Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. I'm Dak Shepherd. I'm joined by Monsta Mouse. Oh, Monsta Mouse.
Ooh, Monsta Mouse. How you doing, Monsta Mouse? Good. We're in my apartment again.
Love it here. When I arrived and the door was cracked to grant me entry, there was a smell hoofing out into the foyer. Oh, boy. And it was the most delightful and inviting smell.
I think you. You burn a lot of nice candles in here. Thank you. I mean, that could have gone either way.
Oh, it could have been a good smell. Well, or just spoiled food. Oh, sure. Lots of things.
I'm glad it was a candle. Is there a specific scent? River's edge. It's kind of a woodsy.
Earthy oak. It actually was hacknically a holiday winter candle? Oh, OK. Well, you would never know.
You'd never know. Well, today we have a really fun guest. David Chang. David Chang is an American restaurateur, an author, and television personality.
He is the founder of the Momofuku restaurant group. Restaurants in New York, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Toronto. We have eaten at several of these, and have always been delighted. So good.
He also has the TV show on Netflix, Ugly Delicious, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner, and the mind of a chef. Very much enjoyed talking to David. And I really, really appreciated his honesty. And he's in an industry that's being hit the hardest right now.
So I appreciate his time. Side note, you may hear a few audio issues at the beginning of this, but we sorted it out pretty early into the interview. So hopefully that'll clear up quickly. There was some mechanical technology difficulties.
This is the time we're living in, and we're learning and growing. So if you think the audio is a little dicey at first, hang in there. It gets fantastic. And I hope you enjoy David Chang.
He's in our church. Hi, guys. Hi, David. How are you?
I'm good. Hang in in there. Are you held up in New York? No, we're staying right outside at a friend's house, because in Korean culture, the one-year birthday is a really big thing.
In March 1st, I had a lot of family in town from all over the place, and they're all stuck. So I couldn't keep them all at my apartment. And I asked one of my friends who has several rooms in the house that lives by himself. I was like, I need a crash in a place where there's foreseeable futures.
There's a ton of people right now. It's been a traumatic three weeks or four weeks. I don't know how long it's been anymore. I would imagine for you, it's got to be 20 times more stressful, because of all the different industries that are getting hit the hardest.
The restaurant industry is just in a shambles, yeah? Yes. It's one of the most exposed businesses right now. And I'm trying to be optimistic, but I want to know what the floor is.
And I don't know anyone that hasn't laid off a ton of employees in my industry. And that's honestly, I don't care about restaurants right now. People are going to find a way to feed themselves in a variety of ways. And thank God, there are still restaurants that are open to take when delivery.
The biggest concern I have is for all the employees that were undocumented or documented, they don't have a job right now. So that's not nice to think about. Well, and especially you're set up primarily in New York, right? So the majority of your employees are all living in a city that is, let's just say it's not too cheap to live there.
You can't really just kind of float along for a while. No, and that's sort of the discrepancy in the recently passed stimulus bill is living expenses in New York are very different than for employees in say, Las Vegas, Toronto, or California. And it's been a whirlwind. We have a really good team and we're trying our best.
And that's the hardest thing is I know that we have people on our teams that are like, hey, you need to do a better job. And I don't disagree, but we're doing our best in a situation where no one could have been prepared for. I can imagine they taught this class at culinary school. So it's like when you have to weather a three month shutdown due to a pandemic, make sure you do X, Y, and Z.
Yeah, I think it's going to be maybe a little bit longer than three months to. And that's what my friends and I and the industry peers are trying to sort out is what does it look like when you do reopen up? So it's very murky. Now, is your wife, Karien?
Yeah, she's first-generation like you. Yeah, she's first-generation parents were born in Korea and they're with us right now. And I am one of the few people I feel like that absolutely adores the in-laws. And how old is your baby?
If you hear him yelling downstairs, he's just turned 13 months. It's been amazing to be able to give him a bath every night. And I try my best even before this all happened to make his food, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. But that's really the only good thing that's happening.
Yeah. Like, so many times I've been getting to see him almost walk. That's where he's at right now. And I would say there's like another week before he's going to really take us first steps.
That's like the best thing. I was working, I definitely could be missing it. I'd be watching on video or FaceTime. So I wouldn't change that for anything because it's been a total joy to see him develop and perform at us.
Yeah, and I don't know a ton about you, but I have to imagine you've been sprinting now for, I don't know, 10, 12 years, yeah? Yeah, no, actually I opened up a moment of Huku in August of 2004. And that was just me, you know, at the time, like no one really wanted to work with me. And now we have over 1,500 points that we used to have over 1,500 points.
Wow. Yeah, so I have to imagine just every step along the way has been really time consuming and energy consuming. It has been nonstop. And honestly, I didn't know what to do until, you know, like maybe a month before our son was born, I was just freaking out because I didn't know how to stop.
Like I work my ass off, I am an addict to work. You might have to take the personality to begin with. And work is the only sort of socially acceptable addiction. And I'm a big time addict to work.
Yeah, first and foremost, mom and dad are from Korea. And dad's from North Korea, yeah, mom's from South Korea. Both my parents were born in what is now North Korea. My mom came from a very well to do family where a lot of like, I would say intellectuals lived.
My grandfather, who worked in the government, I guess in effect, he was sort of like an attorney general at the time. And my dad's like basically came from nothing. And he was born on what is now the border of China and Korea. And they lived through the war, they lost everything.
And it's a whole horrible story in and of itself. Yeah, so how did they meet? This is like literally the story that I've been told. They were at a picnic with some friends from my dad's older sister.
And my dad saw my mom peeling an apple with a knife. And he's like, wow, she peels it so well. I have an area for her. Wow, it's that easy.
Wow. I was that's been my only criteria. I don't know how much I believe of that, but that's when he told us. That's when hearing me tell Sally or sleepless in Seattle, I forget which one.
Supless in Seattle, there's an apple peeling with a knife scene. And if someone fell in love with results. I think it has to do with the love. Yeah.
I mean, I of course now am dying to watch your mom peeling. I know. I have to imagine it's borderline erotic. She's really good at it.
So what age were they when they came to the US? So my dad came to America in 1963. And he moved to New York. He was pretty traumatic for him because he went up washing dishes and living what you believe is a real immigrant experience, just getting any kind of hourly job and making your way through that.
I think he was here for like three, four years. And then he came back to Korea. And that's when he met my mom. And then they came back, I think it's 68 or 69.
And my dad was working in restaurants on the more of a front of house level. And then my sister was when I think 70, 1970. Yeah. Uh-huh.
But at some point, they end up owning restaurants and even a golf store. Is this accurate? Yeah. My dad basically is a hustler.
There's giant sections of my dad's history that will never be known. That's exciting. Yeah. Yeah.
I have no idea. Like how do he wind up in New York? And then I guess he worked in restaurants going all the way down to the Midland. I've been watching the DC.
How he wound up owning a restaurant is crazy to me. And there's like crazier stories. Like somehow I think for a year or two, he lived in some small town in Kentucky. And again, having a Korean dad is not always easy to get any information out of.
OK. Well, you know, historically in LA, there is a path for Korean immigrants, which is that there's a huge Korean community. They often, on a community level, raise money and loan money to new immigrants to start small businesses. Was any of that happening for him out there?
Yeah. That's how he actually got into the golf business. And he wound up getting out of the restaurant business. And I don't know how, but he had some foresight into golf.
And that's basically what I did for an H5 to like 14 or so, just playing every day. But around that time, he got in the golf business. And there were probably, I'm going to say 12 to 14 Korean men that divided up the Washington DC area. Oh, no shit.
Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia. And at the time, they divided it all up. And I think they all pooled their money. And the people that had the most money obviously took the best locations in that area, the wealthiest locations.
My dad being the poorest at the time was given route seven in Leesburg in Virginia, or Tyson's Corner. And that's before Tyson's Corner became one of the biggest shopping malls in America. So he was given the worst, worst location. And it wound up being the best location.
Oh, no shit. Yeah. Was it called Tyson's Washington Golf Center? And it was in a dilapidated warehouse.
Yeah. But you can't call something center if you've only got 400 square feet. Right. It was big.
And it's sort of like, it was such a long time ago. I have recollections of it basically looking like Costco, just like golf clubs and balls everywhere, just stacked on the floor. And my dad's whole thing was spend no money on how things look. Oh, sure.
Sure, sure. Did you work there as a kid? Yes, I did. So I have a lot of class warfare stuff.
And I'm going to get into that with you when it comes to fine dining. I was a real reluctant adopter of fine dining because it just screams rich people. And I feel less than and judged when I'm in a fine dining place. So I want to get into all that later.
But then golf also kind of does that to me. So if I had to pick the last group of people I'd want to be interfacing with on a regular, it'd be like rich dudes looking to golf on the weekend. I was too young, but I don't remember the way we were at, too. There wasn't like old money coming to us.
OK. It was just so bare bones. And I feel like people that went to buy something were going there because it was like discount. OK, right, right.
It wasn't like cat-y-shack. Like not at all. But if my dad had any similarities, it's a little bit like Rodney Dangerfield. But yeah, it wasn't me working the cash register, me breaking down boxes.
And then I got old enough I learned how to regret that and repair golf clubs. And I did that when I wasn't practicing playing golf. My dad was pretty ahead of his time in regards to, like now it's like a choke if you're Korean American, that you want your son or daughter to be like golf superstar. And when I was playing golf, there were no other Asian people on the golf course.
Well, yeah, I was thinking, because I'm four years older than you. And I was thinking, oh, his dad was following the Tiger Woods playbook. But no, there is no Tiger Woods playbook at that point, right? I mean, actually, you about Tiger pretty early on, just from playing competitive golf.
That was the sort of thing when you're like 11, 12 years old and you think you're really good. And you learn you're never going to beat this person. Yeah, I think, well, most of the people in the two were felt that way for about a decade. What are we looking at handicap for you at your peak?
I don't know. Depending on, don't bullshit me, David. Probably around a scratch. Oh, Monica, does that mean anything?
Oh, that is, you just spoke completely differently. But I have no idea what anybody. So scratch means on average, you're hitting par on every hole. Like let's say it's a first hole's a par three, then a par four, then a par three, then a par five.
You're getting it. At the end of the round, you're not above or below. Wow. That's very, very rare, rare, rare, rare.
Wow. But I didn't know what was going on, because I was so young when I was playing. And my whole world was surrounded in center on golf or religion. What religion?
Presbyterianism. And I basically burned out once I just didn't have that mental game to play competitive golf. So that was pretty hard. Yeah.
Also, did you experience all that very stereotypical first-generation Asian parents' type of pressure? Oh, yeah. It would be seen as abusive parenting today, for sure. But.
Walk me through a day in the life of a teenage first-generation Korean. I just always remember some kind of punishment, right? And it wasn't always physical. I don't know.
Like I talked to my brothers about it. We're always in a state of fear, right? That we're not doing a good enough job. We need to work harder.
And I just remember my dad always saying, like hustle. You have to hustle. You have to hustle. And a lot of that was manifested in the golf course.
When I say about playing golf, most of my memories are on a golf course, because I would say 350 days a year for 10 years was playing golf. Because I won a bunch of tournaments when I was younger. So the expectations for me were maybe a little bit higher. And I mean, I saw pretty early on there was a different standard of how the kids I was friends with, that were all white kids from, I would say, upper middle-class families were being treated.
And golf wasn't the center of their life. They had other hobbies, whatever the word. I didn't have that option. So did your parents care about academics, or were they just pushing the golf thing 100%?
It was definitely the golf thing. But the weird thing, how Korean immigration happened, I think it's similar to a lot of immigrants that came here. There are sort of two classes. For Koreans, a lot of the people that, again, if it wasn't golf, it was in church.
And a lot of the people in church that were considered, like, I won't say the well to do, they were on visas because they were doctors or engineers, academics. And then you have everyone else that was a Podega owner, or a dry cleaner, or a son or a lover, or something like that. So it was a very weird, too caste system in some ways. Super similar to the Indian migration story, yeah.
Yeah. And so my dad was always do better in school. But I think he saw pretty early on that I had no aptitude. So my sister was the real bookworm and straight-aid student.
It didn't mean that he wasn't demanding of getting the best grades. But I talked about it in the book that I pushed back in publishing because of the COVID-19 thing. It took a long time for me to process it. But I was so scared of my dad that I couldn't really achieve in academics because I was so scared of a punishment.
Yeah, if you're a failure, just running rampant. I just psyched myself out and I never did well in school. You grew up in what would be a DC suburb, basically, of Virginia? It's weird, though, because I spent a lot of time in Virginia, proper, because I think the south doesn't really start until you get to Richmond.
Right, yeah, yeah. And my dad had a business there. And I played a lot of tournaments down there. So I would probably go to Richmond every weekend.
That's honestly was instrumental in my life, because I got to see what American food actually really was. Now, how much is being Asian? I can't imagine you're one of 1,000 in your town. Probably more than Virginia, I wound up having a lot of Koreans.
And that's why the church is so important in so many Korean-American immigrants, because there's a huge population in Chicago. Atlanta has one. Obviously, California, as you mentioned. But the Korean population in the DC, more than Virginia area, is pretty huge.
But I just never fit in with Korean people either. And I did a fit in too well with traditional white people. You and Monica could have a real long country. Exactly.
Did you want to be white? Monica wanted to be white. Yeah. 100% with my brother.
My older brother all the time is like, my older brother's name is young. And he's like, mom and dad gave you David. You should go like him. And just the whole thing from how my brother doesn't eat a lot of Korean food, because a lot of the scarring, just being made fun of.
That's unfortunately a brutal way to grow up. Oh, yeah. I resent it, everything being Korean. And the funny thing is, by being honest about this now, I wonder if you feel the same way.
By saying how much I didn't want to be Korean back then. Today, in 2020, there will be Asians that be like, fuck you, Dave Chang, how can you say that? I'm not saying that now. I'm saying back then, I felt like I didn't want to be Korean.
Yeah. You have to emphasize that. But people aren't listening to that. I totally agree.
And I talk about it all the time on this podcast. And we have another podcast. It's a relationship one that I talk so much about these early experiences and trying to distance myself from my ethnicity so much. And yeah, there's a lot of backlash, it seems, that comes back.
But I almost think it's fear-based, I think, when I hear people responding. Because how can you argue with someone's emotional rise? You know, like you can't. And it was different then, and definitely way different for you.
I mean, it's slowly gotten better for people of different ethnicities, I think. But it's just hard. It's just hard to be different. Yeah.
It made it feel like whatever I didn't fit in was magnified, like 10x. But I ate two, you know, the customs that we had and the names. And the whole nine, it was just like, oh, how am I ever going to fit in here? Because it's not even all these other secondary tertiary things.
It's how I look. It's why I'm never going to fit in. I'll add as well. Even the Black community, you couldn't be more marginalized.
But at least in the Black community, you have all kinds of different celebrities you could point to for aspirational people who have achieved success in comedy. Dramatic actor, stars of TV shows, sports heroes. For both of you, there's really no one in the popular zeitgeist that is crushing as a Korean or an Indian. But you go like, well, it could be fine.
I could turn out to be Eddie Murphy. Yeah. You just have white people to point to. So you think you have to be as close to that as you can get in order to have any sort of success.
That's why, like, you know, parasite winning, sweeping at the Oscars was such a monumental moment for Korean people, at least in America, because they're like, holy shit. We have someone that we can root for. That's actually Korean. Yeah.
Yeah. So your brother didn't like Korean food, which I get. And you were not in that same position as him. You liked the food?
You know, it was interesting because I ate really well. Like my grandfather's side on my mom's side, they were well to do. And he was basically Japanese in the early 1900s, Japan had colonized Korea. You know, there's a lot of old wounds that maybe never will be healed from Korea's perspective.
And Korea's basically been the doorstop for Asia, for China and Japan. Anyway, like he was raised. So they took a lot of that well to do and smarts Korean men and women and basically taught them in Japan. So they basically brainwashed them.
Uh huh. To be their proxies in Korea. Yeah. And to slowly like assimilate Japanese culture back into Korea.
And he didn't like Korean food. My grandfather hated Korean food. I'm not even a Japanese food. So when I get to Japan, when I land, when I smell the food there, it feels more like home to me than when I land in Seoul.
Oh wow. Interesting. I'm a weird, I got all sorts of weird shit going on. But like, yeah, and like Korean food was something that my mom's an amazing cook.
My mother's mom is an amazing cook. My dad's side were horrible cooks. And I've always tried to tell the two grandmas, you know, a lot of what Korean food is is, I always say from a Western perspective, pretty gnarly, like kimchi smells, like very pungent and the fact that it's popular now is crazy to me because it was the same foods that I was vilified for. So my brother, who I emulated growing up, was like, I don't want anything to do with this food.
I'm never eating it. And I wanted to follow that. And I was like, oh, I also won't eat this food. And I think there's probably a three or four year stretch.
I was like, I'm not eating Korean food either. This is crap. Yeah. When I ate Korean food, it was always at my house.
I never would ever bring Korean food to school. But I do remember when kids would maybe come over and how much the next day or they came over on Friday Monday, everyone would say, oh, Dave's house smells like coo. Oh, that was the flavor. OK.
That's not what I would link kimchi to. I mean, you can't argue that it doesn't have a specific smell. I don't think the bullies are really interested in getting specific. And capturing the right octative.
Well, they shit the bet on that one. So food, I think, had an unfortunate traumatic experience from particularly Korean food as a younger kid. Well, what you did, quite often, what can be empowering for people who have been the victim of abuse is to, at some point, confront their abuser when they feel strong enough to do so. And the fact that you rejected it so much and then ultimately embraced it in such a profound and public way, I have to imagine his cathartic on some level.
100%. It's like I'm working this out with my therapist in front of everybody. Yeah. And what I'm curious to me is you went to college and went to Trinity, you studied religion.
Again, God bless you. But when you got out, you end up in Japan. What was your gateway to Japan other than Grandad? I was a horrible student, again.
So I couldn't get a job like everyone else. This is like the dot com, so I graduated in 99. And I didn't want to answer what the fuck I was going to have to do. So I literally went to the career fair.
I made a right. And it was a teaching English in Japan corporation. And I said, I want job here. And they gave it to me.
And I didn't think really anything about it. So did you speak any Japanese at that point? I don't know. I didn't speak.
And I didn't even have any you care. I just needed to tell someone, what are you doing? So I could tell them. And I didn't really think I was going to go.
You know what I mean? Like, this is something I'm going to tell people I'm doing. It'll never come. Yeah.
And then it came and then I went. And it was pretty hard. The actual teaching of the English are just being in Japan. All of that.
It was Jacksonville, Florida, but hotter and not nearly as nice. If you can say such a thing about yourself. Wow, my God. Well, well, well, that really brings it.
My entire list of where I wanted to go was like Sapporo, Tokyo, Kyoto. And they gave me the place I would never have chosen, which is a small village called Izuneetatori. And my backyard was a rice patty. Wow.
Well, again, probably awesome for five or six days. No, not that is awesome. OK. And I just struggled.
And I think that was on set. I've seen a psychiatrist since 2003. That was like, we can count pretty much pinpoint that was the first real manic episode I had where I was like, OK, like 24-cent. With Mania.
Yeah. OK. I lasted about four months. And in that time frame, though, there was one ramen shop there.
I was too nervous to go there because that's where all the local villagers would eat and congregate. And I wasn't going to go in there. And sure enough, when I said I couldn't take it anymore and I wanted to leave, I couldn't get a transfer. I'm just going to go in there.
And I've eaten ramen my entire life, but never an actual ramen shop. And I walked in. I saw all these hard-boiled eggs and bowls. And it was just like a great place.
Because you could just eat a hard-boiled egg, put some salt on it, and drink a beer, and wait for your ramen. And it was almost like a pub. Yeah. I ordered a bowl of ramen.
I only eat that once because I was so scared of going in there. And it was one of those ratatouille moments where I tasted this. I was like, holy shit, this is so good. And growing up, loving instant ramen, I didn't know that it was a real thing.
Yeah. I mean, this would sound like such a dumb ass question, but yeah, what's the most profound differences between what I've eaten and what you had there? The best way I could describe was having really bad frozen concentrate orangestries, right? And thinking about the orangestries in your entire life.
And then you get beautiful, perfect, fresh squeezed. And like, oh shit, this is what orangest is. Yeah. And I couldn't look back at it the same way.
And they're making the noodles there, I assume, right at the restaurant or? And the broth was a milky, tung-tung-tung-tung. So it was like a mulsified porky goodness. And it was awesome.
It's funny, it's like you can only connect with the odds later in life. Yeah, yeah. And probably, yeah, I wanted to drop out to go to cooking school, but my dad basically convinced me otherwise. And I was never going to fit in the corporate world, no matter how hard I tried.
So cooking was something that I wanted to do, but my dad worked his entire life effectively, so I would never work in restaurants, because he knew how hard that life was. So even though I had an inkling to do it, it's not something I ever thought I was going to actually do. So even at that time, when I was 22, I wasn't thinking that I'm going to make a profession at a cooking. That was like not it.
I was going to come back and I was going to get a job in finance. And working in food was the furthest thing from my mind when I got back to New York City. But you end up at the French Culinary Institute, so how did you end up there? I got a job for about a few months, basically being a corporate desk over.
I think I was pretty influenced by office space in the movie. I really was. And I had an existential dilemma in crisis at the age of 22. I was like, this is what people do.
Like every day you type on a keyboard, you do some stupid shit, you make some phone calls, you get yelled at, and you get dinner at your desk, and you go home, you're so tired, and you pray to God you don't have to go to work next day. It's like, this is a horrible existence. Like I can I do this? In college, I learned about this thing called Be a Negative, which is what the early Catholic theologians would think about and meditate on to get closer to what God is, because you can't know what God is, because he's an Fable, I mean, he's on the ship.
But if you say God's not this microphone, God's not this computer, God's not this cup of water, if you did that all the time, you would be able to get a little bit closer. And I was like, that's a pretty easy logic that I'm going to apply to my life. So I'm going to start to do all these things that I'm not supposed to do, almost like Georgia, Stanza, and it's going to get me a little bit closer to maybe what I want to do. And I for a year or so, I did all kinds of a weird job.
Everything that I thought I could try to do, I would do for like two or three days, and then I would quit. And I was like, you know what? I think cooking is for me, but I don't know. I know that working in this desk is not for me to fly to French Color Institute.
And were you immediately great in cooking school? Like are there prodigies? There are people that are more gifted at cooking than others, like any other field. I would say I've met a couple of people that are real geniuses in cooking, right?
But they didn't go to cooking school. But for the most part, you have to become great. And some people are going to have higher aptitude to be great. And that might be how you move into kitchen, your night skills, your precision, and all of these things.
But for the most part, when I started cooking, I was like, oh, I'm a fucking spouse. I only know one way of getting anything done, and that's throwing everything I have into a problem. That doesn't always work so well with a partner, right? And truth be told, my first partner, level one, so there's six levels in cooking school, she refused to be my partner on level two.
So she told the chefs, if I have to be David's partner, I'm in a quick school, and they said, well, you have to be David's partner. So she quit school, rather than be my partner. Oh, wow. That's a strong motive.
Yeah, yeah. That's a good idea, like one of the next I was as a human. Like I really was just a fucking mess. So what was the turning point?
You went to work for craft at some point in the middle of this? Yeah, I mean, that's another thing. I just started, I worked for John George. I was when I was in cooking school, and I just started pouring myself into the profession.
And I was like, I'm just gonna do everything. I'm gonna do everything I never used to do. I'm gonna pour myself into some study. And I just became like, infatuated with all aspects of cooking.
And like a year later, I literally didn't take a day off because I was answering phones at craft before I had opened up. On my two days off from work in Emerson Kitchen, I was like, this is the restaurant that I wanna be at. And I was like, maybe I like this, because it's not that I love it. I was just like, I can't imagine doing anything else right now.
I just poured myself into it and craft was like winning the lotto for me because the team there was that Tom Flee to assemble was like world class. And they wouldn't even accept me as a free labor. They were like, you know what, we don't need you. Thank you very much.
You suck. And we need a reservation. So I was like, you know what, I just sensed the greatness there. So I would do whatever I needed to do to get my feet into it.
If I had to answer phones, I'll do that. I did that for a few months while still finishing up cooking school until I could actually work for free. Yeah, that's how it all happened. And so many people took me under their wings and I learned so much there.
Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare. When you're at craft and then you graduate cooking school and they start letting you cook in that kitchen, is there anything that you recognize? Oh, I do have a niche here. No, it's not a niche.
It is very much a rigid caste system. You're the lowest person there. And you have to work your way up till you get to the top. And I saw very early on, my role was, I got to do whatever they tell me to do.
Right. And what I learned though was, it wasn't an aptitude. Like I wasn't actually gifted at it. But what I saw about cooking that was very appealing to me was, man, if I do this every day, I get better at it.
Right. Well, the golfing was probably a great training for this in a way. Because very much, yeah, golf is such a baby step, baby step, baby, just micro improvements over years. It taught me a lot because I'm a pretty lazy person by nature, but I get competitive as a motherfucker.
Oh, that's helpful. And golf turned me, unfortunately, into a total lunatic in terms of my competitiveness. And that's how I viewed it was, oh, for me to get to this person's position, I need to be better than this person. How am I going to get there?
When I opened up, I'm open to 2004. No one wanted to work with me, not one person. It gives you an insight to how bad I was. What do you think the people would have, if you would have invited someone to be a part of it and they said, I won't work with David for X, Y, and Z?
I can tell you because I've asked them. They're all my friends, too. You're not that good. You are never going to sue Chef.
You want to make ramen? What the fuck are you talking about? Because after I cooked for craft, I came back and went to Japan because I felt like there was unfinished business. And I wanted to work there.
And I learned a lot in Japan cooking. Living in Japan was like a life-changing experience because I learned a lot about myself, because Japan is such an expensive country, particularly food. And I had, I wouldn't say an epiphany, but I came to the realization that I could eat really well there, cheaply. And that was a weird thing.
Because back in America in 2003, if you said you wanted to go to a nice restaurant, you'd feel like food people would think you're a snob, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I would have been where people call on someone a snob.
Yeah. Because you weren't wrong. Because you couldn't eat well. The whole idea of eating well was you had fast food and then to eat a nice meal meant like some fancy French restaurant that was just exclusive to anyone else other than rich white people.
So it was really elitist. It wasn't democratized at all yet. No, not at all. So this was the weird thing that I had the realization when I was cooking in Japan.
I was like, wait, everyone's actually eating well. I ate most of my meals at convenience stores, like the 7-11s there, equivalent. Some of the best food I had were in like convenience stores, like sandwiches and noodles. I have a stereotype of Japan and the Japanese work ethic.
And I guess also through their engineering and vehicle manufacturing, which is the only field I know a lot about, there's a meticulousness to their work ethos that is evident in their products. So is that what's happening with the food? Is there like an attention to detail and meticulousness? Or is it they're using real ingredients that aren't processed like we're using here?
What was the distinguishing factor that made it all so good? They just care more. Like, have you been to Japan before? No, dying to go.
It's one of the only places to defend that I know. I haven't. I want to. It's the greatest food culture in the world in my opinion.
And everything's good. And everyone knows more about food than anyone else. And their food culture is just, it goes back like 1,000 plus years. They're restaurants that are like 400, 500 years old.
And killed. Wow. But like that all trickles down to everything in Japan is just a little bit better because they care more. They just simply care more.
And like an egg salad sandwich. Would you ever buy an egg salad sandwich at an American 7-11? I'd be terrified. No.
I would imagine it had been made a week before. Minimally. Well, the logistics there in Japan is like, they're constantly being made somewhere and being shipped to these places. So it's very fresh and it's made with delicious ingredients.
And it's amazing. Like the egg salad sandwich at a loss in convenience store is one of my top five things I will ever eat. I want to talk to you. Oh, see, now you're talking our language.
We like to eat at convenience stores. If it was delicious. Yeah. I could walk down the street and I could just buy a nikoman, which is like a steam, you know, stuff, dumpling of sorts.
And it's like 50 cents. And it's delicious. And I was like, wait, food's amazing here. And it's the cheap food that's just as good as even the McDonald's is fucking unbelievable.
Oh, wow. Oh, we need a rectangle sandwich. We need a very good chicken sandwich. We got Burger King over there.
You know what? If I go to Tokyo, I'm eating McDonald's because it's so fucking good. Like they say they still fry their fries and defat the tallow. So and they pronounce it Macu Donaldus Macu Donaldus.
McDonald's a mikodongus. Oh, wonderful. Now really quick. So I read kitchen confidential.
I mean, that book come out around 2000 ish. 2000 2001. Yeah. OK, so I read that book and I was like, oh, wow, if I had not gone into comedy, that would have been my life.
The kitchen life is a bunch of party animals, sex craze, drug laden, terrible hours. Everyone's fucking each other. I'm like, I'm in. That's my kind of culture.
Were you experiencing that craft? Did you like that, especially given the kind of cross your teas that your eyes, childhood? Was that chaos appealing? So when I first got to craft what I loved most was how serious everybody was.
It was like you entered like a surgeon's room. But the moment service ended, it was like going to a party. Right. Right.
It was work hard play hard. And also during service. And this is why I've always deemed as a healthy kitchen is when people are making fun of each other. I was like, oh, this is like perfect for me.
It's like who could hurt someone's feelings the most? This is exactly where I need to be. And you're making really delicious food. But like there's different kinds of kitchens.
I was close with Tony and he wrote about kitchen culture that was very real at that time. But it didn't exist at certain levels in my opinion. Like the restaurant, my craft, was only about food. I could have been naive, but I never really saw anything because I was always just working on the food.
Everyone was so fucking busy cooking that you couldn't do anything else. And it was pretty hardcore. There are a lot of crazy stories. I've seen a lot of crazy shit because kitchen culture thankfully has been updated.
Yeah. Yeah. OK. So where do you get the ball to start?
Momofuku. I'm probably saying the wrong as well. No, no, no, no, no, Momofuku. So again, like following the footsteps of my brother, my brother loved the almond brother.
So I loved the almond brothers. You know, Eda Peach became one of my favorite albums. And when I was studying everything before I left for Japan, like anything, you know, anything Robin became my hobby after the first trip to Japan. And I learned that the guy that created a couple noodles was named Momofukuando.
And I curse all the time. I was like, this sounds like motherfucker. That's a great name. And usually if I have a restaurant, I'll be called Momofuku and I'll have the Peach as a logo.
After Japan, I work for Daniel Balud and Andrew Kermanini at a barisade institution called Cafe Balud. And you know, at this time, I was getting better. But I didn't know what I wanted to do. Because at the time, then, if you wanted to have your own restaurant, you had to get tapped by the chef.
So for example, if I spent enough time with Daniel Balud in one of his patrons decided, hey, I want to open a restaurant in Boston, do you have someone that I could hire? And that's how you get a job. Oh, no, she got that. Yeah.
And I was working at Cafe Balud. And I was like, probably if there was like 16 cooks in my ranking, I was like 15. Yeah. And I was like, I'm never going to be better than everyone else.
Around that time, I had my first manic experience on the depressive side. OK. Yeah. And things were going south of my family as well.
And then all in, I was also working like 14. I don't know what, 14, 16 hours, times, six days a week is. But it was like a crazy amount of work. And I just was like losing my mind.
And my mom's been in cancer for 24 years. My brother was in the midst of suing my dad. And all this crazy shit was going on. And my reality was melting away.
And I was not in a good place. So that was another reason why I had to leave. And one of the reasons I started Momo Fuku was I reached a point. I was like, fuck it.
Who cares? I mean, using that sort of that equation of what's the worst thing that can happen. Right? I might just chill myself anyway.
So who cares? So I fuck this up. Who cares? Well, can I ask what were the depths of that period?
And did you end up having to quit the job? Were you unable to work? How destructive did that spell get? You know, it's funny.
It's like throughout my life, I feel like I've wanted to ask for help. And even times I think I've asked it in college or even high school. And high school is pretty traumatic for me, too. Like I was a whole other like I went to the private school that produced the last two Supreme Court justices.
Oh. Yeah. Yeah. You went to George Tom Prep.
Yeah, I got to imagine some of your classmates, parents, were like senators and shit. So it wasn't a fun time for me. So I didn't really fit in. And I remember in high school asking for help.
And people were like, you're fine. And then I never asked my parents, hey, I think I need to see a therapist or a psychiatrist. Like that doesn't exist in an Asian-American household. Right.
You just don't do it. You know what the remedy is? Stop crying. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Tough enough. Yet any help is weakness, right?
Exactly. Yeah. And the whole idea that you need someone to talk to you or get medication on that was just so foreign. That was never going to happen.
So when I was like 26, that's where I reached a point where I was like, fuck it. And did you self-medicate? Oh my god. Yeah, there we go.
I mean, like, man, I was really good at it. Yeah. Yeah. Really good.
But when your baseline is feeling like a negative six and a drug, even in its worst condition, you can take you to it too. You're going to pick that option, in my experience. Yeah. And because my industry also was like, even after college, you go out every night.