It's Complicated: A Vacheron Constantin Overseas And Losing A Fight Against Hamburgers

I’ve never owned a steel watch.

Not because I don’t admire a steel watch, but the decision to be a gold guy was made for me decades ago when my mother purchased a Jade Buddha blessed by a monk, which she then chose to hang on a 24-karat Cuban link chain with a hook clasp that requires pliers to adjust.

I’ve taken this medallion off twice in my life, and this is what happened.

The first time I took it off was in 2002, driving to Mardi Gras from Orlando, Florida. It was irritating my neck about 7 hours into the drive, so I took it off in Mississippi and continued cruising toward Louisiana. My homie, Krazy Kris, lit a blunt when we entered New Orleans and started rolling footage on my Panasonic DVX100a. About 15 minutes later, we got T-boned when a car ran a red light, weed went flying everywhere, the camcorder hit me in the head, and we were upside down in a Jeep Grand Cherokee. I ultimately had to eat about an ounce of weed before the police came, but I left unscathed besides a sprained neck and bump on my head, so I counted myself blessed.

At the time, I didn’t associate the crash with the Jade Buddha, but a few months later, I took it off and ended up at Walgreens trying to purchase Plan B. To this day, the chain has stayed on.

Since the chain is gold, so is my wedding band, and I’ve chosen not to purchase a steel watch. I can get away with two-tone, but I’ve always felt that a steel watch with a gold chain and gold wedding band is just visually complicated.

For my first Hodinkee article, I requested the gold Vacheron 222, and it was initially confirmed. I told Jake Woolfe, an old friend and fashion writer, about it on our podcast, Canal Street Dreams, and this guy actually went to the Vacheron PR contact and snaked it from me!

Dinner is absolutely on Jake next time, but eventually I was offered the Vacheron Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin ref. 4300V/220G-H151 in a 41.5mm 18k white gold case with burgundy lacquer dial, as well as the Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin ref 4300V/220R-H144 an 18k pink gold watch with gold lacquered dial. Vacheron is my favorite house, and I currently own the 4520V/210R-B967 (shown left), which I adore.

If I were buying another watch, I’d probably get the pink gold with gold lacquered dial since it feels like the elevated Vacheron iteration of the Rolex Day-Date President 118238, the simultaneously most played out but also most necessary watch for an ’80s baby that grew up idolizing Tony Soprano. So, for your sake, dear reader, I chose the watch I wouldn’t usually purchase and spun the block with the 4300V/220G-H151 for a week.

While it comes in a fabulous white gold, it is the closest I’ve come to owning a steel watch, and I treated it as such. Minutes after I picked it up at the Hodinkee Office in Soho, I walked to The Flower Shop on Eldridge to work on recipe development.

For the uninitiated, The Flower Shop is an iconic downtown New York bar that you could say offers an Australian tavern menu but needed a refresh after recently celebrating its 10-year anniversary. As such, I was brought in as the Executive Chef tasked with creating a new menu retaining its Australian identity while infusing it with Asiatic flavors.

Now, if you speak to Australians, they’re sure that they have a clearly defined cuisine, but through my Chinese eyes and American brain, it seems haphazard. Sure, there is a meat pie as well as fish and chips on their menu, but also a quinoa bowl, Maitake mushroom rigatoni, a pan-roasted cauliflower steak, and mushroom escabeche on toast. I honestly asked myself if these were simply the greatest hits from an English Penitentiary Cafeteria, but realized that was probably racist.

One of the operators sent me menus from Australian spots he loved and because I’m an asshole, I looked at them like Rorschach inkblots, mumbling things like “TGI FRIDAYS”, “Applebee’s”, “Dave & Buster’s”, and “utter horse shit” to myself, completely frustrated by my crash course in Australian cuisine.

I scrolled through all the menus trying to identify a cohesive theme, but eventually gave up, tucked my chain, took off my wedding band, and affixed the case of this Vacheron Overseas Perpetual Calendar to the burgundy rubber strap and got to work.

At work, I usually wear a ’95 Rolex Datejust 16233 on a jubilee band and a black dial that I got for the low from DZA at Very Special. While my father wore a President when I was growing up, the goony- goo-goos around him with finger rings and jade medallions always rocked datejusts, so I equated work with the watch and got one for myself in the kitchen.

But I gotta say, a rubber strap perpetual calendar is a whole ‘nother bezel. This watch didn’t move on my wrist the entire 12-hour shift. I diced, I chopped, I whipped, I sautéed, I tried to communicate with the Australian culinary gods, and this watch never flinched; 41.5 millimeter case with a burgundy dial, and somehow I forgot it was there until my co-workers noticed the dial dancing under the hood light. I wouldn’t recommend a burgundy dial or a white gold watch as a daily driver, but they do look nice with an XL White Tee, Evan Kinori jeans, and blacked out Salomons in the kitchen.

My approach to the menu had been to anchor it with roasts. When I’d gone to Australia or London, the things I admired from a culinary perspective were roasts. There’s a lot to learn from the way British cuisine chooses to apply heat to large hunks of meat, and there’s an unfuckwithable simplicity to it. Take a troublesome cut of meat with fat, sinew, and intermuscular complications, drench it in salt and pepper, then roast it slow and low in an oven until everything others see as complicated about that particular cut becomes a positive. Serve it with roasted vegetables in its own jus and keep it under $40.

That’s what I wanted to deliver for The Flower Shop.

To this point, the dishes that had been approved were a roasted crown of pork, roasted brisket, roasted lamb shoulder, an asiatic calamari, General Tso’s Tautog, broiled Chinatown greens, and a Sunday Sauce with macaroni that utilized the end cuts and trimmings of the roasts.

Today’s tasting was the last of four, and if things went well, we’d be locking up the menu. The last items on the menu were chicken thighs seasoned with my Szechuan lemon pepper rub, then roasted in schmaltz, grilled head-on prawns with an herbaceous Asian vinaigrette, a bitter melon stir fry, and a grilled heirloom tomato onion salad, which was a nod to Peter Luger’s, one of my favorite steak houses in New York.

Everything came out as I intended, and those in attendance liked the dishes, but there was hesitation.

“I think we need a few lighter dishes for the ladies.” Said one partner. “It’s a bit heavy.” Mentioned another.

“Perhaps too chef-y.”

“Could it be more approachable?”

“The bitter melon is… bitter.” Someone reminded me.

“It’s what I said I was going to cook,” I said deadpan with a heavy dose of defensiveness.

We were at a crossroads.

“I’d really like to see a burger on the menu. People really like our burger and fries.”

“I can make a burger and fries, but I’d like to lock up the menu so we can start gearing up for opening and getting the photo shoot done.”

I felt doubted, and tension rose to the surface.

“You guys can trust me to make a burger. Can we lock the menu?”

Eventually, everyone agreed to lock the menu so we could begin preparations for opening, with the caveat that I needed to deliver a burger.

For the next 48 hours, I mumbled nasty things to myself every time I saw a burger or a burger was mentioned on the internet. I’m sure that every chef opening a restaurant today needs to present a burger to their superiors, but something about it just pissed me off! I recognized that I was being a bit arrogant and unreasonable, which is my sign that I need to go to the sauna or the gym to physically exorcise what I cannot get past psychologically.

As such, I met up with my coach, David Jou, at WSA, who guided me through a wonderful kettlebell workout.

“You not gonna take that watch off?” Asked David as we did kettlebell swings.

“What watch?” I asked, oblivious to everything going on around me besides my hate for burgers.

“That watch!” He cackled.

Oh right, the six-figure 18k white gold watch with a burgundy dial on my wrist that once again DID NOT MOVE for the entirety of the workout. Somehow, I had forgotten about it.

“How you feeling at the restaurant?” “Good. Finally locked the menu.” “Congrats, man! That’s huge.” I was hesitant. While everyone agreed and it was locked, and the photo shoot was scheduled, it didn’t feel great that there was hesitation. When you sign off on something, you want it to be firm. I don’t like limping into a grand opening, so to speak.

“Anything else you looking forward to this week?”

I wasn’t sure, so I looked at my GCal. I’d been so singularly focused on the menu that I was moving through life meeting by meeting without much time or energy to look ahead, but when I peeked at tomorrow’s calendar, I remembered that I’d be sitting for an interview supporting the Pop Smoke Documentary. It’s obviously emotional anytime Pop is brought up, so I just tucked it away in a corner of my mind, knowing I’d be addressing all of it the next morning.

A few hours after the workout, I was light, whimsical, dare I say centered on my couch watching NFL Countdown, when I got a text from The Flower Shop group chat.

“Hey Eddie – can we meet tomorrow to discuss the menu?” I knew something was up.

“Sure. I was about to place orders for the photo shoot. Should I hold?”

“Can we hold off for now?”

“Sure. I’ll cancel.”

At that point, I changed into the biggest baggiest basketball shorts I had, lit a joint, and lay down on my floor shirtless with the watch affixed to my wrist.

The beauty of a watch as significant as the Vacheron Constantin Overseas Perpetual Calendar is that no matter what is going on in your life at that moment, you can look at the watch and remind yourself that you must have done something right if this ridiculously beautiful thing is on your wrist.

The next morning, I went swimming to clear my mind. I did a quick 10 laps, had a triple shot espresso, got dressed, and headed to the interview. I’d never met the director, Josh Swade, but he came highly recommended by friends who’d worked with him on Empire Skate, the 30 for 30 about Supreme, as well as Ricky Powell: The Individualist.

As a director myself, it’s always interesting to be on another director’s set. In many ways, it’s like watching someone on a date with your ex, no matter how centered, humble, or over it you are. You know how you would set it up, you see how he’s set it up, and especially with the documentary being about a friend and actor I directed, it was a lot.

I loved Pop and the thought of him always hurt, but for almost two hours, I forgot I was a director or writer, showing up simply as Pop’s friend and trusting our story to Josh.

Once we wrapped, I looked down at my watch and realized that I was 30 blocks away from The Flower Shop and already 10 minutes late. After texting the chat, I got in the car and shed a thug tear listening to PTSD as a weight fell off my back.

I’d come a long way since the day Pop passed in 2020, when I ended up crying at the boxing gym trying to spar through my feelings. After a few moments in the car, I laughed at myself for getting so worked up about making hamburgers. Whatever they wanted me to cook, I would cook. Life’s too short to be this upset about an elevated tavern menu.

When I arrived 30 minutes late for an already contentious meeting, it felt like we were fried. I listened for a few minutes as leadership talked about approachability and that the menu I’d created was a bit too esoteric. That British roasts weren’t things that got people excited, and the food was too heavy. They wanted hamburgers, wings, calamari, chicken parmesan, more salads, etc.

I took it all in, listened, and when there was a pause in conversation, offered to help them find another chef.

“Guys. I don’t think you need me for this. Anyone can make a hamburger. I can find you someone excited to make a hamburger, but it’s not me.” People responded, they altered their feedback, and we started to go in circles until one person spoke.

“Eddie, listen. Everything you’ve made has been great, but I’ve sunk a lot of money into updating The Flower Shop as well as hiring you, and I just need to see more. There’s nothing wrong with anything you’ve cooked, but I get nervous. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I need to see things before I sign off. I know you can make a hamburger, and I get that you don’t find it challenging, but as an owner of this restaurant, I NEED TO SEE IT.”

Hearing an owner say that he was nervous made me empathetic.

If I were spending thousands of dollars to update a restaurant and hire a new chef, I would be nervous too. I would perhaps also go back and forth, question myself, question my chef, and doubt everything around me because I had the most skin in the game financially. I may also want a hamburger because it’s what most people want in a bar.

But as a chef, hamburgers piss me off. I find it stupid that people are so enamored by hamburgers. They’re basic and dense and silly and are honestly all quite good even when they’re bad, yet people line up for them, argue over which one is best, despite the fact that hamburgers like humans share 99.9% of their DNA with other hamburgers.

Maybe I’m annoying. Perhaps I am difficult. Perhaps it is I who doesn’t understand…

“Ay, what kind of watch is that you got on? Never seen one of those.” Remarked one of my co-workers.

“It’s a Vacheron Overseas Perpetual Calendar.”

I took it off my wrist and handed it to him. He admired it, then handed it back. “Looks complicated.”

I chuckled as I put it back on.

He was right.

The Vacheron Overseas Perpetual Calendar Ultra-Thin ref. 4300V/220G-H15: a complicated watch for a complicated man who hates hamburgers.

About The Author

Eddie Huang is an American restaurateur, author, and cultural commentator best known for his memoir Fresh Off the Boat, which was adapted into the hit ABC television series of the same name. Born to Taiwanese immigrant parents, Huang has built a reputation for blending sharp social critique with personal storytelling, exploring themes of identity, race, and the Asian-American experience. He first rose to prominence with his New York restaurant BaoHaus, where he fused Taiwanese street food with hip-hop culture. Huang is also a filmmaker and host, having directed the film Boogie and appeared in various food and travel programs, consistently challenging conventional narratives with his outspoken and introspective approach.

Photos by: Eddie Huang, Shota Akiyoshi
Creative Directed by: David Aujero