Medium Raw

“I’m a geek of culinary history,” he says. At Ssäm, he keeps a gallery of photographs of chefs he respects on the wall for his cooks to memorize. “A chef comes in? I know.” (And he wants his cooks to know, too.) He mentions no-longer-living legends like Jean-Louis Palladin and Gilbert Le Coze like some talk about Golden Age baseball players, and asks me, “Do you have any idea who went through Bouley’s kitchens? Everybody!”

He observes that the recent trend away from white tablecloth, crystal glassware, and classic high-end service and haute cuisine is both good and bad. “Good because of the proliferation of restaurants that are not fine-dining. But it’s a double-edged sword—because that erodes the training ground that produces better cooks. And what restaurants need,” he stresses, “is cooks.”

“But, dude! It’s you killing it,” I could easily have pointed out. If anybody has pointed out the way out of fine dining—created a viable and worthwhile alternative to the old model—it’s Chang. After seeing the success of Ssäm and Ko, why would any chef want to weigh down their operation with all the bullshit of stemware and linen service? However he might feel, Chang—if only by example—is helping to kill what he most loves. He’s making his heroes—the names on the cookbooks on his office shelves—obsolete.

Above all others, he seems to respect Alex Lee, the one-time chef of restaurant Daniel. The standards and level of performance he saw there during brief visits made a huge impression on Chang. It’s a template he constantly measures himself against—and he’s never satisfied with the comparison. That Lee, in his late thirties, with three children, recently went to work in a country club was an understandable move for a family man facing forty. But it was a strangely devastating moment for David.

“I see that, and I think, I’ll never be that talented—or have the work ethic of this maniac—and he’s calling it quits?!?!”

Given his own repeated claims to mediocrity as a chef and as a cook, I ask him what he thinks he’s good at.

“I’ve got a weird ability to think what the other person I work with is thinking,” he says, and when I ask whether he’s a better manager or a cook, he says, “The best cooks are like the pretty girl in high school. Gifted. Born to cook. They never had to develop other skills.” He thinks for a moment. “I mean…Larry Bird was a terrible coach.”

Which leaves me with the definite impression that, in his heart of hearts, Chang would have greatly preferred to be a virtuoso talent like Larry Bird (and a crappy manager)—instead of whatever it is he turned out to be.

We’ve wiped out three beers and a fair amount of chicken parts. A cup in front of him bristles with bare skewers. Chang sighs and sits back in his chair.

“Everything has changed in five years. The only things that stay the same are the platonic ideals. Love. Truth. Loyalty. It was the prettiest thing when nothing is expected of you.”

But everything is expected of David Chang these days. In only five years, Momofuku Noodle Bar begat Momofuku Ssäm, Momofuku Ko, Milk Bar—and now, moving midtown to take over the hotel space once occupied by Geoffrey Zakarian’s Town, the open-any-minute Má Pêche. The Momofuku cookbook (at time of our meeting) is hitting the shelves any second with book tour to follow—and with it all come attacks of unexplained deafness, psychosomatic paralysis, the mystery headache. When will enough be enough? Chang talks about taking a year off.

When I ask Meehan about this later, he scoffs: “A year? No fucking way. He’s too ambitious and has too many people he’s accountable for. [He’s] like those touring juggernauts—like the Grateful Dead—there’s a vagabond tent city of people relying on those tours for their livelihood. If and when David walks away from Momofuku, it’ll be for health reasons, or because he’s leaving the kitchen for good.” On the other hand, he considers, “If your hero is Marco Pierre White and you listen to enough Neil Young, there’s significant appeal to burning out instead of fading away, right?”

It’s so easy to see or hear about what torments David Chang that I have to ask…what’s a good day for him?

Chang looks up and away, as if trying to remember something so remote he’s not sure anymore if it ever existed.

“I get up in the morning and it’s not a business meeting…I get to go to the market, say a Saturday, early enough so I can talk to the farmers and beat the crowds and the rest of the chefs who descend on Union Square. If I go later, a forty-five-minute excursion turns into a three-hour bullshit talkfest.

“I get to the restaurants and everything is clean, the sidewalks are clean, the awnings glisten with water…I run through all the restaurants, make sure the walk-ins are tight and all the day mise-en-place is clean and great. The cooks are pushing themselves, there’s a sense of urgency throughout the late morning and evening. The low-boys [refrigerators] are clean.