Medium Raw

Though he has said he “hates” San Francisco—and San Francisco chefs—neither is true. Ask him to mention chefs he really admires, who he thinks are doing important work, and he invariably names David Kinch, Jeremy Fox, and Corey Lee. He will hear no evil spoken of Alice Waters, worships Thomas Keller, and hangs with Chris Cosentino. He’s admitted envying the same Bay Area “figs on a plate” he’s claimed to hold in contempt.

He’s aware of the contradictions, maybe bemused by the fact that he’s just as much at war with himself as with anybody else, bemoaning the lack of order and discipline and high standards in kitchens on one hand and, moments later, regretting the passing of the time when “the funniest motherfucker in the kitchen” was a hero. “That doesn’t exist anymore…” he complains. “But, David,” I say, “you would have fired the funniest guy in the kitchen for not being serious enough about your fucking standards.”

He charges on nonetheless. “Take away Keller and a handful of others and there’s nobody producing serious cooks,” he says—before admiringly mentioning the story of a cook who “chops off a fingertip—they cauterize it on the flattop.” I am forced to remind him that this is a practice they would probably take a dim view of at the French Laundry.

“I hate that cooking has turned white-collar,” says a man who knows full well that, with every day and every new restaurant, he moves farther and farther away from ever working the line again.

So…whom does he like? “I don’t talk to anybody,” he confesses sadly. And I almost believe him.

Then he admits, reluctantly, that he’s actually got a few friends. Peter Meehan, the writer and journalist and coauthor of his cookbook, is a friend. From what I’ve seen, Meehan, a smart and decent guy, appears to serve as Chang’s thermostatic regulator, his consigliere. Someone he can turn to and ask, “Is this a good idea?” or “Is this good for me?” and get an honest answer.

Wylie Dufresne, the heroically innovative chef-owner of WD-50, is a friend. Chang calls him his mentor. “He lives close. He’s like an older brother.” Dufresne is always spoken of with both affection and respect. You get the impression that if you were to complain about so much as an appetizer at WD-50 in Chang’s presence, he’d never speak to you again.

The name of Ken Friedman—owner of the wildly successful Spotted Pig gastro-pub, the bar The Rusty Knot, and an expanding bundle of other establishments—comes up. After a storied career in the music industry, Friedman has had a similarly fast and stellar rise in the restaurant business. Chang seems to look on the way he’s handled his life with a mixture of kinship, admiration, and envy.

“He’s lived the most ridiculously good life…he [seems to have] just bumbled his way through. And a good guy.”

Dave Arnold, the head of the French Culinary Institute’s Culinary Technology department, theorist, and advisor to cutting-edge chefs, is also a friend. (“Dave Chang + Dave Arnold = Happy Chang,” says Meehan.)

Asked for other examples of happy-making Chang activities, Meehan mentions beer, lots of steamed crustaceans—and an impassioned argument over New England transcendentalism as an effective palliative to the pressures of empire.

Chang describes himself as unhealthily obsessed with a hockey player, defenseman Rod Langway of the Capitals, because, he says, he was one of the last to play the game without a helmet. There is, perhaps, an important metaphor there for amateur Changologists seeking to sum up the young chef ’s career.

Peter Meehan says, “The most important thing about David is…that…restlessness, the willingness to throw it all overboard and start again, the drive to always do better, that there’s a palpable, actual dynamism to his places, which is rarer than rare.”

Regretful, I think, about the limited time he spent at Café Boulud and Craft, Chang idealizes the great New York kitchens of Lespinasse, Le Cirque, Gramercy Tavern, Le Bernardin, Daniel—places where entire generations of chefs grew up and learned their craft.

“Christian Delouvrier…I would have been miserable as fuck working for him. But there’s something romantic about it as a cook.”

Longingly—like a kid with his nose pressed to the glass—he looks back at the superheroes of previous generations of cooking. In an amazing e-mail, he described in elegiac terms a cooking event in Copenhagen, where he got to watch the great Albert Adrià at work.

“Albert is all fun and games until we get to the kitchen and he turns into a maniac. He puts on a chef coat for the first time in over eight months (porter shirt), explains why high gastronomy is dead to him…I think three hours went by as I watched him work, his brain churning away…What was sad and beautiful was that we were watching what will probably be the last time he cooks, like watching Michael Jordan retire…He plated everything solo, the whole room, guests…cooks…chefs, watch in reverence. And it was fucking delicious.”