David Chang Quotes
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There are many things to admire about Japan but this is the one thing I love the most and probably the only time I eat breakfast. Fish, eggs, soup, salad, veggies; all in the tiniest bites. It's a full meal, but it's so refreshing.
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I was quite cocky, but having been hailed as this great young golfer, I couldn't even make the high school golf team once I got there. I had a big dose of humble pie then, and ever since, I've always known that there is always someone out there better than you, more talented. Always.
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If you ask what people say what American cuisine is, they cannot really do it. I don't know what it is.
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I doubt I'd ever do television to the extent that, say, Gordon Ramsay has.
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I don't like eating in restaurants.
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Growing up, my dad owned a restaurant in Washington, DC, and food was something I was passionate about. But when I finally got into it, I felt like it was so late in the game; that's why I worked seven days a week at Craft and Mercer Kitchen. I wanted to see how far I could take it.
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Chef Thomas Keller was an inspiration to me and many, many young cooks like me. He told us that the role of the new, modern chef is different.
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If you're going to be a vegetarian, limit yourself to food from a place you can go to in two hours and just eat that.
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My dad was in the restaurant business, but I didn't really think about following him. Had I done better at school, I don't know if I would have been a chef.
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I look forward to the spring vegetables because the season is so short. Mushrooms, edible foraged herbs, wild leeks, early season asparagus.
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I think the best restaurants in America should be in California.
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Open your refrigerator, your freezer, your kitchen cupboards, and look at the labels on your food. You'll find 'natural flavor' or 'artificial flavor' in just about every list of ingredients. The similarities between these two broad categories are far more significant than the differences.
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When you meet the farmers and go to the farms, you see that they treat their animals like they're family. It makes a big difference.
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I love chicken. I love chicken products: fried chicken, roasted chicken, chicken nuggets - whatever. And going to Japan, I would see that these chicken were smoked and then grilled and then have this amazing crispy skin.
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I think the basic thing that home cooks can learn how to do is just season properly... If the home cook realized how little salt they use compared to what's needed, it would make their food taste better.
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I love the intensity of the fine-dining kitchen, but loathe the fine-dining experience.
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Before I had my own restaurant, I was never top dog in the kitchen. I've always had a low opinion of myself as a cook.
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I love to eat sushi, and, you know, those flavors and wasabi and really eating spoonfuls of it... I would just mix it and put it on everything, literally.
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Running a business anywhere isn't easy.
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People don't think that bread is part of Asian culture or Asian food culture, but it's quite prevalent in Northern China, and you see it throughout Japan and as you go to Taiwan.
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Waiting tables has never paid my bills, a fact which I prefer to hide from my colleagues with deep sighs about the price of just about everything.
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The Momofuku Culinary Lab started as a space where we could focus on creating and innovating. I didn't want us to worry about working on projects in a restaurant; there are just too many distractions in service and running a kitchen to be able to focus on creating your dishes.
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I think that the Japanese - and I do love Japanese cuisine and adore Japanese food culture - I think that they're going to plow through the entire world's fishing. They're going to eat everything anyways.
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To me, there are two types of celebrity: there's good celebrity - people that are attracted to the food and working and trying to create something great - and then there's bad celebrity - those who are working on being a celebrity.