know, the chef of Momofuku, Ssam Bar, Ko, Bakery and Milk Bar.

And after the talk, we'll do a little Q and A.

And then, up in Hemispheres -- if you were lucky enough to get a book -- David will be

signing books. All right? Thanks so much for coming.

Here's David Chang.

>> [Clapping]

David Chang: Thanks. Good morning everyone. Very strange. Google last week, San Francisco.

Google, New York. And I never thought, again, cooking would

lead me to both Google campuses. [laughter] Very strange. And yeah, I got into

cooking. And how I got here is very, very strange and

surreal. I started to cook, because I did very poorly

in college, because I spent most of my time with doing extracurricular activities, and

not enough time in the classroom, which is why Google would never, ever hire me. [laughter]

And it was a real struggle to figure out what I wanted to do after college, and cooking

was one of the few things that I knew I enjoyed. And it was one profession that my father

-- I could have chosen to be a garbage man, he would have been more pleased with the decision

I made. [laughter] Because he spent his entire life -- he immigrated

to this country, and he spent his entire life working 30 years in the restaurant industry

so I would never work in the restaurant industry. And it's ironic.

And you know, he sent me to the best schools he could and all that stuff -- and I still

wound up being a cook. And I wanted to see how far I could take it.

That was it. It was one time -- I mean, I've had a lot

of discussions recently about like, Is there anything pure?

Is there anything honest in terms of a craft anymore?

And, at that time, it was like '99. You know, it was either dot com or banking

or whatnot. And I just felt that cooking was one of the

few things that I thought was honest -- that you could apply yourself, and you could get

better every day. And it was remarkable, because you could use

your hands. You could sort of act like a total buffoon,

but still -- there's this total chaos -- but it's under this umbrella of this sort

of French system of a brigade. And I don't know.

I felt like I found my call and that I could do this.

And then, you know, I was never the best cook in the kitchen.

I worked for some great chefs -- for Jean George, Tom Colicchio, Daniel Bleu, Das Caramelini.

And spent some time in Tokyo. But I got out of the game.

And I say the "game" -- I say "fine dining game" -- because we normally associate great

food with fine dining. And when I started cooking -- and it wasn't.

I can't say it's 20 years. It was like ten years ago, you know, food.

You had the Food Network, but 'food' and 'cooking' wasn't cool.

Like, if any of you guys are thinking about career-changing and going into cooking school,

like think twice. [laughter] Because it's a hard, hard business. It's not

glamorous. And, you know, TV has made it seem much more

cooler than it actually is. So, you know, going back, I don't know if

I'd actually be cooking in this world -- that is like, today's like food world, because

it's just getting crazier and crazier. And I've had to, you know, learn to deal with

it. I got into cooking so I wouldn't have to speak

in front of people. [laughter] And here I am, speaking in front of all these

people, and I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. [laughter]

So I've always sort of been a weirdly competitive person.

I think it has to do, again, with golf -- and this was before it was super-cool to

play golf. And I had the typical Asian father who was

like, trying to make me, you know, pro. And then, I realized that -- I'll never forget,

I was trying to qualify for this tournament, and I played -- all I did was play golf 365

days a year. I was trying to qualify for this tournament

in Houston, and I was eleven. Tiger Woods was already on the brochure of

the event. It was called the 'Big I' in Houston.

And he had already won it two years in a row. And that's when I knew -- I was like, "Yeah,

this guy's a lot better than I will ever be, so."

I think it slowly coincided with me just burning out on golf.

But, you know, there's something interesting between golf and cooking -- at least for me

-- because, when you're playing golf -- and I hate golf now -- is that, it's against

you. It's just you and the golf course.

And the only competition is the scoreboard and your competitors.

So, I am always measuring myself against people. I wish I had that sort of competitive drive,

you know, during school. That would have been great.

But, in cooking, you sort of see who is the best cook in the kitchen.

This guy's a sous chef, and he got there from this point and this point.

And, you know, I was very quick to realize that I was not naturally gifted as a cook,

which was one of the things I loved about cooking.

You don't have to be a super-star to become a good cook or a great chef.

You just have to apply yourself. You have to be fully committed.

And when I sort of learned that -- I was learning this, and I had the great mentors.

Craft was very, very important to me. Because, when Craft opened up, we had Jonathan

Benno, Mark Kinura, Octor Nuag, James Tracy. All these guys -- I mean people that will

never make it in the press. Like, I have a friend, Mac Kern.

He's a chef in Madrid in his own restaurant. Everyone that opened up that restaurant is

the chef at their own restaurant now, which is very rare.

And they all took me under their wing and beat the crap out of me.

And that's how you learn. And I learned quickly too that these guys

were better than me. So every kitchen I ever went to, I was always

comparing myself to the best talent in the kitchen.

And I would be like, "Well, there's no way I'm going to be better than this person."

It's a really weird way of looking at things. But I'd learn as much as I could.

And, you know, someone asked me -- I was like, "What should I talk about?

I have no idea." He said like, "What about opening up the restaurant

-- the first restaurant?" Well, I had just got back from Japan, I think.

Part of the reason I came back from Japan was, my mom was battling cancer.

And I was having a hard time working at Cafe Bleu, and working for Andrew Carmellini, who's

now the chef at Locanda Verde, and who is probably one of the best chefs in America

and supremely, supremely talented. I was also just -- working in that kitchen,

I was like, "There's no way I'm going to be as good as Andrew.

Why am I cooking in fine dining? Why am I on the Upper East Side cooking for,

you know, the audience that I could care less about?"

I care about the food, so I want to have the challenge of fine dining.

I want to have the pressure of fine dining. But why does this have to be in the environment

of fine dining? Something I didn't really put together till,

just about now, so. I left, and all these things started to happen,

right? Friends that passed away.

I was just in this weird spot, where I was just like, "I should be working at a new restaurant."

And 2004 was one of the greatest years in New York City culinary history.

You had Per Se open up, Mas opened up. Little bit later, you had Crew and Blue Hill

Stone Barns. All tremendous restaurants. Hearth opened

up. So it was a strange time for someone like

myself, who had been cooking four-and-a-half -- almost five -- years to be like, "Yeah,

I'm going to open up a Noodle Bar." And everybody knew that I was crazy about

noodles. And I wanted to make ramen, you know.

I had a plan to go to Tokyo and learn how to make ramen.

But instead, I learned how to make all sorts of different things.

And that plan sort of fell flat on its face, but it was a blessing in disguise.

So the reason I opened up the noodle bar was, I just needed to prove to myself that I could

do -- I could open up a restaurant. At the time, I was just like -- it was a challenge.

It was something that I could sort of -- if I could open up a 600 square foot spot

on First Avenue on almost no budget, like $130,000 -- that was my only goal.

The reason there is no -- there's a minimalist, and everything is plywood is not because we

were trying to be artistic. We had no money. [laughter]

And there was other reasons why. It was about a test to myself.

And that was the first and only goal I ever had for Momofuku, which is again why I pinch

myself every day for everything that's ever happened.

Which is why I'm so hard on myself and our crew, because I feel very blessed to be in

the position that we're in. So that restaurant opened up, and we failed.

And we continue to fail. And those are two of the things that became

cornerstones of our restaurant -- at least sort of our mantra.

It's like, "You know, if you're going to mess up, mess up big. Or just fuck up, but own

up to it." And number two was, you know, be accountable

for your actions. No excuses, because no one's going to care.

No one cares if we're going to go out of business. So, you know, there were a lot of things going

on, and we were going to go out of business after six months/seven months.

So again, right place, right time. We're learning how to run a business.

I had a terrible business plan. I didn't know how to run a business.

I didn't know how to run the cash register. You know, the only one person that wanted

to work with me was Joaquin Baca, because all my friends at the time were working at

these restaurants that were opening up. So I felt very slighted.

And things started to change. One thing happened, and awards started happening.

We became busier and busier. And the food really took a change right around

springtime when the market came around, the green market.

And I think it tied in with the size of the space, which is what I'm trying to get back

into the mode of thinking and how we do things at the restaurant, creatively speaking.

And again, it's been a progression of accidents. And this is an accident.

I didn't plan to have this sort of philosophy of how we create something.

But the first noodle bar, which is now Ko. And even Ko has its limitations.

It's 600 square feet. It's the size of a one-car garage.

Nobody in their right mind would open up a restaurant in 600 square feet.

I don't know what the hell I was thinking. But that's one of the beautiful things when

you're young and dumb. You don't know.

And I told myself, "Well, if I go out of business, I have the rest of my life to get out of bankruptcy.

I don't have a kid to feed. I don't have a wife to take care of.

You know, let's go all in. Fuck it." So that's how -- we always get to this point

of like -- our backs are against the wall. And that's when sort of the adrenaline starts

pumping, and we start to make very bold, bold decisions.

It becomes more difficult when you become a larger organization.

But, you know, Noodle Bar 600 square feet originally very limited in menu, about five

food items, mise en place, our "mise en place" in French means like basically the stuff you

prep out in a kitchen. It wasn't more than ten or 12 items.

So it'd be like scallions, bamboo shoots, pork shoulder, pork butt.

And when you only have so many ingredients, like five things to work with, after a while,

you just look at the same ingredients day after day, and you're just like, you're not

really thinking. And then, all of a sudden, things started

to click. It'd be like, "Oh, what if we batted."

We just -- it was almost like a Rubix Cube. If we just change this with this, then we

have a new dish. Then, we kept on evolving every day, changing

and changing. And then, we created a foundation in terms

of what we wanted as a flavor profile. Then, the green market happened.

And then, asparagus and ram started coming into the restaurant, which are the first signs

of spring. Rams are such a cliche in New York, but you

know what? Every spring, I get excited, because it's

the first thing, and they're so damn tasty. And it's the one thing that we have over the

West Coast. We have rams.

And, you know, so that added a new variable and food started to change and you become

very, very -- we were forced to be creative, because we had no other option.

Necessity is the mother of all invention they say.

And you really feel it when your accountant is like, "You're going to go out of business

in a month, unless you change certain things." And you don't want to let people down.

And for like, the first six months, I remember reporters or whoever -- journalists -- would

ask me like where I worked before. I wouldn't tell them, because I didn't want

to embarrass the people that I work for. I didn't want to embarrass Mark Kinura, I

didn't want to embarrass Tom Colicchio. I didn't want to embarrass Jonathan Benno.

So I just told them, "Please don't mention where I worked."

And then, all of a sudden, it just became a life of its own.

And that's how Noodle Bar started. Nobody wanted to work with us.

And then, that really defined and paved the way and, you know, created the foundation

for how we did things in the future -- which is basically, make mistakes, grow organically.

You know? I say to the new Noodle Bar now -- I always

tell them, "If we serve fish and chips." Or like recently, I think we just served tamales

last night. And if we serve -- say, we become a tamale