Eddie Huang Considers the East Village

In this series, “Looking to Settle,” Eddie Huang chronicles his search for a downtown restaurant space.

After being open-minded led me to the debacle on Bleecker Street, we narrowed our space search the following week to second-generation restaurants — locations that already had built-in kitchens, venting, the gas turned on, and perhaps even a liquor license in place. It sounds straightforward enough, but finding a place like this in a neighborhood where your concept can succeed is next to impossible because everyone is hunting for these deals.

On our broker’s list of available leases were two East Village locations that presented second-generation opportunities right below my 12th Street cutoff. The first was the former Black Seed Bagels on 176 First Avenue between East 10th and 11th, and the second was the now-shuttered Yummy Hive, a short-lived bodega a block away on 159 Second Avenue, between the same cross streets.

I made the mistake of walking to the area on an 87-degree day in a Guy Harvey pocket tee and met Noah, my broker, outside the Black Seed location with the marlin on my back in actual water.

“What happened here? Isn’t Black Seed Bagels popular?” I asked.

“It is, but they have ten locations now,” Noah said diplomatically, careful not to disparage another business.

I stood in front of the former bagel shop, walked up to 11th Street, then down to 10th, poked my head around the corner, and realized there was an Apollo Bagels 200 feet to the west on 10th.

“I see.”

“Have you been to Apollo yet?” asked Noah.

“Nah. I’m not a big sourdough bagel guy. It’s like orange wine to me.”

“What’s that mean?”

“There’s a reason no one’s made orange wine or sourdough bagels before.”

“Oof. Hot take.”

I shrugged, fully aware that my literal existence is polarizing to most people.

Sourdough preference or not, I knew that if I walked west on 10th Street with the intention of going to Black Seed Bagels, I probably wouldn’t have made it because the Apollo Bagels brand is too strong. There are always people loitering outside, the logo with the red awning is hard to ignore, and the smell of their bagels pumping through the block is intoxicating. Very few people would have the mental fortitude to stick to a Black Seed Bagel plan when the shiny, new thing is right there. Cross the street? That’s what Black Seed Bagels was asking people to do, and now its restaurant is available for rent.

“Where is this guy?” I asked Noah as we literally melted in the heat.

“I don’t know. He says he’s 15 minutes late, but I guarantee he’s showing up in a blueberry suit.”

“Blueberry?” asked my wife, Natashia.

On cue, homie showed up in a suit the color of blueberries (picture Pete Hegseth) with an enormous Audemars Piguet Royal Oak in a size I didn’t know they came in.

He opened the door and a wave of stale, warm air — akin to what comes out of a quart container when your DoorDasher is 30 minutes late, accented by the hint of dust mites — hit us. If you’ve ever wanted to know what the last gasp of a restaurant smells like, this was it.

Smell aside, the space was nice for $17,000 a month. You could tell it was recently in operation and well maintained. There was a decent kitchen on the right side of the restaurant that was vented and had gas, but it was set up to service a bagel operation: Most of the equipment was designed to toast or reheat as opposed to cook on the line, and the built-in shelves were made for baskets of bagels. Most of it would need to be swapped out for what I was doing with Gazebo, but there was value in the gas and the ventilation.

“Is the gas still on?” asked Noah.

“Not sure,” said the broker in the blueberry suit.

I walked downstairs, and it also looked relatively well maintained but set up for large-scale baking. That’s what can be misleading about a listing that says, “Second-generation restaurant, full kitchen, gas, venting.” When it comes to real estate, savory and pastry are opposite sides of the brain. A bakery kitchen doesn’t make any sense to me when I look at it, and my kitchen probably makes zero sense to a pastry chef.

“What do you think?” asked Natashia.

“It’s an option. I could make it work with an open kitchen on the right side, the vent and the gas save us money, but we’d need all-new equipment, and they want value for the build-out of the basement, but we’d have to reorganize it.”

“Okay, but the bottom line in English.”

“We can do better.”

“Great, let’s get out of here. It’s so fucking hot.”

As soon as we crossed to the southwestern corner of First Avenue and 10th Street, there was a vibe shift. Sourdough or not, Apollo Bagels and the coffee shop across the street, Not As Bitter, had created what people call a “corridor.” The two businesses complemented each other. What goes better than coffee with bagel? Of course, Apollo Bagels would probably love for customers to purchase coffee at its location, but as a concept matures, it’s nice to have neighbors that could theoretically buttress your customer base when there are inevitable dips in interest. There were people talking to each other across the street, wandering back and forth, and dare I say it felt like a neighborhood.

Rare.

We walked on to Second Avenue, and again there was a vibe shift. The sun shines brighter on that part of the avenue because of the trees in Abe Lebewohl Park, even though it’s only a half-block long. That little crumb of nature anchors the block and sets the tone, versus First Avenue, which just feels like the now-decrepit birthplace of Momofuku Noodle Bar still searching for its next identity.

At first glance, Yummy Hive felt strong, anchoring the southwest corner of Second Avenue and 10th Street, despite the price tag of $19,500 a month. The building that houses Yummy Hive is serving prewar and is indisputably hot. When you stand across the street on the other side of First Avenue looking at it, with Abe Lebewohl Park in the background, the sun falls favorably on the building, and, despite the giant Yummy Hive sign, there’s romance in the details. I liked this place before I even stepped inside, and it was the first time in our search that I could say that.

Once inside, I had to compartmentalize a lot of things: the Wu-Tang Killa Bees black-and-yellow color scheme, the bright-yellow barrel-shaped HVAC running across the ceiling, the misplaced columns, and the inexplicably long 24-foot hood vent. That said, this spot was viable because it had gas, it had venting, and the kitchen was in a good spot on the left side of the restaurant, leaving room for 50 to 55 seats inside and the potential for 20 seats on the outdoor patio that wrapped around the corner.

I walked down to the basement. It was in bad shape. It was clearly used only for storage, and it hadn’t been taken care of. It was also missing a second exit, so you couldn’t legally prep, cook, or do a private dining room down there without creating one first. That would mean redoing the certificate of occupancy, which would take quite a while.

We walked up to the roof, and there was better news: a new horizontal vent, as opposed to the shitty mushroom that a lot of people use to get by, and it was made out of black iron, which was my preference. Despite the basement, this location had a lot working for it.

“Strong,” I said to Noah and Natashia.

“You know this neighborhood. It’s the grown-up Baohaus customer from 14th,” said Natashia.

“It is. I know what works here.”

“I gotta run, but this is strong,” said Noah.

“You wanna get a bagel?” I asked Natashia.

“Would love.”

As we went back down 10th Street toward Apollo Bagels, I thought about a return to this neighborhood that I’d loved for so long. What I like most about its demographics is the combination of collegiate life, owing to the NYU dorms and the New School campus a few blocks west, mixed with the bohemian old-timers. The culture has been strong in the East Village for quite some time, and there’s a strong sense of progressive values. I never had an issue expressing myself in this neighborhood, parents didn’t complain about the music at Baohaus, and I’d seen kids coming after school for baos from middle school all the way through to college.

We got to Apollo Bagels, and surprisingly, there wasn’t a line. One woman with sunglasses and curly black hair walked out with a bag, and we walked in. As soon as we stepped into the shop, someone said, “We’re closed!” I looked at my phone, saw it was 5:06, and turned to walk out when the manager stopped us.

“You want bagels?”

“Would love bagels.”

“One second.”

The manager went back, grabbed a bag and threw a half-dozen everything with a half-dozen plain sourdough bagels into a bag.

“Can I buy some cream cheese?” I asked.

“I got you. I’m Reed, by the way.”

“Thank you. Eddie.”

“There’s some plain, scallion, and butter in there for you. Enjoy!”

Very quickly my attitude toward sourdough bagels changed. What I had assumed was some marketing trend engineered to create buzz and lines was surprisingly … neighborhood-y?

I got home, cut open an everything bagel and smeared it with plain cream cheese. The flavor was phenomenal, but it was a touch chewier than I like my bagels, so I did the unthinkable and toasted it. Surprisingly, I preferred the toasted sourdough bagel to a toasted not-sourdough bagel and proceeded to eat three of them.

When I inevitably ended up on the toilet 15 minutes later, I texted Noah.

“Let’s write an LOI on Yummy Hive.”