David Chang
David Chang
David Chang is an American restaurateur, author, and television personality. He is the founder of the Momofuku restaurant group, which includes Momofuku Noodle Bar, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Má Pêche, Milk Bar and Momofuku Ko in New York City, Momofuku Seiōbo in Sydney, Australia, the Momofuku Toronto restaurants Momofuku Noodle Bar, Nikai, Daishō and Shōtō, and Momofuku CCDC in Washington, DC. In 2009 Ko was awarded 2 Michelin stars, which it has retained each year since. Chang attended Georgetown Prep and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionChef
Date of Birth5 August 1977
CityVienna, VA
CountryUnited States of America
I constantly think I'm a fraud, that this success is not warranted or justified.
To eat well, I always disagree with critics who say that all restaurants should be fine dining. You can get a Michelin star if you serve the best hamburger in the world.
Fine dining teaches you how to cook many different things, and it gives you the basic fundamentals, but these specialty restaurants, theyre not teaching you the broad foundation you need to become a well-rounded cook.
I look forward to the spring vegetables because the season is so short. Mushrooms, edible foraged herbs, wild leeks, early season asparagus.
I love chicken. I love chicken products: fried chicken, roasted chicken, chicken nuggets - whatever. And going to Japan, I would see that these chicken were smoked and then grilled and then have this amazing crispy skin.
I’m grasping with how you do something on a large scale with multiple operations and not have quality decrease,
People don't think that bread is part of Asian culture or Asian food culture, but it's quite prevalent in Northern China, and you see it throughout Japan and as you go to Taiwan.
When I was in Japan, everyone wanted to work for Pierre Gagnaire, and they wouldn't miss a beat.
Be careful what you wish for - getting to be a successful business and maintaining it is so hard. Anyone can be good one night; being good over several years is incredibly difficult.
Fear is a driving force for most of the things that I do. I don't know if that's healthy.
I love to eat sushi, and, you know, those flavors and wasabi and really eating spoonfuls of it... I would just mix it and put it on everything, literally.
Shouldn't a three-course meal be 90 minutes? Do you know how hard you have to edit your menu to pull that off? Twenty-seven minutes. That's the average meal at Jiro's in Tokyo.
New York gives us a wide colour palette to cook from. We have cuisines from around the world, and that lets us pick and choose.
My dad was in the restaurant business, but I didn't really think about following him. Had I done better at school, I don't know if I would have been a chef.