Voyages of discovery
“He really does smoke a joint every hour,” David Chang laughs, referring to Seth Rogen, after pouring the au jus over prime rib.
The Momofuku chef, restaurateur and TV host would know: He spent a day in Vancouver, British Columbia, getting high and eating with Rogen for his latest Netflix series, “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.”
Whether at his Los Angeles outpost, Majordomo, for a sevencourse celebration of the program’s launch or by phone the next day before heading back to New York, Chang, 42, is more circumspect than his reputation might suggest: Once regarded as the irreverent hothead who helped remake fine dining through ramen and steamed buns, the Korean American wunderkind — and new father — seems to have mellowed, embracing both the expansion of his empire and criticism of his approach. If there is one central theme that resounds through our conversation, it is his yearning for self-improvement.
Good thing too. “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner,” Chang’s followup to last year’s acclaimed “Ugly Delicious” (both produced with Oscar-winning documentarian Morgan Neville’s Tremolo Productions), has been called “a bland celebrity food tour” caught up in “the appetite-driven fog of contemplation” and intermittently guilty of “cultural stereotypes and exoticism.” The series, though part of the “Ugly Delicious” universe, is less food-centric than its predecessor, in which each episode riffs on multiple cultures’ versions of the same dish (tacos or fried chicken). Here, as Chang puts it, food is the “icebreaker”: “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner” uses cuisine to draw out the personalities of four celebrities — Rogen, Chrissy Teigen, Lena Waithe, Kate McKinnon — and four cities — Vancouver, Canada; Marrakech, Morocco; Los Angeles; Phnom Penh, Cambodia — with Chang as the emcee game for anything. (Well, except durian fruit. That’s a bridge too far.)
The Times spoke with Chang about reading bad reviews, managing expectations, allowing for failure and “Ugly Delicious,” which returns for a second season “soon.”
How did you choose your four guests?
I don’t know if being “agnostic” is the right word, but that was it. It was just, “Who are four people that I really like or want to know more or would like to hang out with, and who I imagine would have some version of themselves that maybe hasn’t been revealed to people?” We were just venturing to see if it was going to work. This is not my full-time job; I’m learning to be a better interviewer. It was nervewracking. We were going to a place that I wasn’t the expert — sometimes where I’d never been before.
One of the ambitious things about “Ugly Delicious” was the structure: taking a food and digging into its various iterations. What are the challenges and advantages of leaning more into an inter view format?
Not to be so self-referential, but the only thing I could draw upon when talking about this was, within our restaurants, we have dessert bars, chicken sandwiches, $6 Korean shawarma type of things, noodle bars, tasting menus. How do you get that all aligned? I look at these things that we have at Momofuku, and to me they’re on the same sort of goal — they’re just different avenues to get there. The team at Ko have different challenges than the the team at Ba ng Bar ... I don’t think there’s anything easy about either show, but it was a different kind of rabbit hole with “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.” Also it was sort of unknown. One of the things that’s not easy, but linear about “Ugly Delicious” is knowing where things are gonna go. You have a game plan, even though there’s constant data that’s changing and we weave and zig and zag. We didn’t have that at all on “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.”
Is there anything about interviewing that you learned on “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner” that you’ll take forward?
I think the biggest thing that I was trying to figure out — both as a chef and for this show — was being way more aware of when to actually talk about something and when to shut the ... up and just listen. [H]ow to shape a conversation so it doesn’t go to a dead end.
Do you ever read reviews, either of your restaurants or TV shows?
Yeah. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that. Particularly for restaurants. The restaurant review versus the TV review is very different, though. So different. I don’t even know how to think about it. It’s surreal.
The “Ugly Delicious” reviews were pretty effusive.
I tend to only focus on the things that are negative. Things that we could do better. That’s my own neuroses. When I worked for Daniel Boulud, the whole idea of praise in the kitchen, praise is the absence of criticism. “Praise is the absence of criticism.” I’ve actually turned that into, “The only thing that I really want is criticism.” It’s weird. And it’s something that,
What was one thing you felt you needed to improve [for Season 2 of “Ugly Delicious”], and what did you do to improve it?
One of the things that was a common complaint was, it’s too bro-y. That’s not something we wanted anyone to feel. However small that criticism might be, we don’t want people to feel like they were left out, and that was something we tried to do better.
Whether conscious or not, it seems to me that may have inflected who you ended up going to for “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.”
Did you have a favorite thing that you ate in your travels for “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner”?
The fruit in Cambodia, from the rambutans to the mangosteens, was pretty — I hate to use the word “life-changing,” but it was like, “Wow, I’ve never had this [as good as this].” ... Freshwater prawns, I didn’t know could ever be that big. And also just the breakfast noodles in general were delicious.
The tagine we ate at Tarik [Amar]’s home in Marrakech, when I said it was perfect, it was pretty ... perfect in terms of acidity and the salt and the spice level. And the couscous was delicious. To be able to eat that in the home was tremendous. Gardena Bowl too. That’s a place that I had not eaten before. I love the fact that it’s an icon in Asian American food. Any menu that has chicken teriyaki to Filipino oxtail stew to basically nacho fries to the smothered royale, which left such an impression that we tried to put a version at one of our new restaurants. Honestly, that doughnut that we had with Seth, I’ve never had a hot jelly doughnut in my life, and I was genuinely perplexed as to why I’d never had that before.
The through line in both shows is the question of authenticity. In “Ugly Delicious” it’s in terms of cuisine, and in “Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner,” you expanded that almost to ask, “What does it mean to be an authentic person?”
To me, it was always about discovery. To be honest enough to look like an imbecile when proven wrong or shown a perspective you didn’t realize. What is so important about the shows for me, personally, is that it’s a journey to increase your empathy, as far-fetched and stupid as that might sound. How do you present something where some perspective or held belief prevented you from seeing another angle? ... Whether we were successful or not, our goal was that sense of travel. When you’re in a place, whether it’s foreign or familiar, it’s the one thing that allows you to feel like you have common ground. In the same way that you like the taco episode [of “Ugly Delicious”], if you eat a delicious taco, it should open up your eyes to realize, “We’re all the same. We all want the same.” And if someone that you watch and admire has the same insecurities, the same feelings about being someplace — whether it’s a guest or myself — part of that is just to realize we have the same problems. It was never really to do a show like, “Hey, look at these well-known people.” If anything, it was the same goal that we were going for with “Ugly Delicious”: “This is a taco. This is a piece of pizza. This is a piece of fried chicken. You may have always eaten it this way, or thought about it this way, and it’s quite possible that by watching this episode, it may challenge some of your beliefs.”
I appreciate the humility it takes to be the host of the show and also be willing to admit that there are limits to your knowledge.
I’m an imbecile. And here’s the thing: Even on “Ugly Delicious,” we could have edited out a lot of these things where I look like a dumbass. It’s important to me to tell people, “I’m a professional chef, and you think that I should like all these things that chefs are supposed to like.” I don’t like durian. I’m sorry. ... Or like the chicken feet, with Seth. I don’t like chicken feet. I’m not trying to say that it’s bad. I haven’t gotten to a point where I’m comfortable eating it. It’s not like I won’t eat it, but it’s not something I want to eat. We could have edited that out and made it pretty cleancut. This is who I am.
An important thing, in terms of what makes for good television, is trying different things, taking risks.
I just have to make mistakes. I want to get better . ... I don’t know if it’s my own neuroses, but that’s just how I have to be. As painful and stupid as that might be. I don’t take it for granted to have this opportunity to do this show in the wake of Tony [Bourdain] passing and me being an Asian American. We are striving to be the best. We’re encouraging failure. We’re totally OK with it even though it sucks and it hurts. We’d rather fail than do stuff that’s going to try to be in the middle.