstores and it’s how most overseas Chinese people get their news. It’s a linchpin of our communities.
TO EMERY, WHO LIVED IT,
AND EVAN, WHO BUILT IT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth: I owe everything to my parents, Jessica and Louis Huang. They gave everything for me and my brothers. You can retire now, Dad, we done did it. Mom, stop sm
oking cigarettes, they cause cancer.
Lao Lao, Lao Ye, Nai Nai, Ye Ye, I still talk to you all the time. Thank you for protecting me and always reminding me to do the right thing even if it’s more difficult. I see you.
In chronological order, all the Chink’s men … and women, of course.
Emery, you were always my a a-like until you decided to stop wearing carpenter shants. Bring it back. This Jay Chou hair cut and tight shirt thing is not wuts really good. It’s also very suspect that you have friends who are Scientologists, ha ha ha. Can’t it be like back in the day? You know you want to hit Poseidon, eat Zuzu’s burritos, listen to Master P, and wear beef ’n’ brocs with shants to Chan’s. I still remember that day you wore them with shorts laced up to Dad’s big event at Chan’s just to bug him out.
But, even if you decide to be a Scientologist wearing Armani Exchange the rest of your life, I support you in everything you do. Best memory I have of us is still that day Mom told you not to let the other kids in the basement take your food, so you squeezed the banana so hard that it was all over your hands when she came to pick you up. I’ll always let you have the blue dinosaur, love you, brother.
Evan, I’m glad I still live with you, but let’s make a deal. I’ll stop peeing on the seat if you stop giving five stars to shitty movies on Netflix, because it keeps recommending that I watch Rio and Madagascar. Do you just search for movies with motherfucking George Lopez toucans and shit? Even though you like animated films with tropical animals, we can both agree that Angry Boys is the greatest shit America won’t let us watch. Don’t forget to always stay focused, finish strong, and expect everything that can go wrong to go wrong. Be prepared, don’t half step, you have to want it more than the next guy or he’ll eat your lunch, kid. It’s a jungle out there. Baohaus Spaceships coming 2013, let’s go!
