Huang at the pass of the new Baohaus.
Photo: Alex Shibutani
Stick around long enough, and what’s old is new again. If you’d told me that I’d be hanging out on St. Marks Place in 2026, slurping up street food at an Eddie Huang restaurant, I’d hardly have believed it — that Boat had sailed. But here we are. Huang, whose original Baohaus helped inaugurate a cheap-and-cheerful Chinese-Taiwanese street-food trend way back in the early aughts, has in the intervening years written a best-selling memoir, seen his life story adapted for TV, directed a movie, and — in a much more predictable 2026 move — launched a podcast and a Substack. But the kitchen called him back. He’s lately been cooking at the Flower Shop on the Lower East Side, and late last week, Baohaus opened its doors again on St. Marks and First Avenue.
It’s grown up, and it hasn’t. Hip-hop is still played at rattling volume — I watched a white guy in a Penguins jersey rap along joyfully to Sheek Louch of the Lox — and Huang himself was still supervising the pass, in a bucket hat and Terry McLaurin jersey, pausing to dap up old friends. The Huang gang fuckboys of yore have become “streetwear uncs,” as one of Eddie’s pals and an opening-night visitor joked to me, but it’s nice to remember that you really can go home again.
The baos aren’t back, yet — they’ll return for lunch service, which should arrive in the coming weeks. But there’s plenty of zippy, improved takeout staples on the opening dinner menu, and the prices, if not 2009 cheap, are 2026 cheapish. (In another throwback move, no reservations are taken.) We waved the flag over half-finished portions 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 mostly all-German wine list. The largest dish on the menu is 40 bucks.
Variety is not the goal here. Much of the menu’s middle section is comprised of, essentially, stir-fries, modularized with either pork collar or “shredded steak,” and the flavor profiles don’t vary enormously — though our server was eager to point out that Huang alchemizes each sauce individually, the usual palate of soy, vinegar, and mirin predominates. (Huang is apparently leaning more heavily on agave nectar, in an iconoclastic touch — everything was a bit sweeter than I would’ve expected.) You could wish for a little more spice in most dishes, and maybe a little more variety, but it would seem churlish to insist upon it. I chased every rubbled bit of minced pork with diced black Chinese pickles around the plate with chopsticks. Likewise the strips of pork collar tossed with long flat “noodles” of cured tofu.
Were a few menu items — like sticky, deep-fried cauliflower florets in house-made sweet-and-sour “mambo sauce” or blistered, collapsed eggplant bathed in oyster sauce — a little college nosh? Sure. That’s kind of the point. In addition to lunch, Huang hopes to bring back late-night dining, and no accident that Baohaus 2 is in the heart of NYU country. That might be its highest calling. It felt like the perfect tribute that the lone pair of ladies brave enough to sit in the enclosed backyard space in 30-degree temperatures celebrated their meal by sparking a joint.
Dishes at Baohaus.
Photo: Alex Shibutani
