The Restaurant Review Thing

I am not a critic. I just really like Eel Bar.

Eddie Huang is a Taiwanese-American multi-hyphenate who has made his cultural mark as an author, chef, restaurateur and director. A former attorney, he later turned to cooking and opened Baohaus, a Taiwanese bun shop in New York City. He is widely known for his memoir Fresh Off the Boat, which was adapted into a popular ABC sitcom in 2015. Huang also hosted the Viceland show Huang’s World, which explored cultural identities through the lens of food. In 2024, he directed, produced and starred in the documentary Vice is Broke.

When professional critics review restaurants, they tend to visit four to five times over the course of several weeks before writing a review. It’s considerate, but in my opinion superfluous.

If a restaurant is great, I’ll be back.

I understand the institution of criticism though.

When you criticize things professionally, you need umbrella insurance.

If you’re going to go out on a limb and tell people whether they should or should not dine at a restaurant, you should be sure of your opinion and the idea is that if you visit a restaurant four or five times you can be sure.

But what ultimately manifests is a very watered down, compromised, and sutured analysis of this restaurant that at first glance may or may not have been exciting or terrible.

No one cares if you didn’t like this restaurant after dining there 5 times in 3 weeks. That’s an insane lens to view the restaurant through especially when I’ll most likely just order a Manhattan, pick at small plates of local seafood, and comment on everyone’s footwear with my wife for 2 hours until the Nanny calls saying she has to go home.

It is significantly more interesting when criticism is terrifyingly correct or spectacularly wrong.

Unfortunately, most critics try to write from an anonymous perch conjuring an omniscient point of view, but it’s comical to think we would possibly view anyone as omniscient in an era where literally everything we ever believed in has turned out to be hot garbage.

In past eras, the critic or expert knew more than the individual reader, but because of comment sections, reposting, and the ability to fully sample and repurpose content in a TikTok video, the collective knowledge of the comment section + wikipedia & reddit will ultimately surpass that of the person writing over the lifespan of the article.

If they somehow don’t end up more knowledgable, they are at a minimum more powerful. What Jack Bruce jazz loops were to Smif ‘n Wesson, the op-ed is to the reel. That’s not to say half the comment section isn’t populated by people with no reading comprehension, but there are samurai like Jadakiss lurking that’ll take your essay about pound cake and step on it.

Culture has traveled from amphitheater to movie theater to television to second screen, but the rise of the comment section has essentially put us back into the Globe Theater with the groundlings.

I say that to say being a critic is a sucker job, but I did haphazardly dine at Eel Bar 4 times over 3 months between March 28th and June 14th.

They knew who I was and I said, “hello” because anything else would be uncivilized.

On my first visit, I got a table for 2 at 9 pm and met my favorite living author who I’d never met in person. This author had dined previously at Eel Bar and recommended it highly. We got the fried mussels, grilled bay scallops, stuffed Piquillo Peppers, and a pork dish that was incredible, but I forgot to take notes on because I was ENJOYING myself and lost track.

I ordered a juicy chilled forgettable red that went with everything and it was hands down the most exciting meal I’d had in New York since returning in February.

The element of the mussels and bay scallops that stood out was the light dusting of paprika or some other type of mild gently smoky but sweet chili powder that really liberated the natural essence of the shellfish. It was the effervescent amount of chili and the delicate way it played with the unctuous oily elements of the dish that really hit for me. It sounds simple, but it’s the simple turns of the dial and precise applications that make food exciting to me these days.

Deconstructing, reimagining, or plating food like Myles Turner’s legos just isn’t my kind of dining. People have cooked for 5,000 years so we should just acknowledge that whatever we have to offer here and now is bullshit contrasted against that incredible history. If we’re lucky enough to contribute anything, it is most likely a very, very tiny turn of the dial.

Eel Bar sat us next to the kitchen so I was able to watch the expediter call out every dish as the tickets came in. There were three other cooks with him that evening and whenever a dish was called out, the cooks would turn, make a few small movements and within minutes the dish would appear, the expediter would cross it off the ticket in black marker and yell towards the dining room, “HANDS!”

If you dine on a night this expediter is working, you will frequently see him standing there for substantial amounts of time with his arm in the air as he crosses tickets off with his other hand.

He’s kind of my hero.

I hate when the kitchen is ahead of the wait staff and what this man does with his hand in the air could be seen as condescending, but I see it as a silent protest and I feel the world needs more people like this expediter willing to stand for a belief. Even a belief as simple as hot food.

I like hot food.

I think food should be delivered hot.

Or cold food delivered at the precise intentionally cold temperature the kitchen fired it at.

I think it is uncouth for the wait staff to be behind the kitchen and deliver someone else’s work at the wrong temperature.

It reminds me of class projects when you did your job but because someone else has completely shit the bed, you go down with them.

That feels wrong.

Conversely, if you have a great wait staff that deserves better than what is coming out of their respective kitchen, well, I would protest that too.

I generally enjoy a good protest. It doesn’t take much for me.

I don’t know this expediter and did not introduce myself cause that’s weird. Over four visits, we made eye contact twice, but neither of us was corny enough to act on it so we immediately looked away.

I emailed Eel Bar in my capacity as a Substacker to find out this person’s name and they informed me that it is Chase Bray, who is also the sous-chef.

Watching this expediter and his kitchen literally made me want to cook the next day because there are very few things like cooking or blogging where you can pour your entire heart, energy, and lumbar region into something and immediately know it was fucking fire.

Sports are this way too. You score a basket, you hit a double, you catch a touchdown, you fire bay scallops.

My second visit to Eel Bar was an accident.

I told my wife I’d take her to a nice bar for cute drinks one Saturday evening around 8:45 pm, but typed in the wrong bar and ended up on Essex Street without a plan. She was obviously pissed clicking along in heels as we crossed Delancey going South and did every thing she could to resist heading home out of scorn.

Luckily I saw Broome Street in the distance and said I’d see if we could get two seats at Eel Bar. It was desperate times and the dining room was full, but they were able to seat us outside at a folding table.

We sat down and sipped our waters as a makeshift rap video made its way down Broome with several Eastern European-looking lil’ homies with face tats brushed past our table.

I caught the server’s eye and immediately threw out an order for fried mussels, grilled bay scallops, Piquillo Peppers, Bomba rice with rabbit, and calamari with onions before my wife could shatter a glass intended for orange wine over my head and stab me in the throat for ruining the one Saturday evening she had out this month.

Thankfully, every thing hit.

It hit so hard my wife ordered a second round of Piquillo Peppers and grilled bay scallops, when she randomly saw a friend crossing the street with some secret beef.

She immediately FaceTimed this friend and blew up her spot.

“Ummm, did you just cross Broome with a new man?”

“Yeaaaaaaah.”

We quickly finished our food, our wine, paid the bill, then met up her friend and the secret beef at Lolita Bar, which was a nice throwback.

For the uninitiated or out-of-town, google describes Lolita Bar incredibly as a “basic hipster bar”. I had three terrible Manhattans that really hit the spot watching the Lakers Timberwolves game in the corner of the bar as my 6 leg parlay blew up in my face.

The third time we visited Eel Bar was on a double date with other parents so we hit the 5:30 pm reservation. There was a time in my life - 4 years ago - when I woke up at 1:30 pm so the 5:30 pm dinner is exotic to me.

On this visit, there were significant changes to the menu. Usually in a review, the critic would compare and contrast the menus, but I really don’t think that’s the point. If you were dating someone, would you compare every outfit they wore from date-to-date? Would you love them more or less based on the cut of their jean?

I may perhaps enjoy a date with my wife more when she wears thigh high boots but I’m unwell.

“The bay scallops are gone.” Gasped said wife.

“Do you still love me?” Ok, I didn’t say that, but I wish I had because it would’ve been really funny right here.

We spent a few minutes telling our fabulous dining companions about these now deceased bay scallops and how good they were, then proceeded to order the fried mussels that were still there, the Piquillo Peppers, Bomba rice with Montauk red shrimp, Grass-fed burger with boquerones and roquefort, Rainbow trout and mushrooms pil pil, and finally a Half chicken with shell beans and tomato.

By this third visit I was up to my fucking ears in Eel Bar and I liked it. There were favorites like the grilled scallops and fried mussels, but every dish had a similar electricity running through it. There’s an excitement and urgency with every dish at Eel Bar and it really starts with the discipline and economy of movement in the kitchen. Like my first visit, I watched as tickets came in, hands got moving, and food got fired.

These guys don’t have to be this sharp, especially not at 5:30 pm with a half empty dining room, but they were. They play every dish like its the playoffs and that sense of intensity and purpose is really fucking exciting to see anywhere in 2025. A lot has been said about young people, work ethic, gen z, the fall of America, yada yada yada.

I think every generation has lazy people and every generation has insane people doing things with an intensity no one asked them to do it with like the expediter and cooks at Eel Bar.

I think these guys would be doing it anyway.

For free.

Or not.

But they seem to need this.

Like a writer needs to cut themselves open and bleed.

I went again last weekend and the fried black sea bass might’ve been the best thing I’ve had at Eel Bar to date. Again, extremely simple preparation allowing the fish to talk its shit like Guru on a Premiere track. Yes, I’m so ancient I just compared a tempura-ish fried black sea bass to Gang Starr.

Whatever.

Lemonade was a popular drink and it still is.

I’m not a critic.

I just really like Eel Bar.