14 ms·

David Chang on the long, hard, stupid way

263 points by herbertl 2y ago

lizhang 2y ago
and once they got big enough, they attempted to use their size to stop others from selling chili oil
dghlsakjg 2y ago
David Chang is a salesman and a businessman first. I get the point being made, but keep in mind that he is a brand, and part of that is the stories he tells. He has slapped his name on so many subpar food goods that were a total disappointment that I actually have started avoiding things marketed under his brand name. He might do things the hard way in his restaurants, but they certainly aren't ensuring tasty or high quality goods under his brand. I would rather he do things in a way that makes sense and provides the best tasting food. More broadly, the point is that you should take advice only from people whose successes you want to emulate. The actual advice I get out of this article is: Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product.
- nemo44x 2y ago
  He's really trying to build an empire based on his name and recognition from a few good restaurants he founded. I think he wants to scale it as much as he can right now and sell it. He has commented before that a restaurant based around the chef's personality isn't really a business you can sell one day. But products based around the celebrity chef are. But yeah, most things he's putting his name on are so super over priced they are clearly selling to people with no price sensitivity. I'm sure his margins are fantastic and he'll get a big payday if he sells at just the right time.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    I don't really understand any of this this thread, there's a lot of conflicting ideas. David Chang owns a frozen food empire that's super over priced and super low quality that's successful enough that he'll make a lot of money if he sells at the right time?
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      He has a personal brand built around his name and his in-person restaurant group, which are reportedly VERY good. Good enough that he has two Michelin stars. He has used that reputation to start selling groceries under the same name. They are not very good in many cases, but he is able to charge high prices because of good marketing and his famous brand (Momofuku). As an example he sells, what I judge to be not very good ramen noodles, for $4/pack. That is a lot of money for mediocre ramen noodles, even if it does have a famous name on the package. A successful business is one that makes profits, not one that makes high quality goods. A profitable business can be retained for the profits, or it can be sold to some other entity. A chef, meanwhile, only makes money while they work.
      - radicality 2y ago
        Had two Michelin stars. Momofuku Ko closed recently. I went once around 2016, partly exactly because of his name and brand. It was ok but nothing memorable, I think he wasn’t even there. I guess the closing probably aligns with his goals of maximizing a brand / money, and not actually cooking good food.
        nemo44x 2y ago
        Wow, I didn't realize Ko closed either. I went there around the same time and really liked it. But even then you could start to feel the fade a bit in what Chang did. He certainly had his moment and he was very influential. I still remember the first time I ate at Noodle Bar - was amazing. It looks like they've closed nearly every restaurant they had except a couple Noodle Bars in NYC and Vegas and some other restaurant. Rough times for that industry. Ssäm Bar was a pretty good place, sort of shocked they couldn't keep the lights on there.
        tptacek 2y ago
        Ssam Bar was really good when I went there (also closed, though). It was a not-fucking-around good fine-dining/gastropub hybrid. The Momofuku cookbook is also excellent, and well written.
      - deleted 2y ago
  - hinkley 2y ago
    This is all reminding me of the mean dude in Ratatouille. Only the mean dude is now also Gasteau.
    - throw4847285 2y ago
      I was thinking the exact same thing! Lucky I searched the page for Ratatouille before commenting. Ratatouille is one of my all time favorite movies, but if you read it as a metaphor for director Brad Bird's own career, it's hard not to feel like it lets Walt Disney off the hook. Often in real life, the creative genius who founded the enterprise and the sycophant who has taken over it in his absence are both assholes. Though Ratatouille does touch on this by making Gusteau an idealized figment of Remy's imagination, who is shocked when he hears that the real man had a child via an affair.
- hinkley 2y ago
  > Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product. There’s one interpretation of the idea of business as not selling products but stories. Apple knows this and clearly exhibits it with every product demo. It’s all a story. One that I enjoy. But low priced groceries also sell a story, about how a beleaguered mother can save a few dollars here in order to avoid bouncing a check or to buy herself one nice thing. Or a kid who wants something sweet and already blew their allowance on video games. A pattern they will repeat again every few months since it worked before. Chang is definitely selling two stories and it sounds like they are a bit discordant when taken together.
  - cm11 2y ago
    Michelin stars seem to have the dynamics of a loss leader. Particularly as it's become known that many of the restaurants are badly unprofitable—and moreso if you think the chefs should earn something commensurate to their presumable talent or passion (you don't have to think this). It seems to be more the case that every award or signal of quality is capable of (and actually being used) this way. Some people, like Chang, may know it and treat it transactionally as such. $X for a star, which leads to Y amount of exposure. Others, may know it or not, but treat it like a goal in life either way. It's very possible of course that many of the former start as the latter people until they later [realize/sell out/give up]. I guess it makes sense. The world is more competitive. Information is freely available. You need to find some other moat. With information and access to everything, a moat that might have been quality or talent, is more easily captured by buying the signal (which to be clear can include buying and maintaining the quality). Then once you have the signal, well, it's up to you whether you still need or want the quality. When push comes to shove, it's probably the case that the signal is worth more than the quality.
    - knowitnone 2y ago
      I don't believe you. If a restaurant is unprofitable, it would be closed. Nobody in their right mind would choose to continue losing money.
      - 2y ago
- chubot 2y ago
  I've been wondering about this for YEARS now: WTF happened to Milk Bar in NYC? Based on the taste and quality, it seems like the most egregious case of "selling out" I've ever seen. It seems like an overnight change to me David Chang and Christina Tosi worked together, and I remember seeing a bunch of their marketing on Netflix https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofuku-employee-bakery-chain-ceo/ https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofu... In 2015 the location in East Village was still GREAT. Interesting deserts, seemingly made by hand, with high quality ingredients Then I go back a few years later, and it's this CHAIN and the food is inedible. I take one bite, can't eat it, and throw it away It just tastes like sugary processed food now, like Twinkies or Chips Ahoy or something I also saw Milk Bar products in Whole Foods, bought it, took one bite, and threw it away, and never bought it again It's just weird to me that a chef would let the quality sink so low, so fast. Usually the "founders" care about quality, and are mission-focused I always thought that process took decades, and changes in ownership. (Actually I am re-reading Pollan's account of the "big organic" Cascadian Farms brand now -- another very interesting case of counterculture going mainstream / industrial, but the change was more gradual I think)
  - geodel 2y ago
    As others have alluded too. At this point SC is high on its own supply. Create a food empire, hang out with rich or famous chefs. Create millions of aspiring chumps who'd take his words as gospel. Edit SC -> DC (David Chang)
    - apsurd 2y ago
      Who or what is SC?
      - infecto 2y ago
        Typo, DC not SC. David Chang
    - detourdog 2y ago
      You want to be chef you have to be in the kitchen.
- weaksauce 2y ago
  he’s also reportedly a jerk to his staff and yells at them. and sues mom and pop shops for using his trademark of a really generic term... something like spicy chili oil or very similar.
  - jsbg 2y ago
    In the US, trademarks have to be enforced to remain valid. https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enforcement/ https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enfo... "a failure to enforce a trademark by monitoring the mark for misuses will result in a weakening of the mark and loss of distinctiveness, which can lead to a loss of the trademark"
    - addicted 2y ago
      It’s annoying. Every time a company does basic enforcement they are required to by law to maintain their trademark, they get bonded and we go through the same cycle of outrage with the sensible people explaining that trademarks aren’t like patents and if someone is going around using your trademark, you will lose it. Then the outrage dies down only to have the cycle repeated a few weeks later.
      - dghlsakjg 2y ago
        He trademarked “chili crunch” which is just what that food is called. It’s like trying to trademark “breakfast cereal” or “hot sauce”. If it had gone to court he would have lost eventually since other people had been using that name earlier for the same product, and it was too broad
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      The problem is that the trademark was too generic (chili crunch, to be exact) and he was going after brands that sold a product that had always been known as that or crunchy chili oil, or chili crunch oil. He didn’t invent the food, and started going after small brands and people that had been selling it since before he had tried registering the trademark. He did eventually back down.
- tempodox 2y ago
  > Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product. Isn't that just called advertising? This is so blatantly obvious, it doesn't sound like much of an advice.
  - rapind 2y ago
    Advertising is always attempting to disguise itself as anything other than advertising.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    Pretty much. I wasn't saying that this is a particularly insightful message. I was saying that the message I took from this story wasn't about doing things the hard way. Its a meta lesson about messaging and showmanship.
- paxys 2y ago
  Don't forget he filed a trademark for chili crunch sauce (which has been used in several Asian cuisines for literally centuries) and sued to stop smaller restaurants and businesses from selling it, and only backed down when there was public outcry.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - fsckboy 2y ago
    trademark refers to the name a product is sold as, not what the product is, and also has a local jurisdiction. What they do in Asia has nothing to do with trademarks in the US, and since not very much of Asia has spoken English for literally hundreds of years, I doubt they were calling it chili crunch sauce. I'm not defending Chang nor trademarks, just pointing out how they work legally and the flaws in the argument you're making. Remember, people called windows "windows", but they didn't sell products called Windows till Microsoft started and trademarked it.
    - shaklee3 2y ago
      I don't get your point. There are many other companies using the name chili crunch. He was not the first. But he tried to trademark it to stop all the others.
      - fsckboy 2y ago
        that he was not the first using that name in the US is a very good argument against a trademark in the US now that you've said that, but this is the first time that was said, is the point I was making
- shaklee3 2y ago
  He also tried to sue all the other small businesses using the chili crunch name. I stopped buying his after that.
shahahmed 2y ago
"The dish was meant to be a difficult pickup that required constant coordination between the front and back of house. That was what made it great." This feels like the crux. It's not arbitrarily doing the hard, stupid thing, but the ones that are based in making the product or process better.
- larkost 2y ago
  I disagree. The final product (the food) is not better in any way for doing this. I do see the value of not making the server lie to the customer by pretending that they were going to get the "stunt chicken", but this whole problem seems to be caused by trying to make the preparation of the food into a show, and here is a case where the showmanship is getting in the way of efficiency. If they just got rid of parading out the chicken in the middle of the process they could stage more things without implicitly lying to the customers, while improving timing. You would just lose some showmanship, which might be part of the brand.
gizmo 2y ago
After thinking about this blogpost for a minute I realized the blogpost actually literally argues for doing things the hard and stupid way. Not as a metaphor for integrity or quality. Integrity isn't the point: > It had nothing to do with integrity. I didn’t care about fooling the diners. What concerned me was the precedent we were setting. The quality of the food isn't the point either: > The dish was meant to be a difficult pickup that required constant coordination between the front and back of house. The inefficiency is the point. Doing it the long, hard and stupid way is the point. This is a sermon against process improvements. Without seeming to realize that restaurants are a modern miracle of process improvements! How does this David think the kitchen gets fresh ingredients every morning? Where does David think fruit in the winter comes from? How did herbs and spices get so cheap? Because we decided for the past 200 years to relentlessly pursue efficiency. Because we decided not to do things the slow and stupid way any more. That's how!
- bluGill 2y ago
  Some things are better, but some are bad shortcuts that cost quality. A burger from a place that cooks it after you order will always be better than a burger where they start cooking before you walk in the door. Back when I worked fast food I sometimes made my own burgers, when it was fresh off the grill it was one of the best burgers I ever had, but that is a lot more individual labor and so not sustainable in a fast food model. Back then burgers were assembled before you walked in the door, but these days they have all backed off to assemble the burger after you order of ingredients cooked before - it is higher quality and they have managed to optimize assembly enough that it is now sustainable. Where the fast food industry wants to be is a robot that sees you push the button and starts cooking your burger then before you get to paying for it. Robots could do all that, but they are too expensive for the price they need to hit at least so far. (there are also some fraud issues they have to work out) They have to start cooking before you finish the order to meet their fast goals which is one of the reasons people go to fast food.
- dooglius 2y ago
  He explains the point in the lines you omitted: > I worried about the mindset of the server whose job it would be to parade a stunt chicken around the dining room. I was terrified of our culture stagnating. It doesn't read to me like he would have any problem with a process improvement as long as the real chicken were still used.
serallak 2y ago
"The hard way is pretty hard, but not as hard as the easy way" -- Granny Weatherwax
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- youssefabdelm 2y ago
  Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way — Dogen Zenji
  - youssefabdelm 2y ago
    (It is hilarious to me that Dogen is being downvoted)
- ccvannorman 2y ago
  "The path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long" -- Lao Tzu
trwhite 2y ago
This strikes me as really dumb. An efficiency that the diner would never notice and he wants to make his staff work harder to prove a point. Way to make people resent their work.
- nemo44x 2y ago
  He believes it will bleed into other things where it does make a difference. So he takes a 0 tolerance policy into cheating so it doesn't become a habit and a culture and instead hopes to instill the value of not taking shortcuts as a measure to prevent a lapse.
  - yazzku 2y ago
    As a programmer, this still seems overly dogmatic. Why not just develop the discipline to put effort where it's actually needed instead of burning gas all around like a moron? Every programmer knows this. The extreme dogma seems the real lack of discipline to me.
    - nemo44x 2y ago
      As a programmer I probably don't know very much about how to run a kitchen, the kinds of people that work in them, and the reasonable expectations the kitchen manager might have. Not to mention, the outcome of the majority of software project is failure lol.
ABraidotti 2y ago
I like this. And there's a time and place for everything. If I were inclined to try this boiled chicken, hell yeah I'm going to appreciate that I'm getting served the real chicken I saw earlier AND I believe in developing that kind of kitchen culture about caring for what you make. But I also still eat pizza from the shop down the street when hungry and impatient. Other long, hard, stupid things I like to do: read novels, take walks, invest my time to learn fundamentals of a practice Short, easy, stupid things I like to do: skip the occasional long post on hackernews and just read the comments, automate and simplify my work, watch short videos on how to fix broken things, send one-line emails instead of sit through meetings
karaterobot 2y ago
> It had nothing to do with integrity. I didn’t care about fooling the diners. What concerned me was the precedent we were setting. I worried about the mindset of the server whose job it would be to parade a stunt chicken around the dining room. I was terrified of our culture stagnating. I'm sort of surprised that he didn't worry about integrity, since it's literally an example of lying to your customers about the food they're paying for. Fooling is a pretty light word for what others would call false advertising: you tell people you're making soup out of the carcass you just ate from, and then you just don't do that. I imagine that could also have an effect on the restaurant's culture as well. I understand that fine dining is partly theatrical, but don't charge me a premium for doing something you're not actually doing and then say "fooled ya!"
- refulgentis 2y ago
  Yeah that's what the article says, but you frame it argumentatively. He doesn't assert he doesn't care about integrity, reading it, its clear the communicated point is he cares about integrity because of how it affects culture, not just because the carcass you ate wasn't used to make soup: in that case, it'd be trivial to "solve" the problem by just not affirmatively claiming the soup was made from the exact same carcass.
  - karaterobot 2y ago
    When he said "it had nothing to do with integrity" I think he meant that it had nothing to do with personal integrity, i.e. he's not bothered by lying to customers. It's clear he cares about the morale and culture of his team, and I guess he's making some distinction I don't understand between integrity and feeling bad because you're the guy on staff parading around a decoy chicken all night. My point is that maybe they should also think about other kinds of integrity, if only not advertising a product you aren't really selling, but probably also not lying to your guests.
- hammock 2y ago
  He said if you were going to fool the guest, you had to make up for that lost energy by doing something else (or presumably lower the price) The guest is paying for an overall experience. There are plenty of experiences where a guest is happy to pay to be lied to, like a magic show or a strip club or the Olive Garden. As long as the totality of the experience is providing enough value. Now if you specifically chose the restaurant because of their honesty (for whatever that means), then it’s a different story
lvl155 2y ago
I like him but his food is just a white-person’s version of Korean food. It’s not a bad thing but his food lacks soul and this is reflected in everything he does.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Food is allowed to be different from its origins. Just parroting what Korean food already is isn't particularly special - consider that basically every Korean restaurant is doing exactly that. And that might be part of the reason they, for the most part, don't have 2 Michelin stars.
  - lvl155 2y ago
    That’s a fair point but a lot of his food may taste good to uninitiated western palate. I also see this in Indian cuisine because the spices are on the strong side, it takes awhile (years even) to be able to differentiate between good and subpar. Again, I like the guy and he worked his ass off and took necessary risks to succeed.
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      I'm fine with fusion foods, and borrowing from different cultures to make something new. The problem with Momofuku Goods (No idea about ther resaturant group) is that they aren't even good to the unrefined palate. I'm not particularly tuned into the asian cuisines that he specializes in, but I can tell you that his packaged noodles are pretty middling even by grocery store ramen standards.
- jancsika 2y ago
  To complete the LARP[1], would you mind finding a boomer-age Korean father and complaining jealously about his "white-person's version of Korean food?" 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son
jppope 2y ago
Ignoring the explicit text which everyone seems to be overly concerned with... I'm not really worried about that. The article makes you think for a second... The thing I like about this article is that you should be concerned with these things. You should make active decisions about quality, culture, integrity, the way you produce things, etc. You should not skip to "the long, hard, stupid way" or the shortcut in your proprietary process without consideration. Even the thought that there could be more value in an inefficient process is worth considering if you haven't before.
xivzgrev 2y ago
I needed to read the article a few times - the quotes from David are a bit vague. His presented focus is on great experiences for the customer, which demands high operational excellence from his team. His team found a reasonable way to save time, but his reaction was that's the wrong focus. Focusing on saving time will eventually hurt the customer experience (like advertising models lead to enshittification), even if this particular one doesn't. So they need to re-orient this - either go back to the hard way, or justify the easy way in terms of the customer. To quote, "they wanted to sandbag it, they needed to figure out how they would make up for the lost energy elsewhere."
skybrian 2y ago
I’m generally in favor of “cheap and cheerful” - that is, friendly efficiency. Doing elaborately inefficient things to justify higher prices is a turnoff. Unfortunately, from a restaurant’s point of view, they may care about customer satisfaction, but their incentives are to get more money per visit. A lot of things restaurants do make more sense from that perspective. For example, large portions can be seen as a way to justify moderately higher prices while keeping customers feeling like they got good value for their money. Elaborate, unnecessary service is a way to justify really high prices. And nowadays they care less about perception, so they just add extra changes.
jrm4 2y ago
"I didn't care about fooling the diners." See, that's the moment you've lost the plot. That's where, for me, I realized this article may have been dancing around a good idea, it ultimately fails. This is the most important question of THE WHOLE THING. Is it fair or good to FOOL THE DINERS? Would the diners even care? These are the only two important questions, and he kind of ducked them.
joshcsimmons 2y ago
David Chang is the guy who sent cease and desist letters to other manufacturers selling chili crunch, a condiment that existed long before he was born. Maybe that is the "long, hard, stupid way"
- tmoertel 2y ago
  My understanding is that another company owned the Chili Crunch trademark and took enforcement action against David Chang's company when it started selling products under that name. As part of the settlement, Chang's company ended up purchasing the trademark. As one of the obligations of owning a trademark is to enforce its use in the marketplace, Chang's lawyers did just that. But after blowback in the press, Chang arranged for the other brands to also use the trademark. Here's a summary from NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/david-chang-momofuku-will-no-longer-enforce-chili-crunch-trademark-rcna147838 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/david-chang-momof...
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    > As one of the obligations of owning a trademark is to enforce its use in the marketplace, Chang's lawyers did just that. There is no such obligation. Yes, if you don't enforce a trademark you can lose it, but it isn't like you will be subject to fines or something if you don't. This is a ridiculously generic trademark that never should've been granted, and if Chang (or his lawyers) were good, decent people they would've just let it be. The trademark would've lapsed, and everything would've been fine.
    - tmoertel 2y ago
      > There is no such obligation. Yes, if you don't enforce a trademark you can lose it... Your second sentence kinda refutes the first, doesn't it? I mean, if your company gets a cease-and-desist demand from the owners of the Chili Crunch trademark, and ends up buying the trademark to continue running your business, it seems like a Pretty Bad Idea to not hold on to that trademark. I know you think the trademark should never have been granted, but the USPTO did grant it, and Chang's company did get a C&D from the grantee. So, if Chang's company ever let that trademark go (e.g., to be "good, decent people," as you suggest), the history of this particular matter suggests that someone else could easily pick the trademark up, and probably would (not everyone is "good, decent people," right?), and would then start sending cease-and-desist demands to extract fees. So I'm having a hard time faulting Chang's lawyers for avoiding the obvious trap.
jarule 2y ago
Is the presentation bird alive or dead? What is "fired" in this context? Is the presentation bird unrested? What does "rested" mean in this context? Why does the kitchen need to "butcher" the chicken that's "rested"? Doesn't that mean the rested chicken is still alive? What does "slowing" the other, presumably presentation, chicken mean?
- Spellman 2y ago
  The presentation bird is still dead and cooked. A dish being "fired" means finish the cooking process, eg put into the fire. When a meat comes out hot from the cooking process, it needs to "rest" a certain amount of time for the temperature to even out and the juices to be reabsorbed before being sliced/butchered. This is time that the diners now need to wait before they get their meal. So, in David Chang's model, when the dish is ordered a prepared, dead chicken is "fired" and heated so that it finishes cooking. Then, while hot and still in the pot, presented to the diners. It's taken back, must rest outside of the hot boiling pot, and then is sliced into pieces and plated to be served and eaten by the guests. The remaining carcass is supposed to then be boiled down into a stock for a 3rd dish. However, the resting and boiling steps could be skipped. Why does it all have to be the exact same chicken!? Have a presentation bird, another that is fired and rested (while the other is presented) you can carve and serve quicker, and make a large amount of bulk stock that can be served on order. The only difference is you don't have the exact same bird going through the whole 3 steps to the diners and instead have the 1. dead cooked presentation bird, 2. the carved bird, and 3. stock from a bird from yesterday.
- munificent 2y ago
  > Is the presentation bird alive or dead? Dead and boiled. > What is "fired" in this context? In cooking, that can mean applying direct heat in any number of ways. In this guess, I'm guessing that it means finishing (i.e. doing a last small amount of cooking for color and texture) the bird by roasting or searing. > Is the presentation bird unrested? What does "rested" mean in this context? In cooking, resting means to remove the item from heat and let it sit for a while. Food cooks from the outside in so the surface temperature can be much higher than the internal temperature. Resting gives some time for those to equalize. It lets the inside finish cooking using the residual heat on the surface. > Why does the kitchen need to "butcher" the chicken that's "rested"? It's a boiled whole chicken. After it's rested, it gets broken down into parts that the diner can eat. For chicken, that's usually breasts, thighs, wings, and legs/drumsticks. > What does "slowing" the other, presumably presentation, chicken mean? Resting and breaking down a chicken takes time, especially resting. By having a separate presentation chicken, it means the staff can be simultaneously resting some other cooked chicken and butchering it while the presenetation is being paraded around.
searine 2y ago
Been very unimpressed with his restaurants and more-so by his personality. This hard/stupid blog post just reinforces that.
mcbrit 2y ago
Many chefs go on about this; I don't see anything unique or insightful in the article. Personally, I think the Japanese ryokan tradition is amazing. It's obsessive food, and you /can/ taste the difference. I thought it was mindblowing even as a 20-sth dude in the early 2000s that grew up with Zagats in Atlanta. The difference is spending 30 minutes (Chang) vs 30 years (ryokan).
djaouen 2y ago
The reality he is trying to describe is that COOKING is ART. You could take the shortcut of skipping technique and realism and go straight to splashing paint on a page, but that wouldn't be ART. You have to EARN YOUR STRIPES before you can do something like that.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
There's also the long, hard, smart way. You can focus on making things excellent in a way that it actually gets easier over time. It depends on your goals.
canucker2016 2y ago
I have lived the story from "Eat A Peach" at the end of the article. My family were regulars at a local Chinese restaurant for years. One of the dishes we usually ordered was Peking Duck. First, the waiter brought out the cooked duck on a trolley and carved up the duck, arranging the cut pieces of duck meat on a dish. The duck meat, pancakes/tortillas, sauce, and condiments were placed on the table. At this point, the duck carcass was taken back to the kitchen to be prepared for the second dish - this restaurant just carved up the duck carcass and brought out the cut up duck carcass as a second dish. My family were never that interested in the remaining pieces of duck since there was little meat on them. Instead, my dad would ask the waiter to be given the duck carcass to take home so my dad could prepare the remaining duck meat his way (call him old school). One time, after the Peking duck was presented and my dad had been given the duck carcass for later enjoyment, another waiter came out holding a dish filled with cut up pieces of duck. But OUR duck that we ordered was in a bag near my dad. The waiter claimed that the duck dish was for our table. So where had the duck for the dish come from?
- niceguy1827 2y ago
  I've had similar dinning experience, where they would take the carcass and prepare a soup from it after carving meat. However, they didn't promise that your soup would only come from your duck. I got interested because if I had to prepare that soup by myself it would have taken at least one hour, but they brought it out in 10 minutes.
qwertytyyuu 2y ago
I'm looking at games and all the hacks the do in the name of efficiency.
challenger-derp 2y ago
> And ultimately I think being a chef is one of the hardest jobs to motivate people because there’s no lure of a giant paycheck or bonus or stock options. You’re really trying to teach someone to better themselves through their own personal integrity. 1. jobs that are monetarily incentivized in this way are quite common though. 2. for certain kinds of jobs, if an employer desires employees to go the "long, hard, stupid way" while short-cuts lie in plain sight, the employer might wish to incorporate forms of incentives and disincentives into their payout system rather than rely on their employee to "just do it".
eps 2y ago
> You’re really trying to teach someone to better themselves through their own personal integrity. I am subbed to /r/KitchenConfidential sub (a place where chefs and kitchen staff hang around) and there is a constant trickle of anecdotes of Chang being one of the greatest a*holes they have ever worked for. He doesn't teach. He screams, denigrates and have anger episodes that keep everyone in the kitchen in a constant state of fear. For example - https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/comments/1c3l66u/working_for_david_chang/\ https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/comments/1c3l66...*
- teractiveodular 2y ago
  Commercial kitchens are incredibly high pressure workplaces and many famous chefs are also assholes. It doesn't excuse Chang, but there's definitely a certain personality type that's drawn to and can function in these environments.
  - taeric 2y ago
    This "high pressure workplace" has always struck me as crazy. I grant that it looks true from the anecdotes, but it also seems that the vast majority of the pressure is self created. Often times specifically created by that second point, that many famous chefs are assholes. Worse, as most of their asshole behavior seems to stem from the fact that they are buckling under pressure. Pressure that they themselves are causing.
    - wnc3141 2y ago
      I've always wondered about this. Apart from the small fine dining market, people just want decent food at a decent price and timeliness.
      - taeric 2y ago
        But I am right that the general narrative is definitely that kitchen help staff is a high stress job? I just don't get it. Now I'm curious if this is reputation that is legit, or just one that everyone parrots. :(
hanwenn 2y ago
Both David Chang and his staff are ridiculous. Different parts of the bird take different times to cook, so for food quality, cooking a bird as a whole makes no sense: either the breasts are overcooked, or the thighs are undercooked. There is just one reason, which is that cooking the animal whole makes for an arresting presentation. Then, you'd carve the animal tableside (like is done for Peking duck, see one of the other comments). This requires having waitstaff that can carve a bird or having cooks that are presentable to the guests, and extra space in the dining room. Clearly, David Chang is taking a shortcut already by carving the chicken in the kitchen.
langsoul-com 2y ago
This is actually quite a good point. A single person taking shortcuts is not bad, but certain things are done in a particular way for good reason. One shortcut today is another tomorrow and the day after. It's not about the single person either, but rather the culture itself. Now this is different from improving processes or efficiencies. The incentives and motivations also matter. Take a large group 1 hour before the restaurant closes. For the staff, it's shit, why didn't they come earlier. But for the restaurant it's great news, more money and potential repeat customers.
ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
> I was terrified of our culture stagnating. That’s something I can relate to. A lot of my personal “secret sauce” is habit, and a lot of habit is synonymous with motivation. I find that establishing great habits has a kernel of great motivation. Sometimes, I just do something a certain way, because of the way it makes me feel. No other reason. Personal satisfaction and Integrity are vital parts of all that I do, and these come from a lifetime of experience. I heard a great quote from a friend of mine, recently, who is a retired union exec: What’s the substitute for 30 years of experience? There is none.
supportengineer 2y ago
I’m a big fan of high-end restaurants, but you don’t need to show me the food and take it away and then bring it back. I think he needs a better way to authenticate the chicken. Maybe he can use the blockchain to show proof of work.
mightyhacker658 2y ago
[dead]

263 points by herbertl 2y ago

and once they got big enough, they attempted to use their size to stop others from selling chili oil

David Chang is a salesman and a businessman first. I get the point being made, but keep in mind that he is a brand, and part of that is the stories he tells. He has slapped his name on so many subpar food goods that were a total disappointment that I actually have started avoiding things marketed under his brand name. He might do things the hard way in his restaurants, but they certainly aren't ensuring tasty or high quality goods under his brand. I would rather he do things in a way that makes sense and provides the best tasting food. More broadly, the point is that you should take advice only from people whose successes you want to emulate. The actual advice I get out of this article is: Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product.

nemo44x 2y ago
He's really trying to build an empire based on his name and recognition from a few good restaurants he founded. I think he wants to scale it as much as he can right now and sell it. He has commented before that a restaurant based around the chef's personality isn't really a business you can sell one day. But products based around the celebrity chef are. But yeah, most things he's putting his name on are so super over priced they are clearly selling to people with no price sensitivity. I'm sure his margins are fantastic and he'll get a big payday if he sells at just the right time.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  I don't really understand any of this this thread, there's a lot of conflicting ideas. David Chang owns a frozen food empire that's super over priced and super low quality that's successful enough that he'll make a lot of money if he sells at the right time?
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    He has a personal brand built around his name and his in-person restaurant group, which are reportedly VERY good. Good enough that he has two Michelin stars. He has used that reputation to start selling groceries under the same name. They are not very good in many cases, but he is able to charge high prices because of good marketing and his famous brand (Momofuku). As an example he sells, what I judge to be not very good ramen noodles, for $4/pack. That is a lot of money for mediocre ramen noodles, even if it does have a famous name on the package. A successful business is one that makes profits, not one that makes high quality goods. A profitable business can be retained for the profits, or it can be sold to some other entity. A chef, meanwhile, only makes money while they work.
    - radicality 2y ago
      Had two Michelin stars. Momofuku Ko closed recently. I went once around 2016, partly exactly because of his name and brand. It was ok but nothing memorable, I think he wasn’t even there. I guess the closing probably aligns with his goals of maximizing a brand / money, and not actually cooking good food.
      - nemo44x 2y ago
        Wow, I didn't realize Ko closed either. I went there around the same time and really liked it. But even then you could start to feel the fade a bit in what Chang did. He certainly had his moment and he was very influential. I still remember the first time I ate at Noodle Bar - was amazing. It looks like they've closed nearly every restaurant they had except a couple Noodle Bars in NYC and Vegas and some other restaurant. Rough times for that industry. Ssäm Bar was a pretty good place, sort of shocked they couldn't keep the lights on there.
      - tptacek 2y ago
        Ssam Bar was really good when I went there (also closed, though). It was a not-fucking-around good fine-dining/gastropub hybrid. The Momofuku cookbook is also excellent, and well written.
    - deleted 2y ago
- hinkley 2y ago
  This is all reminding me of the mean dude in Ratatouille. Only the mean dude is now also Gasteau.
  - throw4847285 2y ago
    I was thinking the exact same thing! Lucky I searched the page for Ratatouille before commenting. Ratatouille is one of my all time favorite movies, but if you read it as a metaphor for director Brad Bird's own career, it's hard not to feel like it lets Walt Disney off the hook. Often in real life, the creative genius who founded the enterprise and the sycophant who has taken over it in his absence are both assholes. Though Ratatouille does touch on this by making Gusteau an idealized figment of Remy's imagination, who is shocked when he hears that the real man had a child via an affair.
hinkley 2y ago
> Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product. There’s one interpretation of the idea of business as not selling products but stories. Apple knows this and clearly exhibits it with every product demo. It’s all a story. One that I enjoy. But low priced groceries also sell a story, about how a beleaguered mother can save a few dollars here in order to avoid bouncing a check or to buy herself one nice thing. Or a kid who wants something sweet and already blew their allowance on video games. A pattern they will repeat again every few months since it worked before. Chang is definitely selling two stories and it sounds like they are a bit discordant when taken together.
- cm11 2y ago
  Michelin stars seem to have the dynamics of a loss leader. Particularly as it's become known that many of the restaurants are badly unprofitable—and moreso if you think the chefs should earn something commensurate to their presumable talent or passion (you don't have to think this). It seems to be more the case that every award or signal of quality is capable of (and actually being used) this way. Some people, like Chang, may know it and treat it transactionally as such. $X for a star, which leads to Y amount of exposure. Others, may know it or not, but treat it like a goal in life either way. It's very possible of course that many of the former start as the latter people until they later [realize/sell out/give up]. I guess it makes sense. The world is more competitive. Information is freely available. You need to find some other moat. With information and access to everything, a moat that might have been quality or talent, is more easily captured by buying the signal (which to be clear can include buying and maintaining the quality). Then once you have the signal, well, it's up to you whether you still need or want the quality. When push comes to shove, it's probably the case that the signal is worth more than the quality.
  - knowitnone 2y ago
    I don't believe you. If a restaurant is unprofitable, it would be closed. Nobody in their right mind would choose to continue losing money.
    - 2y ago
chubot 2y ago
I've been wondering about this for YEARS now: WTF happened to Milk Bar in NYC? Based on the taste and quality, it seems like the most egregious case of "selling out" I've ever seen. It seems like an overnight change to me David Chang and Christina Tosi worked together, and I remember seeing a bunch of their marketing on Netflix https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofuku-employee-bakery-chain-ceo/ https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofu... In 2015 the location in East Village was still GREAT. Interesting deserts, seemingly made by hand, with high quality ingredients Then I go back a few years later, and it's this CHAIN and the food is inedible. I take one bite, can't eat it, and throw it away It just tastes like sugary processed food now, like Twinkies or Chips Ahoy or something I also saw Milk Bar products in Whole Foods, bought it, took one bite, and threw it away, and never bought it again It's just weird to me that a chef would let the quality sink so low, so fast. Usually the "founders" care about quality, and are mission-focused I always thought that process took decades, and changes in ownership. (Actually I am re-reading Pollan's account of the "big organic" Cascadian Farms brand now -- another very interesting case of counterculture going mainstream / industrial, but the change was more gradual I think)
- geodel 2y ago
  As others have alluded too. At this point SC is high on its own supply. Create a food empire, hang out with rich or famous chefs. Create millions of aspiring chumps who'd take his words as gospel. Edit SC -> DC (David Chang)
  - apsurd 2y ago
    Who or what is SC?
    - infecto 2y ago
      Typo, DC not SC. David Chang
  - detourdog 2y ago
    You want to be chef you have to be in the kitchen.
weaksauce 2y ago
he’s also reportedly a jerk to his staff and yells at them. and sues mom and pop shops for using his trademark of a really generic term... something like spicy chili oil or very similar.
- jsbg 2y ago
  In the US, trademarks have to be enforced to remain valid. https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enforcement/ https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enfo... "a failure to enforce a trademark by monitoring the mark for misuses will result in a weakening of the mark and loss of distinctiveness, which can lead to a loss of the trademark"
  - addicted 2y ago
    It’s annoying. Every time a company does basic enforcement they are required to by law to maintain their trademark, they get bonded and we go through the same cycle of outrage with the sensible people explaining that trademarks aren’t like patents and if someone is going around using your trademark, you will lose it. Then the outrage dies down only to have the cycle repeated a few weeks later.
    - dghlsakjg 2y ago
      He trademarked “chili crunch” which is just what that food is called. It’s like trying to trademark “breakfast cereal” or “hot sauce”. If it had gone to court he would have lost eventually since other people had been using that name earlier for the same product, and it was too broad
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    The problem is that the trademark was too generic (chili crunch, to be exact) and he was going after brands that sold a product that had always been known as that or crunchy chili oil, or chili crunch oil. He didn’t invent the food, and started going after small brands and people that had been selling it since before he had tried registering the trademark. He did eventually back down.
tempodox 2y ago
> Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product. Isn't that just called advertising? This is so blatantly obvious, it doesn't sound like much of an advice.
- rapind 2y ago
  Advertising is always attempting to disguise itself as anything other than advertising.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  Pretty much. I wasn't saying that this is a particularly insightful message. I was saying that the message I took from this story wasn't about doing things the hard way. Its a meta lesson about messaging and showmanship.
paxys 2y ago
Don't forget he filed a trademark for chili crunch sauce (which has been used in several Asian cuisines for literally centuries) and sued to stop smaller restaurants and businesses from selling it, and only backed down when there was public outcry.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fsckboy 2y ago
  trademark refers to the name a product is sold as, not what the product is, and also has a local jurisdiction. What they do in Asia has nothing to do with trademarks in the US, and since not very much of Asia has spoken English for literally hundreds of years, I doubt they were calling it chili crunch sauce. I'm not defending Chang nor trademarks, just pointing out how they work legally and the flaws in the argument you're making. Remember, people called windows "windows", but they didn't sell products called Windows till Microsoft started and trademarked it.
  - shaklee3 2y ago
    I don't get your point. There are many other companies using the name chili crunch. He was not the first. But he tried to trademark it to stop all the others.
    - fsckboy 2y ago
      that he was not the first using that name in the US is a very good argument against a trademark in the US now that you've said that, but this is the first time that was said, is the point I was making
shaklee3 2y ago
He also tried to sue all the other small businesses using the chili crunch name. I stopped buying his after that.

shahahmed 2y ago

"The dish was meant to be a difficult pickup that required constant coordination between the front and back of house. That was what made it great." This feels like the crux. It's not arbitrarily doing the hard, stupid thing, but the ones that are based in making the product or process better.

larkost 2y ago
I disagree. The final product (the food) is not better in any way for doing this. I do see the value of not making the server lie to the customer by pretending that they were going to get the "stunt chicken", but this whole problem seems to be caused by trying to make the preparation of the food into a show, and here is a case where the showmanship is getting in the way of efficiency. If they just got rid of parading out the chicken in the middle of the process they could stage more things without implicitly lying to the customers, while improving timing. You would just lose some showmanship, which might be part of the brand.

gizmo 2y ago

After thinking about this blogpost for a minute I realized the blogpost actually literally argues for doing things the hard and stupid way. Not as a metaphor for integrity or quality. Integrity isn't the point: > It had nothing to do with integrity. I didn’t care about fooling the diners. What concerned me was the precedent we were setting. The quality of the food isn't the point either: > The dish was meant to be a difficult pickup that required constant coordination between the front and back of house. The inefficiency is the point. Doing it the long, hard and stupid way is the point. This is a sermon against process improvements. Without seeming to realize that restaurants are a modern miracle of process improvements! How does this David think the kitchen gets fresh ingredients every morning? Where does David think fruit in the winter comes from? How did herbs and spices get so cheap? Because we decided for the past 200 years to relentlessly pursue efficiency. Because we decided not to do things the slow and stupid way any more. That's how!

bluGill 2y ago
Some things are better, but some are bad shortcuts that cost quality. A burger from a place that cooks it after you order will always be better than a burger where they start cooking before you walk in the door. Back when I worked fast food I sometimes made my own burgers, when it was fresh off the grill it was one of the best burgers I ever had, but that is a lot more individual labor and so not sustainable in a fast food model. Back then burgers were assembled before you walked in the door, but these days they have all backed off to assemble the burger after you order of ingredients cooked before - it is higher quality and they have managed to optimize assembly enough that it is now sustainable. Where the fast food industry wants to be is a robot that sees you push the button and starts cooking your burger then before you get to paying for it. Robots could do all that, but they are too expensive for the price they need to hit at least so far. (there are also some fraud issues they have to work out) They have to start cooking before you finish the order to meet their fast goals which is one of the reasons people go to fast food.
dooglius 2y ago
He explains the point in the lines you omitted: > I worried about the mindset of the server whose job it would be to parade a stunt chicken around the dining room. I was terrified of our culture stagnating. It doesn't read to me like he would have any problem with a process improvement as long as the real chicken were still used.

serallak 2y ago

"The hard way is pretty hard, but not as hard as the easy way" -- Granny Weatherwax

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
youssefabdelm 2y ago
Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way — Dogen Zenji
- youssefabdelm 2y ago
  (It is hilarious to me that Dogen is being downvoted)
ccvannorman 2y ago
"The path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long" -- Lao Tzu

trwhite 2y ago

This strikes me as really dumb. An efficiency that the diner would never notice and he wants to make his staff work harder to prove a point. Way to make people resent their work.

nemo44x 2y ago
He believes it will bleed into other things where it does make a difference. So he takes a 0 tolerance policy into cheating so it doesn't become a habit and a culture and instead hopes to instill the value of not taking shortcuts as a measure to prevent a lapse.
- yazzku 2y ago
  As a programmer, this still seems overly dogmatic. Why not just develop the discipline to put effort where it's actually needed instead of burning gas all around like a moron? Every programmer knows this. The extreme dogma seems the real lack of discipline to me.
  - nemo44x 2y ago
    As a programmer I probably don't know very much about how to run a kitchen, the kinds of people that work in them, and the reasonable expectations the kitchen manager might have. Not to mention, the outcome of the majority of software project is failure lol.

ABraidotti 2y ago

I like this. And there's a time and place for everything. If I were inclined to try this boiled chicken, hell yeah I'm going to appreciate that I'm getting served the real chicken I saw earlier AND I believe in developing that kind of kitchen culture about caring for what you make. But I also still eat pizza from the shop down the street when hungry and impatient. Other long, hard, stupid things I like to do: read novels, take walks, invest my time to learn fundamentals of a practice Short, easy, stupid things I like to do: skip the occasional long post on hackernews and just read the comments, automate and simplify my work, watch short videos on how to fix broken things, send one-line emails instead of sit through meetings

karaterobot 2y ago

> It had nothing to do with integrity. I didn’t care about fooling the diners. What concerned me was the precedent we were setting. I worried about the mindset of the server whose job it would be to parade a stunt chicken around the dining room. I was terrified of our culture stagnating. I'm sort of surprised that he didn't worry about integrity, since it's literally an example of lying to your customers about the food they're paying for. Fooling is a pretty light word for what others would call false advertising: you tell people you're making soup out of the carcass you just ate from, and then you just don't do that. I imagine that could also have an effect on the restaurant's culture as well. I understand that fine dining is partly theatrical, but don't charge me a premium for doing something you're not actually doing and then say "fooled ya!"

refulgentis 2y ago
Yeah that's what the article says, but you frame it argumentatively. He doesn't assert he doesn't care about integrity, reading it, its clear the communicated point is he cares about integrity because of how it affects culture, not just because the carcass you ate wasn't used to make soup: in that case, it'd be trivial to "solve" the problem by just not affirmatively claiming the soup was made from the exact same carcass.
- karaterobot 2y ago
  When he said "it had nothing to do with integrity" I think he meant that it had nothing to do with personal integrity, i.e. he's not bothered by lying to customers. It's clear he cares about the morale and culture of his team, and I guess he's making some distinction I don't understand between integrity and feeling bad because you're the guy on staff parading around a decoy chicken all night. My point is that maybe they should also think about other kinds of integrity, if only not advertising a product you aren't really selling, but probably also not lying to your guests.
hammock 2y ago
He said if you were going to fool the guest, you had to make up for that lost energy by doing something else (or presumably lower the price) The guest is paying for an overall experience. There are plenty of experiences where a guest is happy to pay to be lied to, like a magic show or a strip club or the Olive Garden. As long as the totality of the experience is providing enough value. Now if you specifically chose the restaurant because of their honesty (for whatever that means), then it’s a different story

lvl155 2y ago

I like him but his food is just a white-person’s version of Korean food. It’s not a bad thing but his food lacks soul and this is reflected in everything he does.

IncreasePosts 2y ago
Food is allowed to be different from its origins. Just parroting what Korean food already is isn't particularly special - consider that basically every Korean restaurant is doing exactly that. And that might be part of the reason they, for the most part, don't have 2 Michelin stars.
- lvl155 2y ago
  That’s a fair point but a lot of his food may taste good to uninitiated western palate. I also see this in Indian cuisine because the spices are on the strong side, it takes awhile (years even) to be able to differentiate between good and subpar. Again, I like the guy and he worked his ass off and took necessary risks to succeed.
  - dghlsakjg 2y ago
    I'm fine with fusion foods, and borrowing from different cultures to make something new. The problem with Momofuku Goods (No idea about ther resaturant group) is that they aren't even good to the unrefined palate. I'm not particularly tuned into the asian cuisines that he specializes in, but I can tell you that his packaged noodles are pretty middling even by grocery store ramen standards.
jancsika 2y ago
To complete the LARP[1], would you mind finding a boomer-age Korean father and complaining jealously about his "white-person's version of Korean food?" 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son

jppope 2y ago

Ignoring the explicit text which everyone seems to be overly concerned with... I'm not really worried about that. The article makes you think for a second... The thing I like about this article is that you should be concerned with these things. You should make active decisions about quality, culture, integrity, the way you produce things, etc. You should not skip to "the long, hard, stupid way" or the shortcut in your proprietary process without consideration. Even the thought that there could be more value in an inefficient process is worth considering if you haven't before.

xivzgrev 2y ago

I needed to read the article a few times - the quotes from David are a bit vague. His presented focus is on great experiences for the customer, which demands high operational excellence from his team. His team found a reasonable way to save time, but his reaction was that's the wrong focus. Focusing on saving time will eventually hurt the customer experience (like advertising models lead to enshittification), even if this particular one doesn't. So they need to re-orient this - either go back to the hard way, or justify the easy way in terms of the customer. To quote, "they wanted to sandbag it, they needed to figure out how they would make up for the lost energy elsewhere."

skybrian 2y ago

I’m generally in favor of “cheap and cheerful” - that is, friendly efficiency. Doing elaborately inefficient things to justify higher prices is a turnoff. Unfortunately, from a restaurant’s point of view, they may care about customer satisfaction, but their incentives are to get more money per visit. A lot of things restaurants do make more sense from that perspective. For example, large portions can be seen as a way to justify moderately higher prices while keeping customers feeling like they got good value for their money. Elaborate, unnecessary service is a way to justify really high prices. And nowadays they care less about perception, so they just add extra changes.

jrm4 2y ago

"I didn't care about fooling the diners." See, that's the moment you've lost the plot. That's where, for me, I realized this article may have been dancing around a good idea, it ultimately fails. This is the most important question of THE WHOLE THING. Is it fair or good to FOOL THE DINERS? Would the diners even care? These are the only two important questions, and he kind of ducked them.

joshcsimmons 2y ago

David Chang is the guy who sent cease and desist letters to other manufacturers selling chili crunch, a condiment that existed long before he was born. Maybe that is the "long, hard, stupid way"

tmoertel 2y ago
My understanding is that another company owned the Chili Crunch trademark and took enforcement action against David Chang's company when it started selling products under that name. As part of the settlement, Chang's company ended up purchasing the trademark. As one of the obligations of owning a trademark is to enforce its use in the marketplace, Chang's lawyers did just that. But after blowback in the press, Chang arranged for the other brands to also use the trademark. Here's a summary from NBC News: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/david-chang-momofuku-will-no-longer-enforce-chili-crunch-trademark-rcna147838 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/david-chang-momof...
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  > As one of the obligations of owning a trademark is to enforce its use in the marketplace, Chang's lawyers did just that. There is no such obligation. Yes, if you don't enforce a trademark you can lose it, but it isn't like you will be subject to fines or something if you don't. This is a ridiculously generic trademark that never should've been granted, and if Chang (or his lawyers) were good, decent people they would've just let it be. The trademark would've lapsed, and everything would've been fine.
  - tmoertel 2y ago
    > There is no such obligation. Yes, if you don't enforce a trademark you can lose it... Your second sentence kinda refutes the first, doesn't it? I mean, if your company gets a cease-and-desist demand from the owners of the Chili Crunch trademark, and ends up buying the trademark to continue running your business, it seems like a Pretty Bad Idea to not hold on to that trademark. I know you think the trademark should never have been granted, but the USPTO did grant it, and Chang's company did get a C&D from the grantee. So, if Chang's company ever let that trademark go (e.g., to be "good, decent people," as you suggest), the history of this particular matter suggests that someone else could easily pick the trademark up, and probably would (not everyone is "good, decent people," right?), and would then start sending cease-and-desist demands to extract fees. So I'm having a hard time faulting Chang's lawyers for avoiding the obvious trap.

jarule 2y ago

Is the presentation bird alive or dead? What is "fired" in this context? Is the presentation bird unrested? What does "rested" mean in this context? Why does the kitchen need to "butcher" the chicken that's "rested"? Doesn't that mean the rested chicken is still alive? What does "slowing" the other, presumably presentation, chicken mean?

Spellman 2y ago
The presentation bird is still dead and cooked. A dish being "fired" means finish the cooking process, eg put into the fire. When a meat comes out hot from the cooking process, it needs to "rest" a certain amount of time for the temperature to even out and the juices to be reabsorbed before being sliced/butchered. This is time that the diners now need to wait before they get their meal. So, in David Chang's model, when the dish is ordered a prepared, dead chicken is "fired" and heated so that it finishes cooking. Then, while hot and still in the pot, presented to the diners. It's taken back, must rest outside of the hot boiling pot, and then is sliced into pieces and plated to be served and eaten by the guests. The remaining carcass is supposed to then be boiled down into a stock for a 3rd dish. However, the resting and boiling steps could be skipped. Why does it all have to be the exact same chicken!? Have a presentation bird, another that is fired and rested (while the other is presented) you can carve and serve quicker, and make a large amount of bulk stock that can be served on order. The only difference is you don't have the exact same bird going through the whole 3 steps to the diners and instead have the 1. dead cooked presentation bird, 2. the carved bird, and 3. stock from a bird from yesterday.
munificent 2y ago
> Is the presentation bird alive or dead? Dead and boiled. > What is "fired" in this context? In cooking, that can mean applying direct heat in any number of ways. In this guess, I'm guessing that it means finishing (i.e. doing a last small amount of cooking for color and texture) the bird by roasting or searing. > Is the presentation bird unrested? What does "rested" mean in this context? In cooking, resting means to remove the item from heat and let it sit for a while. Food cooks from the outside in so the surface temperature can be much higher than the internal temperature. Resting gives some time for those to equalize. It lets the inside finish cooking using the residual heat on the surface. > Why does the kitchen need to "butcher" the chicken that's "rested"? It's a boiled whole chicken. After it's rested, it gets broken down into parts that the diner can eat. For chicken, that's usually breasts, thighs, wings, and legs/drumsticks. > What does "slowing" the other, presumably presentation, chicken mean? Resting and breaking down a chicken takes time, especially resting. By having a separate presentation chicken, it means the staff can be simultaneously resting some other cooked chicken and butchering it while the presenetation is being paraded around.

searine 2y ago

Been very unimpressed with his restaurants and more-so by his personality. This hard/stupid blog post just reinforces that.

mcbrit 2y ago

Many chefs go on about this; I don't see anything unique or insightful in the article. Personally, I think the Japanese ryokan tradition is amazing. It's obsessive food, and you /can/ taste the difference. I thought it was mindblowing even as a 20-sth dude in the early 2000s that grew up with Zagats in Atlanta. The difference is spending 30 minutes (Chang) vs 30 years (ryokan).

djaouen 2y ago

The reality he is trying to describe is that COOKING is ART. You could take the shortcut of skipping technique and realism and go straight to splashing paint on a page, but that wouldn't be ART. You have to EARN YOUR STRIPES before you can do something like that.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

There's also the long, hard, smart way. You can focus on making things excellent in a way that it actually gets easier over time. It depends on your goals.

canucker2016 2y ago

I have lived the story from "Eat A Peach" at the end of the article. My family were regulars at a local Chinese restaurant for years. One of the dishes we usually ordered was Peking Duck. First, the waiter brought out the cooked duck on a trolley and carved up the duck, arranging the cut pieces of duck meat on a dish. The duck meat, pancakes/tortillas, sauce, and condiments were placed on the table. At this point, the duck carcass was taken back to the kitchen to be prepared for the second dish - this restaurant just carved up the duck carcass and brought out the cut up duck carcass as a second dish. My family were never that interested in the remaining pieces of duck since there was little meat on them. Instead, my dad would ask the waiter to be given the duck carcass to take home so my dad could prepare the remaining duck meat his way (call him old school). One time, after the Peking duck was presented and my dad had been given the duck carcass for later enjoyment, another waiter came out holding a dish filled with cut up pieces of duck. But OUR duck that we ordered was in a bag near my dad. The waiter claimed that the duck dish was for our table. So where had the duck for the dish come from?

niceguy1827 2y ago
I've had similar dinning experience, where they would take the carcass and prepare a soup from it after carving meat. However, they didn't promise that your soup would only come from your duck. I got interested because if I had to prepare that soup by myself it would have taken at least one hour, but they brought it out in 10 minutes.

qwertytyyuu 2y ago

I'm looking at games and all the hacks the do in the name of efficiency.

challenger-derp 2y ago

> And ultimately I think being a chef is one of the hardest jobs to motivate people because there’s no lure of a giant paycheck or bonus or stock options. You’re really trying to teach someone to better themselves through their own personal integrity. 1. jobs that are monetarily incentivized in this way are quite common though. 2. for certain kinds of jobs, if an employer desires employees to go the "long, hard, stupid way" while short-cuts lie in plain sight, the employer might wish to incorporate forms of incentives and disincentives into their payout system rather than rely on their employee to "just do it".

eps 2y ago

> You’re really trying to teach someone to better themselves through their own personal integrity. I am subbed to /r/KitchenConfidential sub (a place where chefs and kitchen staff hang around) and there is a constant trickle of anecdotes of Chang being one of the greatest a*holes they have ever worked for. He doesn't teach. He screams, denigrates and have anger episodes that keep everyone in the kitchen in a constant state of fear. For example - https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/comments/1c3l66u/working_for_david_chang/\ https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/comments/1c3l66...*

teractiveodular 2y ago
Commercial kitchens are incredibly high pressure workplaces and many famous chefs are also assholes. It doesn't excuse Chang, but there's definitely a certain personality type that's drawn to and can function in these environments.
- taeric 2y ago
  This "high pressure workplace" has always struck me as crazy. I grant that it looks true from the anecdotes, but it also seems that the vast majority of the pressure is self created. Often times specifically created by that second point, that many famous chefs are assholes. Worse, as most of their asshole behavior seems to stem from the fact that they are buckling under pressure. Pressure that they themselves are causing.
  - wnc3141 2y ago
    I've always wondered about this. Apart from the small fine dining market, people just want decent food at a decent price and timeliness.
    - taeric 2y ago
      But I am right that the general narrative is definitely that kitchen help staff is a high stress job? I just don't get it. Now I'm curious if this is reputation that is legit, or just one that everyone parrots. :(

hanwenn 2y ago

Both David Chang and his staff are ridiculous. Different parts of the bird take different times to cook, so for food quality, cooking a bird as a whole makes no sense: either the breasts are overcooked, or the thighs are undercooked. There is just one reason, which is that cooking the animal whole makes for an arresting presentation. Then, you'd carve the animal tableside (like is done for Peking duck, see one of the other comments). This requires having waitstaff that can carve a bird or having cooks that are presentable to the guests, and extra space in the dining room. Clearly, David Chang is taking a shortcut already by carving the chicken in the kitchen.

langsoul-com 2y ago

This is actually quite a good point. A single person taking shortcuts is not bad, but certain things are done in a particular way for good reason. One shortcut today is another tomorrow and the day after. It's not about the single person either, but rather the culture itself. Now this is different from improving processes or efficiencies. The incentives and motivations also matter. Take a large group 1 hour before the restaurant closes. For the staff, it's shit, why didn't they come earlier. But for the restaurant it's great news, more money and potential repeat customers.

ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago

> I was terrified of our culture stagnating. That’s something I can relate to. A lot of my personal “secret sauce” is habit, and a lot of habit is synonymous with motivation. I find that establishing great habits has a kernel of great motivation. Sometimes, I just do something a certain way, because of the way it makes me feel. No other reason. Personal satisfaction and Integrity are vital parts of all that I do, and these come from a lifetime of experience. I heard a great quote from a friend of mine, recently, who is a retired union exec: What’s the substitute for 30 years of experience? There is none.

supportengineer 2y ago

I’m a big fan of high-end restaurants, but you don’t need to show me the food and take it away and then bring it back. I think he needs a better way to authenticate the chicken. Maybe he can use the blockchain to show proof of work.

mightyhacker658 2y ago

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