The Islands Day

There are certain NY days that hit so hard you have to run them back.

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 2016, he published his second book, Double Cup Love: On the Trail of Family, Food, and Broken Hearts in China. In 2024, he directed, produced and starred in the documentary Vice is Broke.

The first time I dined at The Islands, it was re-up day.

From 2007 to 2009, my sour diesel plug lived in Crown Heights near Franklin. I’d walk over from Ft. Greene with a JanSport bag, fill it up, eat at The Islands on the 800 block of Washington Ave, and walk back to South Oxford Street.

The Islands became my de facto work lunch spot.

Around that time I got put onto The Brooklyn Museum First Saturdays parties as well and hit The Islands before, but did such terrible things in the museum bathroom that I had to adjust my gameplay for the second one.

From 2012 to 2015, I wasn’t in Crown Heights as much until I met Leon Michels who lived on Washington Ave so when I linked up with him or went to the crib, I hit The Islands.

Then around 2018, The Islands moved to the 600 block of Washington Ave, Leon started living upstate, and I was in LA.

I missed The Islands but kept tabs through Pete Wells’ NYT review and was happy that it got a star, people were paying attention, and all was alive and well.

In 2022, on one of my first trips back to NY after the pandemic, I went to the museum with my wife, Natashia, and went to the 800 block of Washington Ave looking for The Islands after. Both of us bugged out thinking The Islands had closed forgetting it moved and panicked until the internet reminded us that it was simply 3 blocks up.

The dining room was quiet when we arrived, but the food was even better. It’s incredible what the correct amount of space can do for a competent chef. The oxtails were perfectly cooked, fork tender yet not falling apart and still bounced back where you wanted it to. The seasoning was perfect with a mild heat that’s there, but not too loud letting the oxtail and browning talk.

I’m sure every thing is good and I’ve tried the jerk chicken when someone else orders it, but when I go to The Islands I get oxtail then do everything I can to convince my dining companion to cop the curry goat because that’s The Islands Day to me.

The oxtail is the bass anchoring the meal, the curry goat provides the keys, and the ginger juice operates like the brass setting it all off.

From 2022 to 2025, life was hectic and I hadn’t been back to The Islands until last month when we decided to take our son, Senna, to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

We did the oxtail and curry goat per usual, but when you do things with your child, you ask different questions and resurrect old knowledge that somehow sling shots you to new revelations. When I looked at Senna passed out in his stroller it hit me how powerful a restaurant could be.

Over the course of 18 years, I’ve lived many lives but I had consciously pursued patterns in life and repeated certain actions so that my life could intersect with this restaurant. It wasn’t just that the food was best in category, but also because it’s a throw back carryout restaurant with a dining room that rarely exists in Manhattan anymore.

The Islands began as a neighborhood carryout business. Very few people sat down in the original choosing instead to order to-go and eat in their cribs. If you chose to eat there, you’d say hi to the regulars in the neighborhood you knew, but it was touch and go. You were in a phone booth.

On the 600 block there’s a spacious dining room, but still very few people in it. Usually it’s the people, like my family, from outside Crown Heights sitting down to eat alone because we don’t have a crib in the neighborhood.

This is the joy of dining in the outer boroughs; people don’t need to take up space in the restaurant. They’re utilizing restaurants differently than people in Manhattan squeezed for space trying to do business, catch a vibe, or raise the birth rate.

I was in THISBOWL (which is phenomenal) on Bleecker the other day when a fool rocking a Mets hat with over-ear headphones read a book while the woman at the adjacent table listened to a podcast after finishing her salad. This is all fine and well in Tompkins Park or at a deserted cafe, but there were over 15 people patiently waiting for a place to eat their food as these two completely disregarded it.

Everyone at THISBOWL needs a place to sit because no one can afford to have a crib on Bleecker, but Manhattan has been expensive forever. These days the issue isn’t real estate, it’s Main Character Syndrome and the way people are acting in public spaces.

There are people doing Zooms at full volume in cafes. It is now, I guess, common place to FaceTime people while at dinner. For three weeks in May, there were 6 employees from a luxury events company contracted by the Tribeca Film Festival that bogarted the communal table in our building’s common area executing their event until the manager told them that the common area was for residents not a company’s entire staff.

While I pursued patterns and repeated certain actions to interact with The Islands, I never bent it to my lifestyle or will. I didn’t break out my digi-scale to buss shit down in the dining room. The old heads who play backgammon or dominoes around the city pull up to spots like the park across from Ben’s Pizza in Soho or the Russian Turkish Baths where there isn’t a line for a table. There’s a level of courtesy in their thoughts and actions knowing where it is and isn’t appropriate to drop a backgammon set.

I will carve out an exception for loitering or taking 30 minutes to drink one beverage because that falls within the intended use of the restaurant. But loitering on a Zoom or conference call, listening to a podcast during lunch rush at THISBOWL, or pulling up to a restaurant with a laptop after 5 p.m. is fucking crazy.

The advent of communal workspaces has completely rotted people’s brains and confused how spaces should be used. People treat cafes and restaurants like they are WeWorks or Soho Houses, but they’re not. When you lease a space to do business in the city, you fill out a Certificate of Occupancy and declare your intended use. You will say residential or commercial, perhaps bar or eatery, maybe cabaret. You don’t say bar, workspace, eatery, podcast studio, Zoom background, conference room, yoga studio, valet.

It’s fucking crazy to use spaces like that.

What we are witnessing in a lot of Manhattan are selfish individuals who think that spaces and places should bend to their needs and lifestyles.

Even if you insist on being a Main Character, you should acknowledge that there are landmarks and locations in the game with certain intended uses that cannot be adapted solely for your use and enjoyment. A shop in World of Warcraft is a shop and while vendors at inns and taverns may sell some of the same items as the shops, they are not shops. They are inns and taverns.

People complain a lot about the cultural desert we’ve been living in for a few years. There seems to be a dearth of bars, clubs, neighborhood restaurants, places to dance, an apartment to rent, etc. But do we deserve nice things? Because I would argue that there are great restaurants and places to drink and places to backgammon, but they’ve been smeared by the excrement of Main Character Syndrome.

You want to act like a dickhead with your feet up on a table doing conference calls for the series xyz raise while eating pigs in a blanket drinking a nitro cold brew, COOL BRO, go get a membership at a private club for dip shits.

How can we enjoy anything even as simple as THISBOWL with the Mets Guy and Podcast Girl anchoring themselves to the center of it forcing everyone else to adjust and adapt around them.

I love The Islands Day because the food is phenomenal, but also because it is a respite from observing main characters in a game going to shit. The Islands represents what I loved about Brooklyn when it was dangerous. People could get snuffed, they would get run down, my friends at Pratt were constantly getting robbed so they acted right. It was unsafe to be a narcissist rejecting hood rules.

If people were out of pocket in a restaurant or cafe, someone would say something and it would get handled. I think that’s why I enjoy going to Time Again because there is a proprietor like Despot who will handle someone who’s out of pocket.

It’s not that complicated to understand how to use a cafe or restaurant, but I think every one’s confidence and self worth is a touch delusional at the moment. In a world where we still have to convince people to leash their dogs, it feels like people will continue Zooming in cafes because it’s not worth arguing over.

We’ll just suffer it.

Quietly.

At least I have The Islands Day.