People don't think that bread is part of Asian culture or Asian food culture, but it's quite prevalent in Northern China, and you see it throughout Japan and as you go to Taiwan.
— David Chang
Running a business anywhere isn't easy.
Say a child raises this beautiful beet. It's going to give her a sense of ownership, and that changes everything. You stop taking things for granted; you become less wasteful.
To eat well, I always disagree with critics who say that all restaurants should be fine dining. You can get a Michelin star if you serve the best hamburger in the world.
Open your refrigerator, your freezer, your kitchen cupboards, and look at the labels on your food. You'll find 'natural flavor' or 'artificial flavor' in just about every list of ingredients. The similarities between these two broad categories are far more significant than the differences.
I've never bribed my way into a restaurant. I've never slipped a C-note or greased a palm. In truth, I've never even considered it. I've assumed, of course, that people do such things.
Life's too short to just breeze on by.
Food, to me, is always about cooking and eating with those you love and care for.
Yes, natural is good and healthy, and whole foods are important. However, experimentation is important, too.
The livelihood of the restaurant is dependent upon getting the word out.
I appreciate people who are happy.
I'm grasping with how you do something on a large scale with multiple operations and not have quality decrease.
If people think you are this amazing, own it.
I love the intensity of the fine-dining kitchen, but loathe the fine-dining experience.
Don't even get me started. I'm not against all vegetarians. But if you're a vegetarian for ethical reasons, you may be causing more harm.
I feel like I'm losing my ability to understand reality; like when someone loses their hearing, they can still speak English, but their speech eventually becomes distorted because they can't hear themselves.
The one reason why I got into cooking was because I wasn't good at anything else - not that I was good at it, but it was considered honest work.
In New York, we're always confined with spaces. Our restaurants are difficult to navigate as cooks and to operate. We fight against the buildings we run in New York.
I'm a big sports fan.
Cooking and gardening involve so many disciplines: math, chemistry, reading, history.
My dad was in the restaurant business, but I didn't really think about following him. Had I done better at school, I don't know if I would have been a chef.
Waiting tables has never paid my bills, a fact which I prefer to hide from my colleagues with deep sighs about the price of just about everything.
Momofuku is not me. It's everyone. I'm just the facade. We have to exceed expectations and be our harshest critics.
New York gives us a wide colour palette to cook from. We have cuisines from around the world, and that lets us pick and choose.
'Tampopo's amazing. I think it's an absolutely fantastic movie, but I don't think it captures for me the meaning of food.
I wanted to disprove the notion that you couldn't open a great restaurant in a casino.
When I was in Japan, everyone wanted to work for Pierre Gagnaire, and they wouldn't miss a beat.
The process and organization leading up to cooking the egg can tell you a lot about the cook.
I hate to say 'chain restaurant,' but we're sort of a corporation now. How do we defy that concept, where people assume each restaurant can't be good?
I want to make simple food new.
When you meet the farmers and go to the farms, you see that they treat their animals like they're family. It makes a big difference.
Why can't it be awesome to work for a food company? Why can't we create an environment where people are trying to push each other to do great things, and we're not trying to steal from anybody - we're trying to be good to our farmers and run an honorable business, if there is such a thing anymore?
I'm not cooking every day anymore, and that's the biggest withdrawal. Cooking is honest work. Now I don't know how to measure myself.
To me, there are two types of celebrity: there's good celebrity - people that are attracted to the food and working and trying to create something great - and then there's bad celebrity - those who are working on being a celebrity.
I'm not trying to bring New York to Toronto. I want to understand Toronto better.
America is a country of abundance, but our food culture is sad - based on huge portions and fast food. Let's stop with the excuses and start creating something better.
I look forward to the spring vegetables because the season is so short. Mushrooms, edible foraged herbs, wild leeks, early season asparagus.
Be careful what you wish for - getting to be a successful business and maintaining it is so hard. Anyone can be good one night; being good over several years is incredibly difficult.
For everyday diners in Manhattan, cracking the waiting list at Nobu is said to be harder than getting courtside tickets for the Knicks.
Just because something's been good in the past doesn't mean it will continue to be good.
When I first started to cook, I would cook these elaborate meals, but I rarely cook at home now.
The Momofuku Culinary Lab started as a space where we could focus on creating and innovating. I didn't want us to worry about working on projects in a restaurant; there are just too many distractions in service and running a kitchen to be able to focus on creating your dishes.
I lived across the street from Noodle Bar. I could barely stand it, because you're there all the time; you can't get away.
I find that there are a lot of similarities between French and Japanese food. I think they're two countries that have really systemized their cuisine and codified it.
I like eggs. My favorite way of cooking eggs is old school French.
If I have a really bad cook or a bad manager or bad sous-chef, I previously would have fired them or lost my temper. But now I realize that if I'm so right, then I should be able to communicate it so clearly that they get it.
Shouldn't a three-course meal be 90 minutes? Do you know how hard you have to edit your menu to pull that off? Twenty-seven minutes. That's the average meal at Jiro's in Tokyo.
If you're going to be a vegetarian, limit yourself to food from a place you can go to in two hours and just eat that.
Fear is a driving force for most of the things that I do. I don't know if that's healthy.
Chef Thomas Keller was an inspiration to me and many, many young cooks like me. He told us that the role of the new, modern chef is different.
