Eat a peach A memoir

Review by Booklist Review

Throughout his first memoir, chef, restaurateur, and Ugly Delicious host Chang (Momofuku: A Cookbook) never loses sight of the "monumental weirdness" of writing a book about himself. While he discusses his upbringing in a Korean American family with poignance, particularly his relationship with his father, this is primarily a book about Chang's career and mental health, and how the two are intertwined. After some post-college searching that led to culinary school, in the early aughts he opened Momofuku Noodle Bar in Manhattan's East Village. One restaurant became several, with accolades and new opportunities aplenty. But Chang is just as open about professional missteps as successes, lauding his talented team while never sparing himself criticism. He also applies brave transparency to the realities of coping with his bipolar disorder, and battling suicidal thoughts. Culinary-minded readers will find much instruction here (including a section on "33 rules for becoming a chef"), as well as the intimate self-portrait of a chef who works hard not to be at the top of his game, but instead always growing.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Chang (Momofuku), Momofuku restaurateur and star of Netflix's Ugly Delicious, starts this self-effacing, heart-on-sleeve memoir with a disclaimer: "Frankly, I just don't understand my appeal." Chang writes about being a hard-driving Korean-American kid with an anger problem who channeled his frustrations into an eagerness to test limits and himself. He left a "soul-sucking" post-college finance job after discovering that, though he was far from a natural at cooking, it was something he "didn't hate doing." He opened his first restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, in the East Village in 2004 at least partially to stave off suicide, and in the course of becoming an international restaurateur, Chang tried to upend people's expectations of ethnic culinary categories while pushing himself to the financial and emotional brink. Chang writes about the sweaty tension of his manic episodes and his dark depression, and there are stories of kitchen screaming fits, reflections on being in the "cool chefs club," and particularly affecting passages about Chang's late friend, Anthony Bourdain. In the book's most heartfelt section, Chang rhapsodizes about the egalitarian Asian dining ethos he wanted to import to the West and even allows himself a rare pat on the back for his influence ("Food across the country had become porkier, spicier, brighter, better"). Foodies and chefs alike will dig into Chang's searing memoir. (Sept.)

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Review by Library Journal Review

Chang is a big name in the culinary world. From Momofuku and his other restaurants, to the gone-too-soon magazine Lucky Peach, to the popular Netflix show Ugly Delicious, his star has continued to rise, despite the occasional setback. Is it luck? Hard work? Tenacity? Yes, to all that and more. Chang's memoir wrestles with those questions and the feelings of inferiority, rage, and depression that have plagued him all his life, from his time first working in kitchens to success as a restaurateur to becoming a father. He is as open about his life with bipolar disorder and struggle with self-destructive impulses as he is in describing the missteps he made while managing the Momofuku empire. This openness about the business side of the culinary world makes for a compelling read, even as readers might wince at some of Chang's self-excoriation. He closes the book with a list of 33 Rules for Becoming a Chef; anyone considering the life would do well to read it before getting started. VERDICT A solid choice for memoir fans and chef-followers alike.--Devon Thomas, Chelsea, MI

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The debut memoir from the star chef and restaurateur. It would be unfair to label Chang's book as the Korean American Kitchen Confidential, but the similarities in tone and attitude certainly invoke the late Anthony Bourdain. The author, probably best known for his now-global Momofuku culinary brand, is no slouch as a writer, with a style that features a refreshingly defiant attitude and some of the best inessential footnotes since A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Chang whisks readers through the steps it takes to be a successful restaurateur, and he makes it clear that there are few ventures harder to pull off. During his first years in the restaurant trade, the author was the beneficiary of family money, a fact that he is not ashamed to admit: Chang's father gave him a generous loan for the financial foundations of his series of restaurants. "There were no apologies or heartfelt conversations, only the money and the particulars of starting a business," he writes. "[My father] was vulnerable. I was vulnerable. We were leaning on one another, just as a family might." Following his early success, Chang began making TV appearances (he now has his own show on Netflix). Of course, there's always a price for success. After moving to Australia and opening a restaurant, he began to feel the stress of managing his many global culinary assets, and a hepatitis scare in one of his restaurants put his business in danger. There's also the inevitable chapter on his addictions: The author was a heavy drinker for years, and he also struggled with anger issues. Chang's memoir eventually becomes a smorgasbord of random recall, covering everything from contemplating the ideal volume of the music in his restaurants to his extended bouts with depression and anxieties about his open-ended future in food. An entertaining, admirably candid self-assessment of life in the foodie fast lane. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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With the benefit of many years of consultation with a professional therapist, I can tell you that what I was experiencing toward the end of my time at Café Boulud was my first full-blown experience with the depressive phase of bipolar disorder. As simply as I can put it, bipolar disorder is characterized by dramatic swings between high (manic) and low (depressive) states. This particular low lasted for several months and was the longest and most intense I've ever endured. But again, I can only tell you that in hindsight. At the time, all I knew was that everything felt shitty and I couldn't pinpoint a specific reason. I felt dislodged personally and professionally. Things I could always count on, like my palate, were failing me. It didn't seem normal to feel this way. High school was where I first noticed that something was off. I'd spoken to the in-house therapist a few times, but I stopped because I didn't really feel comfortable spilling my guts to someone who had lunch with my teachers seven days a week. Instead I wrote about everything going on in my head. One day, my roommate dug through my computer and mocked me mercilessly for what he found. I saw another counselor in college. It took him two minutes to pull out the prescription pad and prescribe me Paxil. I never took it and I never saw him again. I was embarrassed. I didn't feel justified in seeing a therapist or taking pills. For one thing, I didn't know any other Asian people who saw therapists. A lot of my friends had shrinks in college, but their situations were different. They were wealthy kids with actual bad shit going on at home in Westchester or whatever northeastern enclave had produced them. Rich kids are always the most f***ed up. I didn't recognize my issues in anyone else. At Trinity, I grew acutely aware of my otherness. The girls at school were mostly white and therefore off-limits. I'd seen how my parents reacted when my siblings had tried dating non-Koreans, and it wasn't pretty. Not that it would have mattered. The white girls at school were explicit in their pronouncements that they would never be seen with an Asian man. And so, aside from random drunken hookups, I never dated anyone in college. For years, any kind of meaningful relationship I had was one I found during the summer or while traveling abroad. I simply felt more comfortable somewhere else. For a minute, I thought I'd attend divinity school after Trinity, but my grades weren't good enough to get me into a graduate program, much less one of the cushy jobs that my classmates were landing in New York. I didn't know what else to do with myself, so I showed up to a postgrad career fair and signed up to teach English in Japan, because the booth was closest to the door. I'd come to think that my problems were in America, and I wanted to live the life of an expat. Being away from home would be a fresh start, a chance for reinvention. I fled the States with the intention of being gone for good. Cut to the cross-country track behind the high school in Izumi-Tottori and the largest Asian man within thirty miles running around and around and loving it: my first encounter with the highs of a manic episode, and the other side of bipolar disorder. I had boundless energy. I felt invincible. At night, I read dense Russian classics, plowing through the entire canon. I finished War and Peace in a couple of days. I had originally requested an assignment in cold, northern Sapporo. The company sent me to this steamy town in Wakayama Prefecture instead. Imagine Jacksonville, only hotter. At night, I would hear wannabe yakuza riding their dirt bikes and motorcycles around the rice paddy that was my backyard. Most of my students were either the wives of organized criminals or kids prepping for college entrance exams. Once they realized that their English grammar was better than mine, they started using my class as an opportunity to nap. I lived in an apartment with my boss, next to a dorm for Jehovah's Witnesses, and I don't think I had a full night of sleep the entire time I was there. I'd hoped to find something in Japan--a sense of belonging, maybe. No such luck. The women in Japan were no more inclined to date me than the women at Trinity. All the Japanese girls seemed to be paired up with a white guy. If not, they certainly weren't going to stoop to dating a Korean. I did a little traveling while there, and saw that many of the Koreans living in Japan were downtrodden or wrapped up in gambling and shadier professions. Finding vandalism on the monuments to Koreans who died in Hiroshima was an early lesson in racism's ubiquity. I'd always assumed Japan was a country of extraordinary punctuality, but the train would sometimes be late in Izumi-Tottori. I learned that the delays were caused by people jumping on the tracks, even though the government did everything it could to prevent it. They announced that they would fine the families of the deceased. They painted the station a calming pastel yellow. None of it seemed to have an effect. Between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, I read Camus. I spent a lot of time mulling over his famous quote about finding an "invincible summer" within himself. I wondered about the car crash that ended his life, when he took a ride with a notoriously bad driver. When they examined his body, they found a train ticket in his pocket. Did he maybe want to get in that accident? Excerpted from Eat a Peach: A Memoir by David Chang, Gabe Ulla All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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