Fresh Off the Boat

Eddie Huang

(Spiegel & Grau, 288 pp., $26)

Eddie Huang’s entertaining memoir, Fresh Off the Boat, contains what will probably turn out to be the top backhanded compliment of 2013. It comes near the end of the book, when the BaoHaus chef appears on the Food Network’s Ultimate Recipe Showdown. He’s a little sauced, and he’s already run out of the taping to use the john, to the horror of the show’s producers. He loses the competition, but chef Guy Fieri, the anti-Huang, tells him to keep cooking.

Mr. Huang writes, “Despite the fact that Tony Bourdain and I both think Guy Fieri looks like a rodeo clown, I have to say, he played a part in encouraging me to do this. I can’t cosign Tex-Mex sushi or wearing your sunglasses backward, but one time ... he got it right. So, as I say this with a trashcan under my head in case vomit involuntarily spews out of my eyes, ‘Thank you, Guy Fieri.’”

The book traces Mr. Huang’s rise from the child of an “off the boat” Taiwanese family to a successful chef whose pork belly is coveted by foodies. But it’s worth reading for the “Ten Beef Noodle Soup Commandments” alone. —Michael H. Miller

My Brother’s Book

Maurice Sendak

(Harper Collins, 32 pp., $18.95)

When Jack Sendak died in the winter of 1995 from a brief seasonal illness, he became the subject of what was to be his brother’s final work. Maurice Sendak’s My Brother’s Book is an honest depiction of the author’s desire to be reunited with his “snowghost,” the brother who encouraged him to start drawing in the first place.

The story is set in cold Bohemia, the first of several references to A Winter’s Tale, on the fifth anniversary of the event that “heaved the iron earth in two.” Guy, the protagonist, is longing to see his brother Jack. Mr. Sendak, who died last year, then drops Guy into the arms of a Great White Bear that threatens to hug him out of breath, characteristically expressing the author’s feeling of love as an affliction that is out of his control. Finally, through the suggestion of a riddle—“a sad riddle is best for me”—Guy is flung in the direction of his brother again.

Mr. Sendak’s book draws heavily on autobiography. He references the month Jack died, (“In February it will be/My snowghost’s anniversary) and the cause of his death (“A boy in winter fell deep in ice”). But he also remains wonderfully visionary. The book and its William Blake-esque illustrations serve as a fine epitaph. It is a sharp, sad, personal account of life after death. —Henry Krempels

A page of Our Show.

"I guess that's kind of my shtick in general is like punk rock gentleman. You can sound-bite that." The Observer was chatting with talk show host, entrepreneur, and editor Elliot Aronow, who had just released the second issue of his zine, Our Show with Elliot Aronow, and was celebrating with a party in the Yard at the Soho Grand. DJs Cosmo Baker and Prince Language were spinning classic funk and hip hop. The Observer spotted MTV's Sway, Princeton "punkademic" Samuel Goldman and about half of Das Racist's Greedhead labelmates.

Our Show takes its name from the variety show Mr. Aronow used to host at Santos Party House with guests like James Murphy and Andrew W.K., what he calls "my weird pothead version of Glenn O'Brien's TV Party meets Charlie Rose." For the zine, "My idea for it was to make it a punk GQ, take all the stuff that was supposed to be kind of bourgeois and bring it down from the mountain and say, 'Ayo, you can do this.'" Both issues contain fashion advice from Brooklyn Tailors, whose Danny Lewis was at the party and told The Observer, "It's like Elliot's whole world. He spreads the word. You'll probably see some of our stuff floating around." Indeed, Mr. Aronow was sporting bespoke pants from the Williamsburg haberdasher, plus a green-on-white paisley Thom Browne for Brooks Brothers jacket and a white t-shirt from Uniqlo, "'cause I don't care," he said.

Mr. Aronow got his punk cred on tour with grind-glam quartet the Locust, "experimenting with drugs and selling merch when I got around to it." He later developed Gnarls Barkley's marketing plan with Downtown Records (whose chairman Josh Deutsch interrupted our interview to say goodbye: "I gotta go deliver this bag of booze to my college freshman son. How do you like that? It's like, that's parenting right there"). Mr. Aronow started the music downloading site RCRD LBL, taking with him Downtown intern Julian Kahlon, who designs Our Show along with Vogue's Kori Dyer.

The current issue features fiction from Twin Shadow's George Lewis, Jr., a discussion of the greatest mosh parts and an interview about French literature with Chromeo's David Macklovitch, who told The Observer about his in-progress Columbia dissertation on "the pleasure of reading in 18th-century French literature." There's also a nude centerfold and a page called "AYO! Google This" (sample search terms: "dub housing," "escoffier," "edward st. aubyn"). In the next issue, Mr. Aronow plans to do "a shirt story, 'cause a lot of guys hit me up with questions like, 'Spread collar, button-down collar, oxford, gingham? What does it all mean?'" Maybe also some good literature: Mr. Aronow just finished reading a book of Gore Vidal essays.

But he's most excited about what he calls "Jacques," the "men's lifestyle movement that I've started with a few friends of mine." Indeed, in his Twitter feed, he has hashtagged almost every missive with the neologism.

The movement is "kinda small right now, maybe like forty-five people in New York and in L.A. that know about it, but it's gonna become a book soon," Mr. Aranow said. "It's a punk rock gentleman's guide to life and how to live it. The book is gonna be kind of like a reverse-engineered self-help book, so we start with clothes and then work inwards. 'Jacques' is definitely a movement—you can put that in your article."

On the way out, BaoHaus chef (and columnist for The Observer)  Eddie Huang confirmed that Mr. Aronow is "all about this new 'Jacques' movement. He got the 'Jacques' boys going on, it's funny. I follow everything Elz does. I rep it, you know, he's a cool cat."

Back in June, the New York Observer published a piece by Manhattan restaurateur, blogger and soon-to-be-book-author Eddie Huang about Red Rooster chef Marcus Samuelsson, tied to the release of Samuelsson's memoir, Yes, Chef. In it, Huang took a look at the cultural and culinary implications of Red Rooster, one of Harlem's most critically hyped (and priciest) dining destinations.

Samuelsson did not take kindly to the piece then. And over a month and a half later, he's still talking about it.

In an interview with the Washington Post's Tim Carman, Samuelsson responded with vigor to a question about Huang's piece. Emphasis ours:

TC: This seems like an appropriate time to mention Eddie Huang’s essay for the New York Observer, which essentially argued that your perceptions of Harlem were patronizing.

MS: That’s also giving it a lot of thought. The other quick answer is that maybe he wanted to punch up.

TC: Punch up?

MS: Are you kidding me? It’s a joke. You’re dealing with a guy who doesn’t want to enter a conversation. Even discussing it is a waste of time. I trust the New York Times. I trust The Washington Post. I trust the New York Herald. [1] I trust the Tribune. I trust the journalists that I’ve read and that have carefully thought about what to [say], and then render their judgment. I also trust my own work. I have zero interest to get into people who want to get famous. There’s two ways to get famous. There used to be one way: You worked really hard, and you were really good. That was the only way to get known. I still believe in that one. [2] So if I poured a beer on you and we put that on YouTube, maybe we’ll get 4 million hits. I have zero interest in that.

I can tell you my reality: I moved myself from Midtown 10 years ago. I looked at Harlem, at 22 percent unemployment [3]. I look at that block where [Red] Rooster is today, where there’s zero unemployment. I look at the 110 employees that I have, where 80 of them come from Harlem. I’m not here to defend garbage; I trust my work. It takes an incredible amount of effort, an incredible amount of skill to do that. To even answer garbage, why should I lower myself to that level? I, as a mentor, as a mentee, as an employee, as a chef, I have a responsibility, and it’s not to go bottom fishing and enter garbage. [4] It is to rise above and be the person that I set out to [be]. So I hold myself to that standard. Garbage will come.

Criticism is part of the creative man’s journey, and I appreciate it. [5] Garbage is not part [of it]. I see the game. The game is about punching up today. The game is about ‘Here’s somebody that does something great. Well, rather than applaud it, I can now punch up and be part of that conversation.’ [6] What’s fascinating today is that ... before, there was not an outlet for that garbage, and today, real platforms are actually writing about that. [7] That’s what’s fascinating to me; the real platforms are lowering their guard.

A few notes:

[1] The New York Herald hasn't been a newspaper since 1966.

[2] Eddie Huang's writing has certainly made him some type of name, but his cooking isn't bad either. It's been praised by the New York Times (twice), New York magazine, the Village Voice and plenty of others.

[3] In 2002, Harlem was actually at 11.4% unemployment, as opposed to the 22% unemployment rate Samuelsson cites. As far as "the block where Red Rooster is today" having "zero unemployment," we can't speak to the particulars of that block, but the 10027 zip code where Red Rooster is located has a current unemployment rate of 10.27%, which is more than twice the average New York rate of unemployment (4.32%).

[4] Maybe this is a matter of semantics, but if Samuelsson didn't want to "go bottom fishing," he wouldn't continue to discuss Huang's piece—as he does here, as he's done previously—more than Huang ever did.

[5] Eddie Huang's response to a bad review of his Lower East Side restaurant, Xiao Ye, was to admit that he had done something incorrectly. In response to open criticism of his piece about Samuelsson, Huang was receptive and open to conversation. Marcus Samuelsson's previous response to bad reviews and failure was to abandon ship.

[6] Samuelsson keeps referring to Huang's "punching up." Huang's memoir is going to be published by Random House in February 2013. Samuelsson's memoir was published by—of course—Random House as well. If anything, it'd seem at least in one regard (though maybe more) Huang is punching laterally. Also, Huang and Samuelsson both worked on The Great GoogaMooga together (as you can see above).

[7] Other "real platforms" that are "lowering their guard" by covering Huang that we haven't already mentioned: Time, Esquire, Salon and The Wall Street Journal, to name a few.

Huang has taken to Twitter to comment on the interview, not on Samuelsson's response, but on Washington Post interviewer Tim Carman's questions (and how Carman, in Huang's eyes, let Samuelsson off the hook by dismissing criticism as punching up). Huang has a point: Carman could have known with very little research that, if anything, Huang was (as we have just pointed out) punching laterally. Then again, it seems as if Carman may have had his mind made up about Samuelsson going into the piece.

Some choice descriptors of Marcus Samuelsson (from Carman, the interviewer):

• "You seem meticulous by nature ..."
• "You’ve been very successful ..."
• "In some ways, your journey has been a more difficult experience ..."

Of course, Eddie Huang wrote the piece for the Observer, and while not everyone at this paper will agree with what Huang had to say, most of us would argue his right to say it (on the sure footing of the aforementioned facts alone).

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

This morning, The Observer published a column by culinary bon vivant, chef, restaurant-owner, and writer Eddie Huang on the matter of Red Rooster, the Harlem fine-dining restaurant serving the nu-soul food of culinary darling Marcus Samuelsson, whose memoir Yes, Chef comes out this week. The reaction has been—to say the least—fiery.

Now, Marcus Samuelsson himself has weighed in.

In an interview with Paper magazine's website pegged to the book, the site got a question in about today's column—which was none too kind to Mr. Samuelsson's book (which earned a comparison to Rudyard Kipling) or restaurant (and what it means to the neighborhood)—in which Mr. Huang had a Harlem native, rapper-producer Shiest Bubz, accompany him to dinner.

Via PaperMag.com (emphasis ours):

How did you feel about Eddie Huang's piece in the Observer today, in which he basically calls you out as an outsider in Harlem?

I feel that the more you try to be positive, the more you try to make change, and the more people are going to have a point of view on it. It's not like he's a relevant person in this place, but we live in a diverse environment where people have every freedom to comment. I can live with the fact that we have created jobs and that we make people happy. I stand by our work every single day regardless of who has a comment.

We would dare argue: On the contrary, Mr. Samuelsson!*

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

[*Who, of course, would have to have some idea of Eddie's 'relevance,' having co-signed at least one of the same massive undertakings as he.]