Eat a Peach

by David Chang

If you grew up as a first-generation Asian American, there’s a good chance you’re saying to yourself, “Whatever. Big baby.”

if you’re reading this book, hoping to glean some tidbits about the key to my success, know that you’re looking right at it. Depression and the choice to resist it are the only reasons you’re hearing from me now.

I don’t always nail the message. If you’re one of the many aspirants who have approached me for help, you know this. My answers to your concerns have likely made both of us dumber.

I hated work when I was younger. I was a poor student, a poor employee. But the kitchen was different. I found meaning in the repetitive tasks, as long as I did them with intent and purpose. All that peeling, plucking, slicing, and chopping could seem frivolous, but only if I let myself think that way. When everything else felt out of control, cooking was my North Star. It wouldn’t let me down. Putting something on a plate is a finite task. I could see the mise en place in front of me and the customer waiting in the dining room. I saw the pan, the stove, and the process that needed to be accomplished for the dish to make it into the dining room and onto the table. I saw sales numbers. I saw reviews. Each step provided a tangible point of contact. And with success came validation—not only of the work but of myself.

NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING, SO DO WHAT YOU WANT.

By the time we started writing the Momofuku cookbook, other restaurants were already copying our recipes. I was shocked, both by the fact that people were taking our cooking seriously and also that anyone would choose imitation as a strategy—a surefire path to mediocrity. I knew that doing a cookbook would accelerate the process, so I took the opportunity to mess with any potential copycats. In Momofuku, there’s a recipe for the aforementioned roasted rice cakes, tossed in what is essentially gochujang (fermented chili sauce)—only we don’t call it gochujang. In the book, it has the absolutely awful and ridiculous name “red dragon sauce.” I knew that lazy people would copy the recipe without bothering to check whether “red dragon sauce” was a real thing. To this day, I’ll see it show up on menus from time to time. It always makes me laugh.

Throughout this book, I will argue against the validity of various cultural truths, but I believe in han. There’s no perfect English-language equivalent for this Korean emotion, but it’s some combination of strife or unease, sadness, and resentment, born from the many historical injustices and indignities endured by our people. It’s a term that came into use in the twentieth century after the Japanese occupation of Korea, and it describes this characteristic sorrow and bitterness that Koreans seem to possess wherever they are in the world.*5 It is transmitted from generation to generation and defines much of the art, literature, and cinema that comes out of Korean culture.

But whenever someone starts talking about authenticity and cultural appropriation, my mind begins to wander. I ask myself, What if my ancestors had traded places and pantries with yours? What would modern Korean food look like if a generation of Changs and Kims and Parks had arrived in Mexico five hundred years ago? What would Mexican food look like? I imagine both cuisines would be even more delicious, and I bet they’d still be wrapping meat and vegetables in tortillas and leaves. We humans are more alike in our tastes than we think. Even with completely different tools and ingredients, we’re bound to arrive at the same conclusions. I know this isn’t an airtight idea, politically speaking. It can be taken as license to do whatever you want without consideration for the source material. But as an Asian chef, I tend to get away with posing such scenarios more than I would if I were a white guy explaining why his Nashville hot chicken doughnut is actually an homage to black cooks. Yellow privilege, baby! It’s one of the few perks of being Asian that makes up for, you know, your skin color being referred to as “yellow.”

You’re pretty far into this book now. I haven’t been patting myself on the back too much, have I? I think I’ve been a sufficiently Debbie Downer–like narrator when it comes to my own achievements.

He told me that my treatment of my mentee’s mistake had been unpleasant, aggressive, and unconstructive, but that it was not the cause of his death. To think I had the power to kill him meant that I had the power to save him, which was also not true. He didn’t die because of me, but he didn’t die for me, either. He deserves more than to be defined by our relationship.

For anybody who thinks I didn’t feel a responsibility to the magazine, or that Lucky Peach wasn’t tied into the very heart of my own identity, let me explain something to you. To this day, it’s still something journalists ask me. You know what the name Momofuku means? It means “lucky peach.”

specifically say us because I’m also guilty. It used to drive me crazy to see a white chef making kimchi, but really, it shouldn’t have. What’s the alternative? We all stick to our lanes rather than make an effort to see something new? I’d far prefer to see a white chef trying to make kimchi instead of barking at it. Cuisine has always evolved through collision, even if we don’t always notice. To wit: over the course of my life, I’ve eaten hundreds of tacos al pastor. I’ve always considered them the emblem of Mexico City. Only recently have I learned that the vertical spit used to cook al pastor, the trompo, originated in Lebanon. It’s the same exact device that gave us the shawarma, the döner kebab, and the gyro. Lebanese immigrants brought the vertical spit with them to the Americas, where the technology met new ingredients and people, yielding fantastic results. It shouldn’t have come as a shock to me. Deliciousness is a meme. Its appeal is universal, and it will spread without consideration of borders or prejudice.

We listened to the same stuff we listened to when we were by ourselves. Pavement. Silver Jews. Velvet Underground. Yo La Tengo. GZA. Fugazi. Pixies. Metallica. Galaxie 500. Wilco. There was a stretch where we played a ton of country—a lot of Waylon Jennings. Lambchop’s “Your Fucking Sunny Day” was a really important track to me. It’s a great, chill, happy song, but when we put it on the playlist, I thought someone might complain about the profanity. We kept asking ourselves, Are we allowed to play this?

This all raises the question of whether depression is something you can control by simply sucking it up. My answer is no, I don’t think you can overcome it with willpower, but I do believe that dealing with depression is a choice that needs to be made. You have to choose to stand up every day and keep going. To reject your default settings. To offer another silly analogy, I always liken it to being a Jedi. It’s easier—and probably cooler—to give in to the dark side. The only way to be a Jedi is to do the hard thing and reject your base instincts.

Dr. Jim Kim once told me that I would never understand what it’s like to live through war. He’s right. I can never understand the experiences that shaped my parents, how it felt to come to America without speaking a lick of English, the racism they must have endured, the violence they’d fled, or the sense of longing they felt for their homeland. It’s why Asian parents want their kids to study unambiguous subjects like math and science, be good at golf and violin, and avoid liberal arts like English or philosophy or political science or cooking—anything subjective can be taken away from you.

A Kunz spoon, a quenelle spoon, a perforated spoon. And you should know how to hold them properly (like a pencil or paintbrush, not like a toddler demanding dinner).