Photo-Illustration: Curbed; Photos: Daryn Deluca, Getty
In this series, “Looking to Settle,” Eddie Huang chronicles his search for a downtown restaurant space. In the previous installment, Huang wrote about his search for a restaurant operator for a West Village pocket listing.
About eight minutes after the Dapper Gentleman sat down at Gazebo, I asked Natashia to hand-deliver a plate of baos to his table.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“Kind of odd. I brought the baos you sent, and he said he didn’t order them.”
It was a bit strange but whatever. About 20 minutes after we sent the mains, I walked over to the table myself, hoping for the best since I really wanted to work with him.
“Wassup. How was dinner?”
“Great, great. This is my friend Amir.” He gestured to his dining companion.
“Nice to meet you, Amir. You enjoyed everything?”
“Yeah, it was great. Great.”
The conversation was dry. There was no volley. Just dead on impact.
“All right, then. Thank you for coming.”
“Let’s talk next week.”
“Sure. Sounds good.”
I walked away. Mentally, I might have been doing the same. By this point, I was exhausted by the whole back-and-forth. Either you want to do business with me or you don’t. I told myself that if the Dapper Gentleman did reach out, I would meet him, but if not, I would move on. Plus, I still had two more days of pop-up dinners staring me in the face. I didn’t have time to play footsie anymore.
The next morning, I hit a wall. My back hurt, my feet stank, and I was listening to Jimmy Buffett when I decided to walk out of the kitchen to get a coffee. Usually I go to Dunkin’ Donuts to get a Cereal N’ Milk Latte, but they’d been running out of the syrup. I had also seen a video that morning about people losing their feet to diabetes and thought maybe I’d just get an iced coffee with sugar-free hazelnut syrup and die of aspartame rather than live without a foot.
When I crossed Orchard, I saw a couple of dudes with matchas, sardonic dad hats, totes, wired headphones, and black sunglasses. I immediately recognized that, minus the matcha, this was my performative male tribe. I didn’t know these people, but we nodded to each other, and I peeped the coffee shop they had come from.
I walked over as if I’d already been several times because when you pull up to an IYKYK spot you absolutely should have known was in your Venn diagram, the key is to act like you’ve been pulling up. No one likes the person who starts anxiously sharing their unsolicited opinions about the chairs, the décor, or the graphic design, who’s snapping their fingers saying “yass” to everything, then sitting down to read page one of Infinite Jest. Just put in your wired headphones and act like you’ve been coming for years until someone talks to you.
“Eddie! What’s up, man?” I heard from behind me.
It was my buddy Daryn, a talented director I’d always identified more with L.A. He was wearing a Martin Scorsese hat in the end-crawl font from Casino that I quite liked because I’m also a nerd who communicates through likes and dislikes.
“My guy! What are you doing over here?” I asked.
“I’m helping Roman with a few things.”
“Oh, this is Roman’s spot?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah. Roman from Regina’s. You know him, right?”
“Oh yeah, I know of him but never properly met. What’s this?” I said, pointing to the name of the coffee shop, MxdIn, I couldn’t pronounce.
“Mixed-in, meaning mixed ingredients.”
“Word, word,” I said, copping to my ignorance.
“Bro, you should meet Roman. He’s doing a lot of things out here.”
“Nah, I seen it since Regina’s. I lived on the first floor across the street from Regina’s when he opened.”
“No way! You live in the neighborhood?”
“Nah, I’m just over at the Flower Shop now, doing the pop-up. You should come by sometime.”
“I heard about that! I’ll tell Roman, too.”
“Aite, bet. See you, bro.”
I got a fantastic iced latte with date syrup and whole milk, then walked back to the Flower Shop. The dinners that night were solid but uneventful, which I appreciated. It felt nice to have a smooth service without the HVAC dying or someone curving me.
The next afternoon, I went to MxdIn again instead of Dunkin’, and my foot thanked me. Daryn was there once again and so were random homies I knew from Miami as well as one of the partners at the Flower Shop. It was a family affair, and I couldn’t believe I’d been expending all my calories at Dunkin’ on Grand Street for two months when this place was here.
Just as I got in line, Roman popped out.
“Eddie, I want you to meet Roman,” said Daryn.
“My guy. Pleasure to meet you.”
“Same, same. Welcome, bro.”
I’d always had a lot of respect for Roman. I’d watched him open Regina’s on Orchard years ago and immediately clocked that he was about family and tradition as well. He didn’t do any corny chef stuff, just opened a neighborhood Italian deli named after his mother, filled it with family photos, and served very well liked sandwiches.
Truth be told, I was always jealous of Regina’s because David Laven, the showrunner of my Viceland travel show, Huang’s World, was always eating there and gassing it up. For years, I’d known Baohaus was David’s favorite sandwich shop, but then Regina’s kind of took our spot in his heart and mind. And David, being one of my all-time favorite humans who was unfortunately (or fortunately) also my boss, meant I had to immediately dislike Regina’s and never eat there.
I started asking Roman how he got into the business, and I discovered he was a former DJ like most of my friends and came up in the party scene. Then he asked what I was up to. Usually, I sidestep, get elusive, or mentally twirl because I don’t always like people knowing what I’m doing, but I immediately liked Roman. As Foreigner’s Waiting for a Girl Like You started pulsing through my mind, I imagined myself selling Chinese food on the Lower East Side with Roman, the wind at our backs and the sun shining on our faces. And most of this positive feeling was the direct result of Roman’s ability to do one thing most men cannot: make direct eye contact.
I don’t look at people’s résumés or LinkedIn or ask who they know. None of that tells me anything. If I’m actually considering doing business with someone, I remember what my father taught me.
When I was about 6 years old, I was hanging with my father, who was selling furniture at my grandpa’s store, Better Homes Furniture, and I sat in his chair.
“What are you doing in my chair?” he asked.
“I’m going to be a businessman.”
He had me get up.
“Okay, if you want to do business, stand up straight.”
I followed his instructions.
“Feet flat, back straight, chin up. You got it?”
“Yeah,” I said, scared of every command.
“Chest out. Make eye contact. Show confidence.”
“Okay,” I said, trying my best to look like I meant business.
“Now look me in the eyes and shake my hand. No, firm. Shake hand have to be firm. Let me know you’re a man I can trust.”
That’s what was running in the background of my processing system while I was speaking to Roman.
“You should come over for dinner tonight. It’s our last night in August,” I said.
“Tonight? Lemme see if I have the sitter.”
“If you can come, I’ll get you a four-top. Bring the guys.”
That night at the pop-up, we were hosting my friend’s album-release party in the basement, so I’d spent most of the night downstairs with the band when Daryn came down.
“Yo! We’re about to leave but just wanted to say thank you!”
“Oh shit, my bad, I gotta go say wassup to Roman.”
I ran up, and Roman was there waiting.
“Dinner was fantastic. Thank you, bro.”
“Of course! Of course, thank you for coming. Apologies, I was in the basement.”
“All good, brother. I see what you’re doing. Let’s keep talking.”
“Absolutely.”
I shook his hand, and of course the man’s handshake was firm. After months of back-and-forth with the Dapper Gentleman, this was what I needed. A man who knew what he wanted.
The next week, he texted me.
A stretch of Allen Street with a handful of vacant retail spots.
Photo: Sukjong Hong
“Check out that corridor of Allen below Grand. I think that area and Two Bridges has opportunity.”
I happened to be in the neighborhood taping a podcast, so I started to walk around. Roman was right. While 9 Orchard already had Corner Bar on Allen, and Bridges was only a couple blocks away, there was still a lot of untapped opportunity in this corridor. There were still restaurant-equipment stores, a print shop with no customers, and another shop advertising computer construction that looked decrepit. But among those businesses from another era, there was a shop named Title of Work with a nice font and an art gallery that also sold thoughtful home goods. I’d seen this happen ten years ago on Bowery between Houston and Delancey when all the restaurant-equipment stores turned over, and now it was happening on Allen.
A mix of design shops and older retail on Allen Street.
Photo: Sukjong Hong
I walked the whole area and then walked East Broadway all the way down to Ernesto’s looking for vacancies as well. After being gone for so long, it felt like home — a neighborhood I understood — as opposed to the West Village, where I really hadn’t spent much time. It’s probably my inferiority complex talking, but the West Village always seemed too nice for me. You can accumulate wealth and ascend as far as you want in life, but there is an undeniable comfort in areas that mirror your formative sociological habitat and familial upbringing. Despite watching Sex and the City front to back multiple times, I’m a kid who spent a lot of time at Chinese school and Dong-A Trading Corp. picking at bean sprouts, so I’m significantly more comfortable in a partly Chinese neighborhood like the Lower East Side, doing business with a guy like Roman who upholds immigrant values.
The next week, I had a catch-up meeting with the Dapper Gentleman, but I was already checked out. We decided to meet at his restaurant Casablanca, which happened to be in the neighborhood Roman suggested I keep an eye on.
It was really a beautiful restaurant he had built. There isn’t a single thing I’d change, I thought to myself. We walked to another one of his locations in the area, and along the way I shared updates on the West Village pocket opportunity. It piqued his interest. Then he said something completely unexpected.
“I’d love to do something in that location with Amir, the guy I brought to dinner. He wants to work on a concept with me that works in that neighborhood.”
“Oh, Amir?”
“Yeah. We’ve been talking about doing something.”
After asking for months to work together, here he was talking about a location I’d found for a concept he had with someone else. Frankly, it pissed me off.
“Do you have the bandwidth to work on this many concepts?” I asked him point-blank.
“That’s the issue. I don’t. I also have to wind down a couple things.”
“Right.”
I remembered that when I had gone on Resy months ago to look at Casablanca, every prime-time table had been available. It wasn’t a secret that this place was empty several nights a week. I was sick of dancing around the topic and just went for it.
“I’ll plug you with the broker and landlord for the West Village spot if you’d be open to me doing something with Casablanca,” I said.
“What do you have in mind?”
“I mean, I’m down to put Gazebo in there.”
“What’s that mean, though?”
“You tell me. Either it’s a partnership or I ask my investors to do a buyout.”
“I didn’t expect to talk about this, so I need a minute. But there’s something there.”
“Yeah, I think it’s beneficial to both of us.”
I walked out with mixed feelings. I had spent months wanting to work with him, but I’d also read the writing on the wall and didn’t need to figure out why he was more interested in working with Amir, or anyone else for that matter. I needed to focus on the people who wanted to work with me.
So I went to see Roman at MixedIn.
“Yo!”
“Yo! What’s going on?”
“I walked the blocks you were mentioning, and I agree that’s where things are happening.”
“Yeah. You know what’s going to happen on those blocks, but we’re still early enough to get a deal. I like it a lot.”
“Also I came across something. You know that spot Casablanca?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“I think it’s going to be available.”
“Bro, that’s my lease.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s my lease. I got him that lease.”
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