Medium Raw

Because David Chang is an interesting guy doing interesting things, and because, unusually for a chef with a lot to lose, he’s both articulate and impulsively undiplomatic, people who get paid to write about food, or blog about food, or make television about interesting people are constantly coming round and poking him with a stick—in the not-unreasonable assumption that something quotable and, hopefully, even controversial will come tumbling out of his mouth. An off-the-cuff and only half-serious quip that he “hate[s] San Francisco—all they do is put fuckin’ figs on a plate” can be easily conflated into weeks of blog posts and newspaper articles. Actually, with Chang, you don’t even have to poke him. Just wait around long enough and he’s pretty sure to drop a soundbite that will piss off somebody somewhere. Column inches, especially for print food writers, are harder and harder to fill with something “new” or relevant these days. As drearily limiting as writing porn is for someone who enjoys adjectives, and difficult as hell for those looking to keep up with the many-headed, quick-reacting blogosphere. For a food writer usually consigned to matters no more exciting than cupcakes, Chang-watching has become something of a one-man Gold Rush, a potentially life-giving font of hipness. There are those who grudgingly admire the guy and look to his next move to show them what to write about or talk about (“The Next Big Thing!”), and those who sense the injury just beneath the surface of Chang’s public persona, the recklessness—and hurt—and want to write about that. And those like me, who straight-up love the very fact that he exists—but also can’t help trying to psychoanalyze him.

“Why does everybody want to get inside his skull?” asks his friend and coauthor Peter Meehan. Though he knows the answer.

Unlike just about any other chef in the public eye, Chang wears his fears and his most deeply felt loathings right on his sleeve, for everybody to see.

What Chang would have you believe is that he really deserves neither the acclaim nor the success. He’s been saying this to journalists quite disarmingly for some time, repeatedly pointing out his relatively minimal qualifications and experience—and insistently comparing himself (unfavorably) to other chefs. To what degree this is a pose is debatable. I’d maintain that just because he says it often doesn’t mean it’s not true.

“I didn’t want any of this,” he says. A statement, conversely, I do not believe for a second.

He’s a former junior golf champion, after all, who quit the sport completely at age thirteen because, he’s said, “If I can’t beat the brains out of everyone, I don’t want to play. It’s not fun otherwise.”

That doesn’t sound like somebody who doesn’t want things. “Golf fucked me up in the head,” he says, by way of explanation. We’re talking about God over skewers of chicken ass at Yakitori Totto on the West Side.

We arrived early, because they don’t take reservations before seven at this traditional, Japanese-style yakitori joint—and because they tend to run out of the good bits early: chicken heart, chicken ass, chicken “oyster,” chicken skin. You don’t want to miss that stuff. We’re drinking beer and talking shit and I’m doing a very bad job of what everybody else is trying to do—which is to figure out what David Chang is all about.

He was born into a Korean family of observant Christians, the youngest of four kids.

In his book, he describes his relationship with his father—and the beginnings of his relationship with food—thus: “I grew up eating noodles with my dad…On nights when it was just him and me, he’d make me eat sea cucumber along with the noodles. And the weirdness of eating them would be offset by the warm afterglow of pride I felt in being an adventurous eating companion to him.” His father, who had first worked in restaurants after emigrating from Korea, warned him to stay away from the business.

It is my theory that the fact that Chang attended Jesuit High School and then Trinity College, majoring in religion, is of vital significance to the emerging science of Changology.

“For me…it wasn’t…enough,” he says cryptically. “I used to give a shit about God…but if God were to exist, I’d rather burn in hell. If he failed, he failed by putting the message in human hands. I guess I’m pretty pissed at God. The Crusades…Pol Pot…Hitler…Stalin. The same time all these terrible things were happening, people were bowing their heads and thanking God before they ate.”

Which begs the question: If you don’t believe in God, why study religion?

“I just needed to figure out…I just wanted to know,” he says, draining his beer a little sadly. “You know, I always thought you can never disprove faith. The Christian God seemed flawed. I mean, you only had one chance to make it into heaven.”