By Allison Wallis

1. David Chang Peachy Keen
2. David Chang Peach Mart
3. David Chang Peach Mart

US chef David Chang of Momofuku and Ugly Delicious fame bares all in his new memoir Eat a Peach, out on 8 September. Giving an up-close and personal account of navigating success, and failure, in the modern restaurant world, the celebrity chef and Netflix star shares his highs and lows of nearly two decades in the profession - all while tackling his demons, and all in the pursuit of.

David Chang’s memoir Eat a Peach is a book about disability, but it is not a disability memoir. A disability memoir, in my opinion, requires that an author be aware that he is disabled. I found myself continually wishing that someone would step in to tell the author that a community of people with bipolar and mental health disabilities exists and an even larger community of disabled people.

David Chang is the chef and founder of Momofuku. Called one of “the most influential people of the 21st century” by Esquire, David has appeared on numerous television shows, and was the first chef to be featured on the Emmy-award winning PBS television show, “The Mind of a Chef.” His cookbook, Momofuku, is a New York Times bestseller. In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan’s East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen. David Chang knows ramen noodles. His Momofuku restaurant empire is known for signature ramen dishes. It's appropriate that he focused the first issue of his new food journal, 'Lucky Peach,' on the.

This vital missing piece loomed large throughout the book.

Chang recounts growing up with perfectionist parents, and the pressure his father put on him to become a young golf phenom. Chang lost his edge at golf when he hit puberty and his body changed. The author’s lifelong attempts to please his father are an undercurrent that runs through the book

I graduated from the Culinary Institute of America a few years after Chang finished culinary school. Many of my friends at school would take the train into New York City on the weekend to eat at Chang’s restaurant Momofuku. I never joined them, because Chang’s reputation preceded him. As a mostly vegetarian, I was not going to spend the small amount of cash I had at a place with a motto of “Fuck Vegetarians.”

I worked in restaurants for the same reason Chang did. We both had a background in finance. I was looking for a community and needed an outlet for my creative side. That community, however, was only there for me when I was healthy. As my disability progressed but before my diagnosis, I started missing work. Once I became dizzy and grazed my cheek on a hot sheet pan. Another night towards the end of a double shift I fainted and knocked my head against the Hobart mixer bowl. I was not given compassion; instead, I was threatened with termination. The restaurant industry widely welcomes people with mental health disabilities. It shuns the physically disabled and chronically ill.

I know of two people who use wheelchairs and work in restaurants. I know of no one who uses a cane or braces, or who has a chronic illness. I’ve never seen data, but I’d imagine the numbers of people who claim physical disability or chronic illness and have restaurant careers are infinitesimally small.

I wasn’t dealing with substance abuse and bipolar like Chang. Restaurants provided temporary refuge and escape from my quickly disintegrating body and the after-effects of a rough childhood, but in the long term, that work made my problems worse.

I finally found the community I was looking for after I left restaurants for good.

Chang recounts confusion in describing his therapist, who withheld his official diagnosis for years, only recently confirming it. As someone who was misdiagnosed for years, I can empathize with the feelings he may have been experiencing: the nagging sensation that there was something that needed to be uncovered about yourself. How would Chang’s working life have been different with a diagnosis? Would his new self-awareness have tempered his legendary rage and the guilt that followed? Would he have had better relationships with his employees and customers?

Chang’s account of sexism in the restaurant industry raised some doubts for me, as I find it highly improbable that any man who has run a professional kitchen could have been unaware of the rampant, industry-wide sexism and abuse.

He recounts multiple instances of behaving in an abusive manner toward his employees, including describing how “the slightest error or show of carelessness from a cook could turn me into a convulsing, raging mass. The only thing that could snap me out of my fits was punching a wall or a steel countertop.”

The book is chock-full of Chang screaming at and berating his employees, of outbursts of physical anger. Yet, when describing his role as a male chef, he writes, “I pride myself on my empathetic abilities, especially when it comes to other cooks and chefs.” He writes, “The distress of being ostracized and derided as an Asian American had tortured and motivated me for much of my career, and yet I hadn’t connected my own struggles to the way women of all ethnicities were feeling in the workplace.” Chang’s memoir relays a similar disconnect about the larger context when it comes to disability.

As I finished Eat a Peach I hoped that Chang might get an introduction to the disability community. He comes close to realizing the need for systemic change, recognizing that, “The mental and physical toll of working in restaurants is corrosive. It will take generations to undo the harm and build an industry that is equitable for all people of all genders, races, ethnicities, sexualities and beliefs. We need to be responsible for one another.”

I last worked in a restaurant kitchen in 2006, and afterward I spent a very long time grieving the loss of that life. The hardest part of that grieving was coming to terms with how I allowed myself to be treated: the pats on the ass, the too-close encounter in the walk-in, the constant sexual jokes, the having to work twice as hard as any of the men in order to prove myself. I destroyed my body in the process. I wish I could visit seventeen-year-old Allison. I wish I could help her realize her worth.
__

Allison Wallis is a writer and disability rights advocate. She lives in Hawai’i with her family and writes about life with rare medical conditions and disability.

This Blog essay is part of our September 2020 special focus on Experiences of Disability. Read our guest-edited special issue of the magazine for more.

• I’m curious about how you would help 17-year-olf Allison realize her worth. Thank you for pointing out the disconnects in this memoir.

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Thursday, June 23, 2011

By Angela Carone, Maureen Cavanaugh

Above: The first issue of Chang's new magazine 'Lucky Peach' is devoted to ramen noodle dishes.

Aired 6/23/11 on KPBS Midday Edition

David Chang knows ramen noodles. His Momofuku restaurant empire is known for signature ramen dishes. It's appropriate that he focused the first issue of his new food journal, 'Lucky Peach,' on the Japanese noodle dish. We'll talk with Chang about food, television, and experimentation.

David Chang knows ramen noodles. His Momofuku restaurant empire is known for signature ramen dishes. It's appropriate that he focused the first issue of his new food journal, 'Lucky Peach,' on the Japanese noodle dish. We'll talk with Chang about food, television, and experimentation.

Guest:

David Chang is a New York chef-restaurateur. He's also the editor of a new food journal called 'Lucky Peach' published by McSweeney's.

Read Transcript

CAVANAUGH: Why do Americans settle for mediocre food? This conversation is one of the attractions of air new glossy food magazine from one of America's most innovative chefs, David Chang. He's created the Momofuku restaurant in New York is out with the latest issue of lucky peach. Hi David.

CHANG: How you doing?

CAVANAUGH: Congratulations.

CHANG: Thank you very much. It's been a crazy thing happened.

CAVANAUGH: I understand you were in San Diego earlier this week. I gotta ask you, where did you eat?

CHANG: I wanted to check out a bunch of places, but we didn't really have time to eat anything. We had to rush back to LA. I used to go to San Diego a lot. My brother used to live out there for many years. It's been a while. So I don't really know exactly where, but I just -- I have to go check out San Diego.

CAVANAUGH: I'm so upset!

CHANG: I know it. I'm so bummed. I thought we'd be able to at least --

CAVANAUGH: Nothing?

CHANG: My friend, chef Tony DiSalvo has a restaurant, and to just check out the food scene there. But I haven't had the chance.

CAVANAUGH: Let's talk lucky peach. First explain the title.

CHANG: Lucky peach means -- Momofuku, the name of our restaurant in New York also translates roughly in Japanese to lucky peach.

CAVANAUGH: I see. You also created an iPhone app called lucky peach, which makes a lot of sense in today's media world. Why did you go with a magazine?

CHANG: We had worked with McSweeney's, the publishers based out of San Francisco. Dave Eggers is the head of it. And we worked with Chris Ying, and they had published a 300 page or more, a very, very thick volume of a newspaper called the panorama. And we helped with their section on ramen. And as we were sort of filming and getting everything ready for the app, we just thought that there were a lot of things that might not make -- anything that got edited out, we felt that, wow, some things might be better told in written form instead of with someone else's voice. We wanted to create something, not just old school media, but something you could read on its own or as an accompaniment to the iPhone app.

CAVANAUGH: You are so good on TV and videos of everybody's doing a TV cooking show. Why didn't you decide to go that route?

CHANG: I don't know. I guess reality TV wasn't necessarily something I wanted to do. I wanted to focus on something that, if I was gonna do TV, it needed to be educational. I needed to support the restaurants and fund research and development for the restaurants. I think going on TV just for TV's sake was not why I became a cook.

CAVANAUGH: Uh-huh.

CHANG: If I was gonna do anything that was in front of a camera, how educational. So that I could at least go to bed at night and feel good about myself, or try to.

CAVANAUGH: You just dedicated the first issue of lucky peach to a dish that's close to your heart, the Japanese noodle dish, ramen. You are a true advocate for this dish. What will readers learn about ramen if they pick up this first issue of lucky peach?

CHANG: Well, I think they'll learn about a food culture is massive in another country. And that obsession in that country is similar and akin to, say, the pizza and barbecue craze you have in America. And I think that there's this under current at least among chefs and cooks and a lot of people wherever I go, oh, I wish we had a ramen place or I wish I knew more about ramen. So we thought it would be a good jumping off spot for -- to talk about food in general and to educate people about ramen in English. There's plenty of books about ramen in Japan. There's monthly magazines about ramen. But it's a food group that people know quite a bit about because of instant ramen, but they don't know the history behind it, why they're eating it.

CAVANAUGH: I see. I also want to bring up the fact that you did a little acting turn on HBO this Sunday on the show, Treme. How did that come about?

David Chang Peachy Keen

CHANG: I would do anything for David Simon.

CAVANAUGH: Okay.

CHANG: I think that what he does and his views and philosophies about the world I would -- I just agree with, and I think that the wire was just a fantastic thing. And the first season of Treme was so great that I couldn't say no. I never thought that I'd be a character on a TV show. But -- initially, I thought it was just gonna be food consulting which I would have done anything -- I really would have taken out the trash for these guys. But I wound up playing a version of myself, which is weird.

CAVANAUGH: Are you gonna be on again? Are you gonna repeat your role?

CHANG: I think I'm allowed to say yes. Yeah. Just a very small role. I'm not an actor. I have a massive respect for the acting profession and what the guys at Treme do. It's really amazing. The entire staff, the production. I learned quite a bit about an industry that I never thought I'd ever be in. And it takes a lot of patience and hard work and team work to pull off something that's on TV.

CAVANAUGH: Finally, David Chang, I want to ask you about that conversation that is in this first issue of lucky peach. Did you ever figure out why Americans do settle for mediocre food?

CHANG: Well, I think what we settle on was -- it's mediocrity tends to settle into America because people are not -- they're averse to taking a risk. And I always liken it to being a wall flower. There's no point in being a wall flower. There's nothing to lose. And it seems that as a culture, we're not encouraging risk takers. And those are the people that change culture and try to strive to be better. My friend, gen Nakamura, told me we have a culture of failing upwards. If you just do enough not to ruffle anyone's feathers or question the status quo, you're just gonna get promoted for just being there.

CAVANAUGH: I want to tell our listeners, if they would like to take a risk and see really some gorgeous food photographs as well, the first issue of lucky peach is out on news stands and on iPhones everywhere. I've been speaking with chef and restaurateur David Chang. Thank you very much David.

CHANG: Thank you so much for having me. I have to be -- I'll be in San Diego soon. I promise.

CAVANAUGH: Eat something!

CHANG: I will, I will.

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