Photo from Momofuku website
What a glorious afternoon! I went to David Chang's book signing this afternoon at Microsoft with my friend Michele. I guess when the uber chefs make the rounds with their book tour, many of them stop at MS campus. I missed Eric Ripert last spring. David was my first chance to check out...
He started with an informal speech about how his background and how he came to be where he is now, then Q&A, then signing. He was very causal, almost an "ah shucks, I have to talk" attitude and seems like no prep at all. I liked it though. He was very "rough" around the edges and told it like it is. He managed to get his "fuck" words in a couple of times. He is notorious for the f word in his interviews. I loved every minute of it!
He was very modest to how successful he has become. He seems embarassed by the fact he has a restaurant group. He blamed it all to mistakes and how failure mentality drives what he has built to date. He says that he works like it will go away at any point, so you have to just do what drives you. I liked his story about his first restaurant Momofuku Noodle Bar and how they were a month away from being closed for good so he and his partner said fuck this and started cooking the food they wanted to cook. Up until that point, they had menu of what they thought people wanted and should be served a noodle shop! Now his menu at his various restaurants SSam Bar, Ko, Milk Bar, are french and Asian techniques, lots of Korean influences. Just doing what they love and inspired by, serving high quality food at low prices. He was raised in "America", classically trained, and in a Korean family so his food seems to be all of these, combined with the "chef" hat and prob influences from his bad ass cooking friends and ideas. He just makes what he likes combined with a eat local/sustainable mentality. I actually think some of the Korean Taco truck could have been inspired by him.
I haven't tried his food yet. Last time I went to New York, it was on the list but we couldn't find it. :( It is on my list now for future. He is not very veggie friendly so I'll prob have to spend most time at Milk bar.
So how can I be such a fan without trying his food. It's not the awards and the celebrity, and definitely not that he is the "it" chef. It's his attitude for food, his cooking, life, and his story. It's great to see a fellow Korean American living the life like me and able to execute what he had, in the way he has. I admire it but I'm also envious and it inspires to get my but moving. It inspires me to not worry about the failures that prevents me from getting my stuff out there but also just doing what we like and hoping for someone to like it too. He is so cool and started so young! He was pretty cute too!
His success seems to have taken him away from the day to day and create aspects of food, to more of a reluctant "manager" of people and business. He talked briefly about his health and how a forced hospitalization gave him the refocus he needed. He even felt his cookbook was a bit premature with 5 years under his belt.
Well...I bought his book, he signed it "Good luck with your culinary career". I hope I can have a culinary career soon. I'll try some recipe and post.
Well, we wanted to end the day by going to the Baguette Box but they were closed so we went to Lucky Pho (that's another blog entry) and then had a Freddo at Peets.
I'm so inspired today, I hope I can bottle this feeling!
