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"  If you&amp;#039;re not familiar with Eddie Huang, he&amp;#039;s the chef of Baohaus in New York City, sometime TV personality, onetime proponent of Four Loko, and an outspoken author of his own blog and, next year, his own book with Random House. He&amp;#039;ll also be serving his own bao at the Bonnaroo music festival in Manchester, Tennessee, this weekend \u2014 for free, which might make him the most popular chef there. We talked to Huang before he left for the festival about cooking en masse, what he&amp;#039;d like to make for the Beach Boys, his Internet personality, and David Chang. ESQUIRE: Who do you want to see most at Bonnaroo? EDDIE HUANG: As much as I love hip-hop, my first three records \u2014 those seven-inch records \u2014 were Alvin and the Chipmunks, Michael Jackson&amp;#039;s Bad, and the Beach Boys. So I really, really, really want to see the Beach Boys. And then Santigold. And I think it&amp;#039;d be fun to see the Skrillex scene. Because I&amp;#039;ve never been to a Skrillex concert. I&amp;#039;ve never been near Skrillex. I&amp;#039;ve never been near people who listen to Skrillex. So I think it&amp;#039;s going to be funny. ESQ: You&amp;#039;re not a little scared of the Skrillex fans? I am. EH: Nah. ESQ: If you were tasked with making something for the Beach Boys, what would it be? EH: I think they&amp;#039;d like our cold-noodle salad. It&amp;#039;s got cumin and fennel and cardamom and our own chili oil that we make, and it gets some Japanese tamago [egg], three types of pickles. I think they&amp;#039;d like that a lot. ESQ: I want to take it to the beach right now. EH: Yes, exactly. That, or lobster Hainan rice. Those things would be good for them. Every time I leave a city, I play &amp;quot;Sloop John B.&amp;quot; ESQ: Have you ever had good music-festival food? EH: Yes, absolutely. At GoogaMooga, I had great festival food. ESQ: A lot of people thought GoogaMooga got a little crazy. EH: I&amp;#039;d say those people were wrong \u2014 GoogaMooga got a lot crazy. It was fucking insane, but it was awesome. You&amp;#039;ll never see a festival melt down before your eyes like that. It was fun to see it totally self-destruct on Saturday, and then resurrected on Sunday. ESQ: A lot of my outdoor music experiences have involved soggy tacos and warm beer. EH: Yeah, that stuff usually sucks.  ESQ: How is Bonnaroo trying to do things differently? EH: They&amp;#039;re bringing in chefs like us. The reason festival food sucks isn&amp;#039;t because it&amp;#039;s hard to cook at a festival. It&amp;#039;s because people don&amp;#039;t know what they&amp;#039;re doing. If you bring cooks and chefs and restaurants that really care about their reputations, you bring the best you have. You want people to get the best representation of your food and your restaurant in Tennessee. ESQ: Would you say you make the best bao in America? EH: I think we make the best bao in America. I&amp;#039;m not afraid to say that. I go to a lot of cities, a lot of restaurants. I see them trying to replicate Baohaus. It doesn&amp;#039;t offend. Because I eat it, and it&amp;#039;s not even close. I know we make the best bao. ESQ: The press release says you&amp;#039;re doing a &amp;quot;food pop-up&amp;quot; at Bonnaroo. What exactly is that? EH: They&amp;#039;re going to put us in the back of a pickup with our food wrapped up, and we&amp;#039;re just throwing it to people for free. ESQ: Do you know which bao you&amp;#039;re going to be serving? EH: Yeah, the Chairman Bao. The main one.  PS: How are you going to cook it? I mean, if you&amp;#039;re in a pickup truck. EH: We&amp;#039;re doing it at the Holiday Inn and then bringing it over. That will be funny. ESQ: Are you going to blast music from the pickup? EH: I hope they let us.  ESQ: How&amp;#039;s the blog coming? Do you find it hard to do that along with things like this and running a restaurant? EH: It&amp;#039;s all about having a good team. Any chef will tell you that. I crossed the threshold, I think, late last year. I used to have issues juggling, and I would freak out. But you work really hard for three years, and you will cross the threshold where you&amp;#039;re like, You know what? I got my business to a level, I got my staff to a level where they think like me, they do what I would do when I&amp;#039;m not there. I&amp;#039;ve collected a number of great individuals, formed a team, and once you get to that point, then you get on the blog more. It also makes you feel like you did your job. Because I actually don&amp;#039;t like when chefs are like, &amp;quot;The food will not be as good when I&amp;#039;m not there.&amp;quot; You know what? It should be as good when you&amp;#039;re not there. That&amp;#039;s the point. ESQ: So what do you think of the people who think chefs shouldn&amp;#039;t be recapping Girls instead of being in the kitchen? EH: People always said that. I think it was great when [former New York Times restaurant critic] Sam Sifton took me down. He was right, but I&amp;#039;m at the point now where I can sit in the dining room and enjoy the meal, and it&amp;#039;s just as good as if I was in the kitchen. ESQ: How has hip-hop helped shape what you&amp;#039;ve done? EH: Oh, it&amp;#039;s shaped my entire life. My memoir&amp;#039;s really about it. I don&amp;#039;t know. I honestly can&amp;#039;t give you an answer, because it took me 350 pages to explain it. ESQ: When does that come out? EH: February 2013. ESQ: Does it have have the same sort of stream-of-consciousness, eccentric writing style as your blog? EH: Yes, it does, but I&amp;#039;d say it has more momentum and clarity \u2014 ESQ: You have some good one-liners. EH: Thank you. The blog is like a mixtape. It&amp;#039;s all battle records. But the book is like The Black Album. It&amp;#039;s really reflective. I&amp;#039;ve put more of myself into that book than anything I&amp;#039;ve ever done. ESQ: Questlove is going to be at Bonnaroo. He makes his own fried chicken, and he competed against David Chang on Jimmy Fallon&amp;#039;s show, and Chang won. Do you think you could beat Chang&amp;#039;s fried chicken? EH: Absolutely. I actually asked him to do a throw-down when I saw it, and he wouldn&amp;#039;t do it. PS: That doesn&amp;#039;t sound very David Chang of him. EH: I know. He&amp;#039;s a tough guy in the press. I don&amp;#039;t actually talk to him. We work out at the same gym. ESQ: That&amp;#039;s pretty funny that you both go to the same gym. EH: Yeah. He&amp;#039;s just on the stationary bike. I go do free weights. ESQ: So you&amp;#039;re officially saying you&amp;#039;d do a challenge with David Chang? EH: I definitely would. I think we should. PLUS: The 20 Most Underrated Bands at Bonnaroo Top photo credit: Steven Lau "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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