andamp;ldquo;Long before I met him, I was a fan of his writing, and his merciless wit. Heandamp;rsquo;s bigger than food.andamp;rdquo;andamp;mdash;Anthony Bourdain Eddie Huang is the thirty-year-old proprietor of Baohausandamp;mdash;the hot East Village hangout where foodies, stoners, and students come to stuff their faces with delicious Taiwanese street food late into the nightandamp;mdash;and one of the food worldandamp;rsquo;s brightest and most controversial young stars. But before he created the perfect home for himself in a small patch of downtown New York, Eddie wandered the American wilderness looking for a place to call his own. andamp;#160;Eddie grew up in theme-park America, on a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac in suburban Orlando, raised by a wild family of FOB (andamp;ldquo;fresh off the boatandamp;rdquo;) hustlers and hysterics from Taiwan. While his father improbably launched a series of successful seafood and steak restaurants, Eddie burned his way through American culture, defying every andamp;ldquo;model minorityandamp;rdquo; stereotype along the way. He obsessed over football, fought the All-American boys who called him a chink, partied like a gremlin, sold drugs with his crew, and idolized Tupac. His anchor through it all was foodandamp;mdash;from making Southern ribs (and scoring drugs) with the Haitian cooks in his dadandamp;rsquo;s restaurant to preparing traditional meals in his motherandamp;rsquo;s kitchen to haunting the midnight markets of Taipei when he was shipped off to the homeland. After misadventures as an unlikely lawyer, street fashion renegade, and stand-up comic, Eddie finally threw everything he lovedandamp;mdash;past and present, family and foodandamp;mdash;into his own restaurant, bringing together a legacy stretching back to China and the shards of global culture heandamp;rsquo;d melded into his own identity. Funny, raw, and moving, and told in an irrepressibly alive and original voice, Fresh Off the Boat recasts the immigrantandamp;rsquo;s story for the twenty-first centuryandamp;mdash;itandamp;rsquo;s a story of food, family, and the forging of a new notion of what it means to be American.
