Let’s move away from impeachment talk for a moment. But, in the theme of peach, Chef David Chang’s memoir is just as sweet and satisfying.
If you’re of a certain age group (mine, age 47), you probably grew up on a steady feed of Just Like Mom. The Canadian television game show ran for five seasons on CTV (1980-85). It was hosted by a husband and wife and the premise was a spin-off formula of The Newlywed Show. Except, how well did children and mothers know each other? After a round of tell-tale questions, the kids did battle in the kitchen, baking chocolate chip cookies with wieners and Coca Cola, marshmallows and mustard. The kids had a full arsenal of barf-inducing ingredients that they could utilize and then dear ol’ mom had to guess which cookie their lovely little child made. It was seriously great, addictive TV. The kids walked away with big swag from Chuck E. Cheese, Playmobil, Robin Hood flour and for the luckiest grand prize winners: a trip to Walt Disney World! For chocolate chip wiener cookies!
Nowadays, food television is a simmering 24/7 monster. Martha, Nigella, the Barefoot Contessa. We love them so, don’t we? Their voices are like whipped frosting and as soothing as a simmering soup. Even if that soup is simmering on a burner on their TV studio. It’s just as easy to name 10 chefs as it is to call-out 10 actors. The kitchen has come a long way since the Bam! of Emeril and the *$#^%$## of Chef Ramsay.
From the cutthroat Kids Baking Championship to Top Chef Canada to Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, the fascination with food is real and insatiable. Maybe your introduction to David Chang was through his Ugly Delicious docuseries on Netflix. Or the PBS series, Mind of a Chef (which was narrated by Bourdain). If you want another big, selfish serving of him, Eat a Peach delivers.
The book: Eat a Peach by David Chang with Gabe Ulla (Clarkson Potter/Penguin Random House, 2020)
The beer: This one’s easy: Chang! Chang (ช้าง)is the Thai word for elephant, and the beer that is synonymous with Thailand will involve a 19-hour flight to access it. In lieu: Stanley Park Brewing’s Sunsetter Peach Wheat Ale. As a reasonable facsimile: McAuslan’s Apricot Wheat Ale.
The who: Foodie evangelists, rabid fans of Momofuku, chefs in the wings, galley staff, entrepreneurs of all sorts, Food Network devotees
The part you’ve been waiting for:
Chang is the first to admit that he’s an “egomaniac with low self-confidence.” He signed a daunting 10-year lease on his first restaurant at age 26. The control and numbing repetition found in cooking was his North Star, though his kitchen climate was often fuelled with rage and conflict.
He found easy company in kitchens full of the typical misfits, ex-cons, alcoholics and new immigrants. The stress was constant and with zero work/life balance, Chang’s mental health was in a pressure cooker.
He grew up in northern Virginia under the watchful eye of classic tiger parents, waterboarded by religion. Embarrassed by the foreign smell of his mother’s Korean cooking, he found solace in Hungry Man dinners, microwave burritos and ramen.
Many will be surprised to learn that Chang was destined to be a golf pro. He won back-to-back Virginia State championships at age 9 but then slowly unraveled by high school. He attended Jesuit boarding school—a likely path as his sister had become a missionary in Mongolia and most of his extended family sold Bibles or worked in Bible-adjacent businesses.
After a flop attempt at a corporate job Chang became a reservationist at Craft restaurant. His first glamorous kitchen job was prepping mirepoix (finely, uniformly diced celery, carrots and onions), learning his chops from PBS cooking shows in his rare downtime, and later, the French Culinary Institute in New York. In 2004, mirepoix nailed, he opened Momofuku (“lucky peach”) Noodle Bar in New York City and the foodie world scrambled and pulled hair to get a reservation.
There’s no spoiler here. Chang was suicidal and teetering. His recklessness took on many forms: downhill skiing through trees (on purpose), stepping off curbs into live traffic and finally, collapsing into a giant glass table on New Year’s Eve 2000 after a potent intake of booze, drugs and self-doubt.
Chang’s journey is monumental. Some might crinkle their nose and think he’s too cocky, too dude. But—his accolades and resume! He deserves to be a braggy blowhard! At one point, early in his career trajectory, his totally monthly responsibility between rent and loan payments alone was $47,000US. With every new restaurant opening under his brand (there are 14 now, in Australia, Las Vegas, LA, New York and Toronto), success was countered by bouts with shingles, panic attacks and paranoia.
It came from all fronts—the scrutiny and evaluation of performance. His goal was to introduce Asia’s “classless dining” concept to mainstream America—but he had to battle the bloggers, inspectors and fussy palates of cross-armed diners every step of the way. He wooed them with casual pork buns and poularde en vessie (a whole chicken stuffed with foie gras and truffles placed inside a pig’s bladder).
Christina Tosi, founder and owner of Milk Bar, Momofuku’s sister bakery, ate up every headline with her cereal milk panna cotta. It tastes “exactly like the milk that’s left at the bottom of the bowl when you finish all the cornflakes.” Tosi’s “compost cookies” became a legend. (*Note to my mom: Can you make these when we are permitted to visit again?? See what I did there? I put the “Mom” in Momofuku.)
If you’re expecting to have uncontrollable snack urges while reading this, you probably won’t. There’s actually very little food talk. Yes, everything surrounds food and the building of Chang’s empire but it’s a memoir that let’s you hang onto the tails of the chef’s whites and be rather glad to be on the receiving end of the kitchen.
For anyone who has entertained thoughts of having a go at it, this industry is designed to kill you, slowly. Cribbing a format established by Jerry Saltz’s How to be an Artist, Chang provides his own sage 33 guiding principles to be a good chef.
Love him or loathe him, you can’t deny the monumental success of the Momofuku brand and Chang’s personal resilience. His story is wholly empowering and will underdogs and visionaries. Chang confessed to a “99% failure rate” in his life because he was defeated and unsuccessful so many times. However, when you’re that unsuccessful, what do you have to lose?
If you love Eat a Peach, put these books on your NEXT list:
Anything and everything by Anthony Bourdain, especially Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
I Hear She’s a Real Bitch by Jenn Agg. She’s the force behind Toronto’s Black Hoof, Cocktail Bar, Rhum Corner and Agrikol. It’s a saucy and authentic tell-all for the Toronto set.
I can go on: Comfort Food for Break-ups: The Memoir of a Hungry Girl by Marusya Bociurkiw, An Embarrassment of Mangoes by Ann Vanderhoof…
Okay. I’ll stop.
Alphabet Soup 