David Chang

David Chang is a Korean-American chef and restaurateur whose Momofuku memoir traces his rise from culinary school dropout to one of the most influential chefs in contemporary American food.

David Chang founded the Momofuku restaurant group in New York City starting with a single ramen bar in the East Village in 2004, and went on to build one of the most influential restaurant empires in American dining. The book Momofuku, published in 2009, is part cookbook, part memoir, and entirely characteristic of Chang’s voice: direct, self-deprecating, occasionally profane, and deeply serious about food. It traces his background as the son of Korean immigrants, his struggles in culinary school and early kitchens, and the near-failure and eventual success of his first restaurant.

Chang’s significance in contemporary American food is substantial. He helped legitimize ramen and Asian flavors as fine dining territory, trained a generation of cooks who went on to run important kitchens of their own, and approached cooking with an intellectual rigor — and an appetite for experimentation, including fermentation and unconventional ingredient combinations — that influenced how a whole cohort of chefs thought about their work. The book captures this sensibility: it is a portrait of a particular kind of obsessive cooking mind as much as a career narrative.

Chang has been publicly candid about his struggles with bipolar disorder, which he has written and spoken about elsewhere, and Momofuku has a restless, sometimes chaotic energy that reflects the personality behind it. The book is better suited to readers interested in the world of professional cooking than to those primarily seeking recipes, but as a portrait of how a particular kind of culinary ambition develops and finds its expression, it is vivid and honest.