After SLA Crackdown, Xiao Ye Shutters For Good

Xiao Ye, Eddie Huang’s four- month-old Taiwanese joint on the LES, is officially closed for good. Huang tells us that the restaurant had its last service this weekend, and they are vacating the space as we speak. The reason for the shutter is in large part due to what he described as a crackdown from the SLA following their highly controversial Thursday night all-you-can-drink Four Loko event.

As we know, after hyping the event heavily a few weeks ago, Eddie was told that it was illegal, so he changed the deal to be $3 a can, instead of all-you-can-drink. The night after the event, SLA agents raided the restaurant and destroyed all of the caffeinated malt liquor beverages. Huang and his team agreed to stop serving the drink after the incident, but their troubles with the SLA didn’t stop there. Eddie tells us that the restaurant was subject to three separate raids in the last few weeks, some of which involved underage, undercover agents with fake IDs trying to order alcohol — though not Four Loko, which they stopped serving — and that the restaurant wracked up three separate fines for serving them.

Although they did not lose their liquor license, the threat was looming, and so Huang in conjunction with his partner decided it would be best to sell the restaurant space for fear of having to continue to operate without a liquor license.

This is sad news for fans of Xiao Ye, but Huang assures us he has many other things in the works. For the time being, he’ll be back in the kitchen at his Taiwanese bun shop BaoHaus, six days a week. As an aside, Eddie also notes that one of the cops that took part in the raid told him that this kind of intense scrutiny from the SLA was extremely rare for a restaurant.
· All Eddie Huang Coverage [~ENY~]
· All Xiao Ye Coverage [~ENY~]
· All Four Loko Coverage [~ENY~]