Medium Raw

“Front-of-the-house meeting. The servers show up on time and no one is hung over or bitching…

“I eat a bowl of rice and kimchi and maybe some eggs—or whatever is for lunch staff meal. Lunch service, the trailer comes in and I don’t have to say anything to him. All I want is for the cook to season properly, to label things, and condense his mise-en-place. The cook never responds with a ‘no’—just hauls ass. Everyone has a sharp knife and there is no attitude. No one burns themselves. Servers don’t fuck up the tables, and I don’t have to yell…

“I step downstairs to work on new dishes or butcher or clean veg. That’s so relaxing. Working on a dish with those in the inner circle at the restaurant and via e-mail. I give some to everyone to taste…

“I get no e-mails that say, ‘Dave, can we talk for a bit’ (translation: ‘Dave: I want a raise,’ or ‘I quit,’ or ‘I’m unhappy’).

“I stop by Ko and Noodle Bar, make sure everything is copacetic, everything tastes the way it should, every station is clean, every cook trying to find a way to make their prep better and faster and more efficient…I can see them going over their mise-en-place over and over again to make sure it’s right, I can see them asking themselves, ‘Is there a better way to do this?’ I don’t have to question anyone’s integrity or commitment.

“Family meal is a perfect spread of fried chicken, salad, lemonade. The most important meal of the day. I shoot the shit with the boys…

“Get ready for dinner service. No VIPs, but we’re busy. I stand in the corners of the various restaurants and watch. I avoid service at Ko like the plague, stop by Noodle Bar and see them hustling and tinkering, see a line of people waiting and see happy faces. I keep my hat down low so I don’t have to talk to anyone.

“No equipment breaks, and the air-conditioning or the heat is working, there are no plumbing issues and the walk-in is fuckin’ cold. No problems.

“I walk downstairs and see the new trail or new hire doing knife work, and they don’t realize that I’m watching, and they do it the right way—which means the long and stupid way (which is cooking with integrity)…cooking or prepping something, with no one watching, realizing there are a million shortcuts but taking the hard road [without] any glory or satisfaction from one’s peers. I see this and walk back upstairs, see that the restaurants don’t need me at all, that they run better during service without me. That makes me smile.

“I walk back to Ssäm and Milk and stand in the corner and watch one of my cooks berate another cook for not pulling their weight. The level of accountability is so high that I can bolt at around ten p.m. on a Saturday night with some other chefs who maybe skipped work early, grab a drink with a friend or my girlfriend…maybe a late night of drinking. A bar with a great jukebox. A night of bourbon.

“Basically? A night of no problems and where everybody is busting their ass and doing their jobs. I don’t have to yell.”

Finished with his reverie, he adds, “This used to happen. No more…This is more hypothetical.”

As Chang’s answer has almost everything to do with work and little with play, a few days later I ask Peter Meehan what he thinks makes David Chang really and truly happy—if the wheels can ever stop turning, he relaxes, takes a deep breath of free air, nothing on his mind.

“I’ve seen it,” Meehan says. “It’s there. But he doesn’t pursue it. His happiness is not a priority in his life. It’s an incidental benefit, but he’s not dead to it. Maybe, if someday he realizes that happiness can help him achieve his goals, he’ll give a shit about it.”

The waiter at Yakitori Totto comes over and reminds us we have to be out by seven. They need the table. Chang looks out the window, then back at me. “My great regret is I can’t get drunk with my cooks anymore.

“I’ll die before I’m fifty,” he says, matter-of-factly.

18 My Aim Is True

Spanish is the language of the early morning in Manhattan. At the bagel place where I get my coffee, everybody, customers and counter help alike, are papi or flaco or hermano—or addressed by country of origin. Doesn’t matter if Spanish is even your language. At this hour, it’s what’s spoken. It’s how things are done. The Bengali shop owner, the few American suits—everybody addresses each other in one form or another of Spanish. That’s who’s up and working this time of the morning and who owns this part of the day: the doormen from the nearby apartment buildings, the porters, the nannies on the way to work, the construction guys sent out on a coffee run, the dishwashers and early-arriving restaurant help, they greet each other with the familiar nicknames. If they don’t recognize a face, they ask, in Spanish, “Qué país?”