Bourdain.

For example...

On Paula Deen

"The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations and she’s proud of the fact that her food is bad for you."

On Guy Fieri

"I look at Guy Fieri and I just think, '...I'm glad that's not me.'"

"If I had to be him for five hours, I'd hang myself in a shower stall."

"Anyone who's on TV, if you can’t have a sense of humor about yourself, it's going to be a very tough road. If you can't make fun of Burrell and Fieri, comedy's dead."

On Bobby Flay

"In service to this new, groin-level dynamic, even poor, loyal, Bobby Flay was banished from cooking anywhere near as well as he actually could—to face off with web-fingered yokels in head to head crab cake contests—to almost inevitably (and dubiously) lose...They're sending this poor guy all over the country, to trailer parks and meth labs."

On Sandra Lee

"Pure evil. This frightening Hell Spawn of Kathie Lee and Betty Crocker seems on a mission to kill her fans, one meal at a time. She Must Be Stopped. Her death-dealing can-opening ways will cut a swath of destruction through the world if not contained...The eye-searing 'Kwanzaa Cake' clip on YouTube, of Sandra Lee doing things with store-bought angel food cake, canned frosting, and corn nuts, instead of being simply the unintentionally hilarious viral video it should be, makes me mad for all humanity. I. Just. Can’t. Help. It."

On Bourdain's Brief Time at the Food Network

"I knew there was no light at the end of the tunnel the day we were joined by a new hire—the lawyer and the (it would soon be revealed) outgoing execs stood up and said, "Say hello to Brook Johnson … who we're all delighted to have join us from … (some other network)." Ms. Johnson was clearly not delighted to meet me or my partners. You could feel the air go out of the room the second she entered. It became instantly a place without hope or humor. There was a limp handshake as cabin pressure changed, a black hole of fun—all light, all possibility of joy was sucked into the vortex of this hunched and scowling apparition. The indifference bordering on naked hostility was palpable."

On The Food Network's Programming

"2007 was also the year that Food Network canceled 'Emeril Live,' and stopped ordering episodes of 'Molto Mario,' a calculated break with the idea of the celebrity chef as a seasoned professional and a move toward an entirely new definition: a personality with a sauté pan."

On Scripps' Purchase of the Travel Channel

"I'm definitely taking a wait-and-see [approach]. I'm not happy about sharing a hot tub with Guy Fieri, is what I'm saying."

"Given recent developments, I would say that anything could happen. I'm giving the whole enterprise some serious thought. I know that my crew and I are really into pushing this season as far as we can go creatively. We are doing an entire show in black and white, dubbed in Italian."

From Bourdain's 2010 memoir, Medium Raw:

""It's Sandra Lee's world. It's Rachael's world. Me? You? We're just living in it. If this wasn't clear to me then, after Aunt Sandy had turned me inside out, left me shaken and husked, a shell of a man—like the remains of a lobster dinner, it became absolutely clear just last week: When Scripps Howard, the parent company of Food Network, outbidding Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp, bought my network, the Travel Channel—for nearly a billion dollars.

I remember now, from a distance, my earlier, dumber self, watching Emeril, hawking toothpaste (and later, Rachael, endorsing Dunkin' Donuts and Ritz Crackers) and gaping, uncomprehending at the screen, wondering, 'Why would anybody making the millions and millions of bucks these guys are making endorse some crap for a few million more? I mean … surely there's some embarrassment to putting your face next to Dunkin' Donuts—what with so many kids watching your shows—and Type 2 diabetes exploding like it is … Surely there's a line for these people, right?'"

It is safe to say this may have been in the works from quite some time. Like, since the day Scripps purchased Bourdain's network. He may have found more liberal masters in CNN (the same network that decided to make a disgraced governor a television host and that made an attempt at syndicating VICE video clips two years ago). Here's hoping they show him and his crew that kind of liberal approach to television.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Mr. Bourdain, who recently signed famed Olive Garden reviewer Marilyn Hagerty to his publishing imprint, expressed dismay at not being able to sign Eddie Huang to his own imprint for our piece. While there's only so much wordage room in one profile, given the wealth of quotables we received from Bourdain, some things are just too good for the cutting room floor. The interview, in full:

How did you initially become acquainted with Eddie?
I was reading about him for a while. I started following his amazing blog, became a fan as well of his after-action reports on The Next Iron Chef, which were hilarious. And then it wasn’t long before we realized we had mutual friends. But honestly, it was his writing that—long before I met him, which was actually on my show, when I ate at BaoHaus for the first time—I was really a fan of his writing, and his merciless wit. I’m heartbroken that I didn’t have my imprint up-and-running in time to publish him.

And what was it you found so compelling about his writing?
Some of the stuff he’s written about Asian identity, and his mom, and growing up Asian-American, I thought was really powerful. Here’s a guy with a voice saying things that to a great extent haven’t been said before. That made a powerful impression on me early. And then, I just love that: Here’s a guy on his way to getting a show on Cooking Channel, and [laughs] he’s out there just mercilessly beating up on their stable of stars. He had a shamefully rough time [at the South Beach Food & Wine Festival] in Miami....

We actually heard something like that as we—...
...If you’re walking around with bleached hair, dressed up like a rodeo clown, you should have a fuckin’ sense of humor about yourself. You know, I don’t get it. Anyone who’s on TV, if you can’t have a sense of humor about yourself, it’s going to be a very tough road. If you can’t make fun of Burrell and Fieri, comedy’s dead.

As Eddie told it, when they were in Miami, Anne Burrell elbowed him in the back.
What? Wait, really?

[Ed. From an earlier interview with Eddie: "I went to South Beach Food and Wine [Festival] and I’m there waiting for a hamburger at the 212 House and Anne Burrell comes up behind me, elbows me in the back. I turn around, just looking, and she goes, ‘Oh, excuse me, I’m sorry. Did I just do that?’ and I told her—exact words—I said, ‘Anne, you need to let this go, ‘cause it’s only going to get worse for you.’" When asked for comment on this story, a representative for Burell noted: "Anne is unavailable for comment at this time."]

So the story goes. They were waiting in line for burgers...
I like Anne. That’s just no way to go, though. Eddie’s smart, he’s funny, he’s fast, and that’s not an enemy you want to have.

What do you make of Eddie Huang, chef, or Eddie Huang, restauranteur?
I don’t know Eddie the cook, and I don’t really know Eddie the restaurateur. It seems to me a smart operation with tasty little pork buns. Great. I definitely recognize in his criticism of Next Iron Chef, as hilarious as it was, it was pretty goddamn astute!

Fundamentally sound?
It was fundamentally sound, though scabrously, insultingly, witheringly funny. The guy obviously spends a lot of time immersed in pop culture, but honestly, I think those are deep waters. I see a guy who’s probably had a lot of pain in his life, and there’s a pain and discomfort in what he writes about. I don’t even know how to address it!

Here’s a guy less and less unusual these days in the respect that he’s clearly not done what his parents wanted him to do, who’s broken the pattern of what’s expected of him, and with that there’s come some guilt there, some discomfort there, there’s a lot of anger there, and as so often happens, a very funny guy there. A very very sharp, funny guy there with a lot to say. Important stuff to say. And a guy with a vocabulary like that, who’s that fast, and that funny, that’s a dangerous entity to have. Especially in a target-rich environment like the Cooking Channel [laughs].

So what are his odds of success at a place like that?
My experience, having toiled in the same fields, is that you have to establish up front what you are and are not willing to do. When I was at Food Network, it helped me a lot that I’d written this obnoxious book, and my feelings about the network were already a matter of public record, so I don’t think anyone expected me to morph into another creature, and I made it very clear—very quickly—that...that just wasn’t going to happen. I think he’s in a position to do that same thing, in a sense.

But would they steamroll him creatively before he could do that? Or force him to acquiesce to their brand first and foremost?
Networks have been looking for someone like him forever, they just tend to get scared when they actually find someone. You know: 'We want someone proactive, and who appeals to a younger demographic, and somehow hip, someone edgy!' And when they get someone like that, it scares the shit out of them, and they think: Gee, not that edgy. But if he rates, he’ll be able to do whatever the hell he wants. As long as he’s getting ratings, they’re going to have to eat it.

What do you think Eddie represents to the industrial-food-celebrity complex? Or the food world at large?
I think he’s bigger than food. I’m looking at the guy as a writer, and an interesting guy with a story to tell, and who’s telling it in an interesting voice. I see him as someone with something to say. Whether he’s using food or not to say it, it’s not about his cooking.

He actually said something to that extent: He used food as a way to get into a position where he could speak freely and be taken seriously, as an Asian-American man.
I’m surprised that—I find it really interesting that he’d say that. He clearly has some really interesting and often uncomfortable things that he wants to say, and I’m really interested in hearing them.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Eddie Huang, the gleefully iconoclastic chef-cum-troublemaker, was in a back room at the Ace Hotel, remembering high school. He'd just finished serving as the host of a Jeremy Lin viewing party for a crowd of the chef's friends and "three random girls from Twitter." The wax-paper wrapped bao—the signature Asian bun sandwiches that have been drawing crowds to his restaurant, Baohaus, since December 2009—were long since emptied of their pork-packed glories. The Knicks had fallen to the New Jersey Nets. And Mr. Huang was in a reflective mood. 

Earlier that day, he had published a post on his blog, Fresh Off the Boat. The post examined the spectacle of an Asian-American like Mr. Lin exploding as a pop-culture force. It was a cutting, personal indictment of stereotypes and racism. By that evening, it had racked up over 32,000 unique views.

"It was mainly Asian kids that really hated on me," he remembered. "They thought that there was one face to being Asian, and I was different."

Mr. Huang was wearing a hybrid of high fashion and streetwear. The look was finished with large glasses not unlike the kind made popular by Kim Jong-Il, giving him the appearance of the lost Beastie Boy who'd finally taken Pyongyang.

If Mr. Huang has made a splash with his reinventions of quick-serve, high-end Asian eats, he is perhaps better known for his outspokenness. In a way, he admitted, cooking has always been more of a means than an end for him. "I went into the food world because I realized that no other place in America would let me break through and speak the way I speak. They will listen to us"—he pointed to himself, meaning, Asian-Americans—"because they want Combo Number Five. You know what I mean? We're cute. We're Hello Kitty-like."

Mr. Huang noted that Asian stereotypes were a double-edged sword. "At the end of the day, people would rather put me in a conference room"—sitting in on a business meeting—"than one of the dudes who works for me from LeFrak City, just because of the way I look and the way I smile," he said. "I recognize that it's an advantage. But it's also a disadvantage."

He laughed, adding, "No matter what I do, people will be like, 'He's cute. That dude is like Keroppi.'"

Of course, Sanrio's cross-eyed amphibian is internationally famous, and Mr. Huang is still just a local celebrity. But that might all be about to change. On the horizon for Mr. Huang—who before opening his own restaurant had stints as a streetwear retailer, a journalist, a weed dealer, a stand-up comic and an attorney—is a memoir and a television show.

"There's a lot of good things in place," Mr. Huang told The Observer. "The show, the book—those things are gonna happen. It's just like: Don't fuck it up Eddie. Do not. Fuck. This. Up."

IN MARCH, while negotiations were underway with the Cooking Channel—the Food Network's younger spin-off—over the fate of Mr. Huang's first national TV show, he took to Twitter to verbally fricassee one of the company's top celebrities, Anne Burrell.

After the frosty-haired host of Worst Cooks in America, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef and The Next Iron Chef derided him to another chef, Mr. Huang fired back: "you host WORST COOKS IN AMERICA, dress like Guy Fieri, and snitch to networks when you're not happy. i tell it like it is." And yes, Mr. Fieri is also a major Food Network star.

Mr. Huang admitted that network executives were not especially appreciative of his particular preparation of beef.

"They were pissed," he said.

As a negotiating tactic, trashing your would-be colleagues seems counterintuitive, but Mr. Huang can't seem to help himself. "I just love that," laughed his friend and mentor Anthony Bourdain. "Here's a guy on his way to getting a show on the Cooking Channel, and he's out there just mercilessly beating up on their stable of stars," he chuckled. "A guy with a vocabulary like that, who's that fast, and that funny? That's a dangerous entity to have. Especially in a target-rich environment like the Cooking Channel."

Mr. Bourdain, the bad boy former chef, author of Kitchen Confidential and Travel Channel regular, recently started his own literary imprint at Harper Collins. "I'm heartbroken that I didn't have my imprint up and running in time to publish him," he noted of Eddie's forthcoming book with Random House, which (Mr. Huang explained with unrestrained glee) is being edited by Chris Jackson, who also edited Jay-Z's memoir Decoded.

He was effusive in praise for Mr. Huang when explaining his appeal: "Here's someone less and less unusual these days in the respect that he’s clearly not done what his parents wanted him to do, who's broken the pattern of what's expected of him, and with that there’s come some guilt there, some discomfort there."

"There’s a lot of anger there, and as so often happens, a very very sharp, funny guy there with a lot to say." Mr. Bourdain finished: "Important stuff to say."

A few weeks later—just days after his 30th birthday (the party, at Southside, featured a "dream" performance by Prodigy, of the seminal rap group Mobb Deep)—Mr. Huang explained his Cooking Channel dilemma over a late lunch in Fort Greene.

He talked about weighing two alternative routes to video stardom: his planned basic cable show versus a project to be produced and distributed independently online. Despite the recent publication of a press release by the channel's parent company heralding Mr. Huang's arrival, his contract had not actually been signed yet. By him.

Mr. Huang declined to discuss the nuances of the deal, but it seemed clear that joining an established network would mean sheathing his paring knife, learning to be a team player, going along to get along.

"They told me straight up: 'Look, you can't make fun of anyone on this network anymore,'" he recalled. "'They're all family. You're part of the family now.'" At this, he threw his hands up. "I was like, 'I didn't choose to be part of this family.' Like, 'You're buying a show, I'm fulfilling my services on the show.'"

Or as Mr. Bourdain put it, "If you can't make fun of Anne Burrell and Guy Fieri, comedy's dead."

"Networks are always looking for something "edgy," he added, but when they actually get it, "it scares the shit out of them, and they think: Gee, not that edgy."

THE ELDEST of three brothers, Mr. Huang grew up in Orlando, Fla. His mother was just out of high school when she met his father, now a restaurateur whom Mr. Huang said had been affiliated with a Taiwanese street gang. "He ran shit," Mr. Huang said.

Eventually, the elder Mr. Huang settled with his brother in Washington, D.C., where he met Eddie's mother, who became pregnant with Eddie—the first of the three Huang boys—in college. The family then relocated to Orlando, where they ended up launching a steakhouse called Cattleman's, and the Black Olive, a Mediterranean restaurant—where Eddie and his two brothers were exposed to the business at an early age.

Still, the Huangs pushed their sons toward academics. "They wanted us to be straight-laced and overachieving," remembered Mr. Huang's 24-year-old brother, Evan, who in addition to living with Eddie in StuyTown, is a co-owner of Baohaus.

While Mr. Huang was a decent student ("B average-ish") he had a tendency to get into trouble. In high school, someone broke his middle brother Emery's nose, so Eddie earned his first assault charge for fighting. The second came when he was a film and English major at Orlando's Rollins College. He was then making extra money by selling weed, and he got into a fight with some fraternity types. The two offenses earned him felony probation.

Forced to clean up his act, Mr. Huang threw himself into his schoolwork, winning departmental awards in African-American and feminist studies, and trying his hand at sports journalism, penning an article on the Malice at the Palace for the Orlando Sentinal.

After the piece ran, Mr. Huang said, an editor called him in to interview for a job as a basketball beat writer. "The first thing the guy said to me was: 'Oh, no one's gonna talk to you with that face.' Those exact words. Not, 'Hi, hello.' And he caught himself: 'No, not like that—your age.'"

"But I knew what he meant. I knew exactly what he meant."

In early 2005, Mr. Huang enrolled in law school at Cardozo in Manhattan. While there, he maintained a number of side-jobs: He printed his own tees and hawked them online. He became friendly with 50 Cent affiliate and G-Unit member DJ Whoo-Kid, and began promoting parties for him. He took freelance writing jobs with XXL, Rotowire, NBA.com, and Law.com. He also continued selling marijuana, though "not, like, serious weight," he noted.

In September 2008, Mr. Huang was hired as an associate at white-shoe law firm Chadbourne and Park. The economy tanked immediately thereafter. On March 10, 2009, on what Mr. Huang described as "one of the best days of my life," he was laid off. He tried his hand at stand-up comedy, hosting open mic nights, but soon sensed he wasn't gaining traction. What did seem to be winning him fans was the food he often brought along for club owners and fellow comics.

After answering a Craigslist post, he landed a spot on the Guy Fieri-hosted Ultimate Recipe Showdown. He lost the competition, but by the time he went home for the holidays in 2009, plans for Baohaus were well underway.

Mr. Huang's parents, already unhappy with their son's rudderless streak, offered no financial help with the restaurant. The relationship worsened when Eddie managed to get Evan—then a single semester away from graduating college in Orlando—to join him in his new endeavor. "'My parents hated Eddie for a while," Evan laughed. "They thought he was going to ruin my future."

But Baohaus was a hit. So much so that barely half a year later, Mr. Huang decided to open another restaurant on the Lower East Side, Xiao Ye, in July 2010. Whereas Baohaus was a tiny, counter-based quick-serve restaurant, Xiao Ye typified the middle-class family restaurants his parents had run. Without the family part.

Hip-hop blasted from the speakers. A sign painted above the kitchen door screamed: "DERICIOUS." The menu read like any TigerMom's worst nightmare: "Cheeto Fried Chicken," "General Poke-Her-Face Prawns," "Robster Rice" and "Poontang Pot Stickers" were signature dishes. Only three months after opening, the restaurant earned a New York Times review.

In it, Sam Sifton slammed Xiao Ye as an "artful misfire," calling the food "dishonest" and finishing things off with a goose-egg. The review also noted the potential the place had "if Mr. Huang spent even a third of the time cooking that he does writing funny blog posts."

Oftentimes, restaurant owners respond to a bad review by taking up arms in the press against the critic in question. Mr. Huang took a different tack: wholeheartedly agreeing with Mr. Sifton, and posting a hysterically withering email from his mother, encouraging him to keep his law license active so he could potentially go back to being a lawyer.

"YOU MUST GET BURNT BEFORE YOU WILL HEAR YOUR MOM," she wrote. "You have a lot of potential, but you must make good choice and stick to it with the best choice. With all the staff, and your korean friend, no one was able to point out or warn you the mistakes, or problems you have???????????????????"

"I didn't want to do shitty food on purpose," he explained. "I wanted to just wild out, and do really dumb shit in an artful way."

He added that part of the original vision was that "customers could come in every night and know that it was going to be fun." That part, he definitely managed. That summer, a caffeinated malt liquor drink called Four Loko began to gain popularity. Senator Charles Schumer launched a war on the beverage, and Mr. Huang saw an opening. He changed his Twitter handle to "General Loko" and instituted an all-you-can-drink Four Loko dinner. After the plan was deemed illicit, he tacked on $3 per can charge. According to his tweets the morning after, the dinner was a great success.

But that night, the State Liquor Authority raided Xiao Ye and destroyed all the Four Loko. Over the next few weeks, the restaurant was raided by the SLA on three separate occasions after citations for serving underage drinkers (in the form of undercover SLA agents). Under threat of losing his liquor license—which would have made selling the space more difficult—Mr. Huang and his partners shut Xiao Ye down.

Reflecting on the failure, Evan is philosophical. "Xiao Ye was definitely Eddie trying to prove something," he said. "And he didn't fully prove it, but he learned a lot."

IN JULY, a second Baohaus was opened on 14th Street. On a recent Friday night, a line snaked around the door as Ol' Dirty Bastard's "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" pumped through the restaurant.

Mr. Huang has collaborated on a few one-off Chinese New Year's dinners, one of which received a glowing review from Mr. Sifton. Plans to open other Baohaus locations are in the works. And the book deal—which Eddie considers the best thing he's ever done with his life—has been signed.

Though he eventually wants to open another sit-down restaurant, he noted, "I don't have a plan. I hope people don't get upset that cooking is just one thing that I'm into."

Just a few weeks after our lunch, Mr. Huang was sitting in the lobby of the Museum of Chinese in America, having delivered a speech on the topic of whether Asians are black or not. Later, sitting with The Observer in the lobby, he was still mulling over the contract from the Cooking Channel.

He wanted success, but at what price? After all, it was the unfiltered Eddie Huang—self-destructive fuck-up, unlikely feminist, reluctant chef, crack-up, class clown and social equality advocate—who got him so far in the first place. Would those ingredients work any other preparation but his own?

A few days later, he made it clear where he stood, while DJing music on an Internet radio station. "My next song is for Anne Burrell and Guy Fieri," he wrote, tweeting out the link to a YouTube page. Those who clicked through found a G-Unit video: "I Smell Pussy."

The contract has yet to be signed, and negotiations are still ongoing.

During our interview, Mr. Huang recalled the posters he put up in his room as a child: Basketball players like Allen Iverson and Charles Barkley.

"There were no posters I could buy of Asian people besides Bruce Lee. And—I mean, no one's ever going to put up a poster of me, but I hope that, to some kid"—he paused, looking up. "I get emails from Asian kids, and it means the world to me, that they're like: Yo man, you're doing your thing, you're saying what I want to say, and you make me feel like I can walk around with my head up.

"People have sent me emails like that," he grinned. "I won."

[Illustration by Drew Friedman. Photo by Steven Lau.]

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

*Editor's Note: In October 2012, Eddie Huang's show—Fresh Off The Boat—was announced by VICE Media. The planned show with the Cooking Channel and Scripps never materialized.

Lee participated in Cuomo's campaign and was seemingly planning to occupy into the Governor's Mansion, but a representative for Cuomo confirmed on Friday that Lee won't be moving to Albany or taking the official First Lady title.

Cuomo spokesperson Josh Vlasto told the Wall Street Journal that Lee will be remaining in the Mount Kisco residence she currently shares with Cuomo. Lee will not have any official duties or a staff.

"She has many talents that could be of service to the State of New York and any contribution of her time or participation would be Sandra's pleasure and not at public expense … Sandra would never expect any taxpayer dollar to support the contributions she makes nor would she want to burden the state in anyway. She will be supportive and generous to the people of the state and she will accommodate them in every and any way she can," Vlasto said to the Journal.

After Cuomo's victory, many in the New York media apparently automatically assumed Lee would be New York's next first lady, but on Thursday, a spokesperson for the Governor-elect told The Observer that Lee's role had yet to be determined.

Lee, 44, is a Los Angeles native who got her start hosting infomercials. According to Page Six Magazine, she met Cuomo at a party in Bridgehampton in the summer of 2006. They didn't confirm their relationship to the press until two years later. 

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the governor-elect declined to comment to The Observer saying speculation about the plans for Lee at this early point in Cuomo's transition would be premature. 

Lee seems ready to move into the governor's mansion. She participated in Cuomo's campaign and stood beside him when he declared his candidacy in May and when he made his Election Night victory speech. Lee talked about her plans for Albany in a 2009 interview with talk show host Wendy Williams.

"And do you know what I'm going to bring when I go to the governor's mansion? Great garnishes!" Lee said. 

Lee hosts two Food Network shows that focus on blending ready-made and fresh ingredients: Semi-Homemade Cooking With Sandra Lee and Sandra's Money Saving Meals. Semi-Homemade Cooking With Sandra Lee has been on the air since 2003 and is currently in its fourteenth season. A new season of Semi-Homemade Cooking is scheduled to debut in March 2011. Lee's cooking shows film in Manhattan and Connecticut. A spokesperson for Lee told The Observer, "currently, there are no plans to shoot any of Sandra's shows in Albany." In addition to her television work, Lee also publishes a magazine, Sandra Lee Homemade, and has written twenty cookbooks.

Her rise to chef stardom hasn't come without a few PR pitfalls. Internet users regularly post videos of Lee's more awkward on-air moments and a clip of Lee making a cringeworthy "Kwanzaa Cake" reached full-on meme status with commemorative t-shirts and posters. Lee's regular television appearances could leave the New York tabloids with plenty of fodder if she has a similarly clumsy gaffe in the next four years.

Lee's high profile could be a political minefield, but her fame could also be an asset to Cuomo. A lavish Catskills wedding to the star chef would be a great distraction if his approval rating ever takes a serious dive. 

Earlier: Sandra Lee's New Tablescaping Turf [SLIDESHOW]