Chef Eddie Huang – the author, TV personality, and moviemaker who jump-started his culinary career with his Taiwanese bun shop BaoHaus – is officially back in his “til-I-die” NY neighborhood, leading the kitchen at the Flower Shop next month.
The news comes on the heels of Huang’s 2025 move back from LA and a summertime residency inside the Lower East Side pub (107 Eldridge Street, at Grand Street), where he served a comeback modern Chinese menu: a test run, of sorts, for a restaurant called Gazebo that Huang now hopes to open in New York next year.
“I was looking for spaces, and I have partners to do Gazebo, but we just weren’t seeing anything that we completely loved,” he says. “The thing with Flower Shop is the relationship wasn’t built off of a deck. I didn’t pitch them. We just liked working together.”
Flower Shop, led by Eldridge Hospitality co-founders Dylan Hales and Ronnie Flynn, will now offer a more expansive food menu with a big-name chef like Huang behind the wheel. The nearly decade-old neighborhood hangout for fashion, art, and music types previously served a straightforward lineup of maitake rigatoni, shrimp tacos, and pan-roasted cauliflower steak.
Coconut shrimp pays homage to chef Eddie Huang’s Floridian upbringing. The Flower Shop
Huang’s menu debuts Tuesday, November 11, with service from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. across the ground floor of the Flower Shop. Reservations will be available on Resy.
“I love bar food. I love bars. And this is a cool opportunity to do something that’s not straightforward Chinese food for once,” Huang tells Eater.
Huang grew up in Florida, going to ale houses like Flanigan’s, a family-run sports bar institution since 1959. A fried fish sandwich pays homage to his dad’s restaurant, Coco’s Floribbean Grill. “I worked there every day after school as a prep cook. This is really nice getting back to doing that kind of food,” he says.
There are also nods to Primanti’s from his time in Pittsburgh (a “yinz-style” mortadella sandwich), recipes learned from his Greek in-laws (New England steak tips), and inspirations from his former LES neighbors like Kossar’s (onion biały tuna melt).
“I’m just taking dishes that you would see on bar menus, but then cooking them the way I would. I got really inspired at home and was like, let me make this dish my own,” he says.
Take his spinach dip, for instance. In lieu of artichokes, he subs in pickled mustard greens and his proprietary chile oil.
“It’s a really eclectic mix of my favorite bar food from all across America,” he says.
Two years after its LES debut in 2009, BaoHaus relocated to the East Village into a storefront off Union Square, until 2020, when it closed during the early days of the pandemic (there was also briefly a BaoHaus Los Angeles, which is also now closed). In the past five years, Huang has not publicly put his name behind another New York restaurant, focusing on the entertainment world (adapting his memoir Fresh Off the Boat into a hit ABC comedy series, for one).
He moved back to NY from LA with his wife and toddler this year and says he feels right back at home.
“This was cool to get back to that ‘08-’09 BaoHaus energy I had where I just took money in a shoebox and opened the thing up,” he says.
He still has his sights set on a 2026 opening for his own place. Coined a “dance music-influenced” menu, Gazebo refers to the Beirut-born, well-traveled singer who rose to fame during the Italo-disco music craze of the 1980s. Dishes during his popular summer pop-up run included dan dan noodles dressed with cherrystone clams and pancetta.
“Opening a restaurant takes so long. I didn’t want to rush finding a location, but once I started cooking again, I was just like, I don’t want to stop,” he says. “It’s like kicking up a sport that you didn’t play for a few years, and I just don’t want to go cold. So I was like, ‘I’ll take the job.’”