The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 97: Restaurateur David Chang

Episode Date: May 6, 2016

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons brings on world-renowned chef David Chang to discuss the beginning of Noodle Bar, Momofuku's move to D.C. (12:00), "selective competitiveness" with critics (18:00), the Redskins’ and Clippers’ tragic flaws (26:00), the Pats' professionalism (31:00), hanging with John McEnroe (33:00), the best chef-inspired films (40:00), Five Guys vs. In-N-Out Burger (50:00), Chang's golf aspirations (1:05:00), and his greatest sports moment: Linsanity (1:10:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And we are off. Yeah. Clear enough for you. All right. Yeah. Here with David Chang. Very excited to be here. What's your exact title?

Famous chef, renowned chef, celebrity chef. What do I call you? Let's start there. Man, I work in restaurants. I don't know. The title celebrity chef or famous chef or anything like that is, it's like ridiculous. I agree. I don't even understand.

Renowned chef? How about four-time James Beard winner? Yeah, though. That's pretty good. That's like being the four-time mvp in the nba or something it's pretty wild right um i i honestly don't think about her i think i'll spin off the planet right because you're like me you were just this unassuming dude who all of a sudden good stuff started happening you're like i don't want to exactly exactly it's it's it's uh i i'm sure people would say that I've changed.

I'm sure that I have changed, but I try my best to sort of just keep it as normal as possible and be as paranoid as possible. Can I ask you the dumbest question I'm going to ask you this whole podcast? Shoot. Can only one person win the James Beard Award? There was a tie, actually. Okay. I won one of the awards with a tie. So, yes, usually you can have nominations. You can

have like a group, but usually it's one person. Yes. And when you won the first one, what year was that? I think it was like 2007 or eight. Did you expect to win? No, I didn't. Did you freak out? Yes. It's like winning the oscar right uh it was for rising star chef i think i was 29 and i remember the night before the award ceremony was still in new york and i actually had to go for a walk and and they sort of hit on me that like hit me that oh my gosh i didn't if i win i actually have to prepare a speech. Yeah. And public speaking and general speaking to other people is one reason why I became a cook. So the prospect of talking to people about award speech

was terrifying. And I couldn't tell you what the hell I said. Yeah. Yes. You're like one of those actresses that wins and just starts thanking the cast and crew and babbling. Yeah, we actually were nominated for Out restaurant for the second year we lost to lindy in chicago one of the great restaurants in the world and and uh i was uh really nervous i

was playing it cool one of our other chefs at sambar was nominated for the same award that i won rising star chef matthew rudofker and i was giving him shit the entire night telling him how embarrassing he was going to be if he won all this shit. And about two categories before they announced us, my heart started to pound through my chest. And you sort of I had a mixed feeling of not wanting to win and also being like, well, sort of would like to win as well. But the not wanting to win was sheerly out of fear of going on stage i remember the first time 30 for 30 was for an emmy it was the same thing it was it was like oh if if we win we have to go up and and then you're right it's like you jedi mind trick yourself

like it's actually now i don't need it i'd rather not go up than yeah yeah it's weird it's a weird thing a lot of people it's a lot of people and um i don't know it's a terrifying thing so did you know immediately your life was different from the standpoint of well now people are going to want to get into my place constantly all the time no i mean when i opened up noodle bar uh in 2004 um we almost went out of business the first few months first eight months almost and you were like living in some terrible apartment right just there seven days a week infested yeah i'm only recently this is the first time i'm now on the sixth floor in new york it's the first time in my life at the age of 38 i have sunlight right um but we almost uh i always lived on the ground floor facing another building.

Yeah. But winning awards, it was really hard for me to win awards because all these great honors were coming our way. And they were the same honors. A lot of the people that I work for are other chefs that I admired. You know, no one says they want them, but, um, one of the first awards, um, I ever won, I declined it.

I tried to decline it. Really? Which award was that? Um, if you ask Dana Cowan at food and wine, um, I got a call and they asked, uh, she was Dana and she's like, Hey, David would like you to know that we've selected you as like 2006 food and wine best new chef which is still a huge honor one of the biggest honors and i i grew up reading this magazine thinking that i will never ever win this award that's ridiculous and i had worked for a lot of chefs that really wanted that honor. And I asked her, like, please, can I work some more so I feel like I've earned this award?

And can I kindly decline? I'm not trying to be a jerk here. And that was just the state of mind I was in. I just didn't feel like I deserved anything, any recognition whatsoever. I was just trying to, like, stay in business. And then Dana, who's become, like, one of my moms in New York, was like was like in my 20 years no one's ever declined this award we're not going to start now right and uh that was really the first award and um what's more important award i mean i would i would imagine for most people and definitely probably you it's probably the respect from

the other chefs right when that when people you really respected start reaching out to you and saying they like your stuff or whatever well you know we were really more of a upstart and we didn't really get a lot of respect and i think probably a lot of people in the business still don't respect us too much even after some of the other stuff yeah that's my mindset it's like we're we gotta we we constantly have to prove people wrong. Because we're not your traditional restaurant group. We don't have the trappings of a lot of things. And we play to our strengths. And we're more like the bad news bears than anything else. This sounds like you're just keeping a chip on your shoulder.

I have fucking some massive chips on my shoulder. Yeah, absolutely. But that is like awards are wonderful. I i think they're i've always looked at them not as singular achievements but as team awards and uh at the end of the day because food and what we do is so in the moment and ephemeral you don't need awards right and if anything sometimes it can fuck you because people's expectations are like, well, this isn't the best restaurant

I've ever read about in my life. Yeah, live up to the hype. Yeah. Well, I was reading the New Yorker piece about you

from like seven, eight years ago, which I know it's really super weird to be written about. I'm sure you have different issues with that. Another thing I declined.

That's a pretty flattering piece though. Oh yeah, I was, I sounded like an idiot. I curse, I broke the record of New York for cursing. But I thought it was, so you do noodle bar, and you're trying to do it traditionally. And at some point, you decided, let's just start fucking around.

Let's start creating dishes that we like. Let's start trying to do the traditional way of doing this. And let's make awesome dishes that we would eat and take some chances. And at least what the article made it seem was that's when it took off. Yes. That was when we almost went out of business. And I viewed it very much like being diagnosed with cancer or terminal illness. Because nobody's coming to your restaurant.

No one's coming to your restaurant. And it was very much the mindset, if we're going to go out of business, let's fucking go big. Let's just go out swinging. So give me an example of a dish you made that is like, wow, we shouldn't do this. Nah, fuck it, let's do it.

It wasn't necessarily the dishes that we made, I think. I think it coincided with spring coming in. And we were like, all of a sudden, we don't have the bounty of la and we started cooking more we started to be a little bit more emboldened to do things we might not normally do and it was like the construct of a normal noodle bar we we stopped cooking dumplings we started you know just creating new dishes i would say but it wasn't i think the dishes it was more the attitude it was really, don't tell us what to do. It was an exploration of the customer is not always right.

And if we don't like you, we're going to tell you to leave or we'll tell you. It was a brief period, even though a lot of people feel that we still do it this way. Obnoxious stance of no substitutions no special requests and we were that's it that was it and it pissed a lot of people off and uh i i i was stuck between uh what was a health food store where a lot of vegans and vegetarians were and that first year was just constant battle um Not just first year. Still feels this is a constant battle in different ways. But that first year, two years, I mean, we had the Environmental Protection Agency against us for pork smells. We had the city against us for electricity and water.

We never had enough electricity for heat in the winter or air condition the summer and it was just a constant battle like felt like everyone was against us and it just actually didn't feel that way it was and customers would come in complaining that they couldn't get the food that they wanted we were threatened with a lawsuit by a vegetarian who proclaimed that they've got um you know meat broth even though we don't make vegetarian broth so it it is sort of become lore but it actually happened we just one day said basically fuck you to everyone um we're not we're gonna put pork in everything we're gonna even though that wasn't true even though we had vegetarian dishes we just took a stance and we were going to do something that no, I didn't think it was going to be a pivotal moment,

but it wound up being something. It sounds like you were inspired by the Soup Nazi episode. Sort of. A little bit. Not necessarily Soup Nazi, but we sort of became that. And we were young

and we had no idea what was going on. It's crazy to think that it was 12 to almost 13 years ago now yeah but when did you open the restaurant in DC we opened the restaurant in DC earlier this year in 2015 so November 2015 what was the one Joe has seats at that that's Joe that's right I heard the podcast so I don't remember exactly when he came in yeah but he mentioned an outburst by me, which most likely happened. I've been really working on trying to be better and a little bit more adult mature.

I think it's good for your persona. My talent is really getting angry. And I can't really say who, but there's a famous coach who I sort of met this year. He said, I also have the gift of anger and you should really use it to your advantage.

And that was very frightening. How many restaurants are you up to now? It's double figures. It's like 13, 14, 15, something like that? Yeah, with the bakeries and I don't really think

of it that way i think of the people that we have i i honestly believe i run a sports team in my my my mind right so you're like a league and you're just adding franchises or is it more like an actual or like a team sort of so each restaurant's like a like a player yeah or each restaurant is sort of like a player but you but each restaurant is its own team. I guess you're right. But I look at it as sort of this single entity in terms of how we run it. So I live in a world of sports analogies, which is why I always listen to everything you do. And it sort of gets me through the sort of crappy parts of running a business.

Because I don't think I'll ever have the money to own the Redskins or a football team or a basketball team. So I think there are a lot of similarities between running a successful sports franchise and running a successful business. And there's also similarities between chefs and athletes, right? There are, I think, quite a bit. So these are... Wait, go into some of them. Because now you're talking my language.

So I think that the... I study a lot of chefs over the years, and I think that the sweet spot for a chef is age 27 to 32. Which is quite often... How come? Because you have the most stamina? It's a very physical thing, right? And it's a weird discipline. You have to be physically active and and healthy

enough to do a lot of activity on your feet bending down people don't realize how sort of physical it actually is and mentally draining as well um you know it's a it's really physical hand labor and it's tough but there's also at times creative elements and i think this is where some people can get carried off being an artist or it's really a mixture of being an artist and a craftsman and you can sort of veer towards one or the other but in terms of being the best at it i think that there is a peak for a chef to be in their prime much like any athlete and uh or yeah and i've always felt that it was around 27 32 where you have enough information and just enough know-how where you think you can make something, but you don't really know enough to actually know. So there's a curiosity.

Correct. And then when does that curiosity kind of start to dip? When you start to know too much. Yeah. Yeah. I really think that it's, you know, wisdom and accumulation of that is good for making sort of decisions. I think that something I've always tried to understand is when do you get worse at something? And I think the only profession that you actually get better as you get older are things that are humanities driven, like being a judge or a lawyer or historian.

But anything else, I think that you just get worse after a while in terms of creativity right right and I really wanted to be in the moment and when I tell people when I signed the lease for noodle bar in 2004 I didn't think I was going to be alive after the age of 35 which sounds crazy but it was no different like man I don't think I'll be alive when I'm 60 right now if you think I don't think I'll be alive past the'm 60. Right now, if you think, I don't think I'll be alive past the age of 60. Right? But it was way more like determined at the age of 26 when I opened up Noodle Bar

that I wasn't gonna be alive past the age of 35. So it was like- It's urgency. Sense of urgency, let's just do it in everything that we did. What about how much does criticism have to play in that? Like if you read the wrong review or you get the wrong take and you get in your own head with some things you want to do creatively

there are a lot of things that happen on the on the on the criticism and no no different like i read uh what you spoke to draymond about when you criticized his ability to hit field goals right it was like the same thing like writers get picked apart all the time by other writers and it was funny when i watched kobe say you know talking about the the media and how it sort of can be good and bad thing for nba players i think it's absolutely true for restaurants and and the chefs that work in those restaurants so um we came at the age right when food blogging started to happen. And people felt more emboldened to tell their opinions. And most of them probably had little idea what the hell they were talking about, I'm guessing. Yeah, but I can actually crazily remember almost everyone that said something negative.

And that's when I turned into a crazy person. And there's probably a tiny sliver of each thing you hear that's like, eh, maybe there's something to that one. I mean, I'm selectively competitive. By nature, I am a pretty lazy guy. But when someone threatens or I believe says something that I have, I almost have to interpret it, even if it's not a bad thing, as a negative thing to like push me to be better and the people around me to be better.

Well, you probably need that. Cause I think one thing that happens with chefs, once they hit a certain level of success is they can go down that route of more restaurants and here's a franchise here. And then, and then all of a sudden you have all these places you're not cooking in any of them you're putting your you're putting your name and your fate in the hands of all these people that aren't you yeah so being a being a chef is is interesting because it is a lot like being an athlete like um if you're a really good cook right it's like being an amazing player on the team but really good player not every player is well-rounded some people are only good at one thing and it's very true with cooks

and a lot of kitchens are system driven so you know just like athletes you know you could be really good on one team but if you transfer to another team you're not going to be as good because of the system evan turner perfect example he's gonna be good on like three teams and he found one of the three last season and i always use the derrick coleman example for cooks all right um very by the way i'm just gonna interrupt you i can't wait for this i love derrick coleman without a doubt is one of the most physically gifted athletes to ever play. Best power forward on paper of all time. Ever.

But was, you know, just couldn't ever put it mentally together. Never had the coaching or the desire to be. Because he was so gifted. You know, if he was half as physically gifted, I think he would have been a much more better player. He would have been one of the 25 best players ever. But he was just too talented. He could post up and shoot threes, and he was lefty, and he could pass, and there wasn't one thing he couldn't do. So that's the thing.

You see some cooks that are so talented that they don't know how to empathize or communicate to anyone else why anyone else isn't as good as them and it's you see this with athletes all the time they're just too fucking good and i see cooks that are naturally gifted 100 but i think that they're never the cooks that actually make great chefs and being a chef is way different right um you can turn you can turn yourself into a very good cook you're just you know hitting the gym basically practicing practicing and um many of the same attributes it's it's um very similar and and if you're a really good cook it doesn't always translate that you're going to be a great coach basically and a chef is now a coach more or less you worked for daniel balud i did that how you say his name daniel balud

from cafe balud yep which um my friend william goldman yeah he loves right there and every time i see him we go to that restaurant because he loves that restaurant that's his favorite and he's convinced the guy's a genius and how old were you when you're working for him i was 24 and worked for andrew carmelini and he used to come to craft a lot and he's a real gourmand and uh is that that's obviously a good thing for you to have had the chance to work under people who are like borderline geniuses yeah you you it's it's a lot like having great coaches right yeah and learning systems and that's why like i think popovich is amazing i think belichick is amazing even though people hate him it's like the dude wins all the time and there's systems and there's

discipline and you'll learn how to if you work under the great chefs, you'll learn how to work your ass off. Right. And you realize that talent will only get you so far. And cooking in a really good kitchen is almost 90% organization and cleaning. You don't really cook. You're 10% cooking. And that's absolutely the truth. So if you work it in a place where it's not organized, it's never really going to work out.

And consistently, you can be like a really good team in sports if they're, you know, they can be good every once in a while, right? If they're not disciplined. I always felt like chefs were like great drummers in a band where I don't understand how you do it after like 15 years. Like I watch drummers, you see these guys, these bands that have been around for 25, 30 years. And it's like, how does that guy just drum for three hours a night, 190 times a year? And they all end up with back problems and different things and special seats.

And I would imagine physically for chefs, it's similar, right? 100%. And it's really hard because there are no days off. There are no off seasons yeah um it's it's uh i i question that i think a lot of my friends now as they get older myself included it's like no one ever told us what baggage was going to happen and um i think this is the first time you have a generation of american sash that were very successful that are in their late fifties, mid sixties now that are still like figuring out what the next step is. I mean, and you got to that point a little bit earlier.

I mean, you're already like sniffing around, branching out. You're ready to think for GQ. But I, cause I, I wanted to age gracefully. Yeah. You know, I, I, I always looked what other chefs do and I don't want to be that guy that was like, I can still play the game. And I think mentally I can still do what I did when I was in my early twenties. Right.

But there's no fucking way. I see cooks that we have at like Coe for instance, and they're like 20 years old. They're, they just have a physical stamina that I just don't have anymore. Right. And besides like life happens. Right. Yeah. They just have a physical stamina that I just don't have anymore. And besides, life happens, right? Yeah. And I put off life for a long time, and then it eventually just catches up with you.

Pussy of the Redskins, they're taking years off your life. I'm a Raiders fan right now. When you did the thing, what was it, Kickstarter? You were like, hey, and you got a lot of attention for that. It was awesome. I ended up using you in one of my columns. I had no idea. I had no idea it was going to be that way. But I was born and raised a Redskins fan.

And I'm so pissed that Dan Snyder bought the Redskins. And I wish the Lerner family bought them or the Cook family kept them in the family. He's going to outlive you in-house. And the sad thing is he's going to give it to his kids and we're going to be like, you know, we're going to be like the Clippers. Like I didn't think that growing up,

you, you, you read about the Clippers and what a shitty organization it is. And you're like, Oh my God, I feel so bad for them. And I realized now that's how the rest of the NFL use the Redskins. So if he came into your restaurant,

I mean, I'm sure cook your best meal for him or do you do you make him leave what happens young dave chang would probably have kicked him out 100 so i don't know i i mean that's the thing is don't come into his restaurant daniel slater i don't think he's gonna come in yeah I'm pretty sure he's not. You're a pretty vocal critic. He's terrible. Although, you know, they got a good GM in right now. But, I mean, there's nothing worse than being a Redskins fan and talking about the Redskins.

Yeah. I mean, we're just pathetic. It's reached that point. It's just the Redskins. But, I mean, this year they made a couple of big moves. Got Josh Norman. Yeah, but that was terrible. Resigned Cousins. I mean, at least when you look at the

Eagles, they look like the Redskins of like 10 years ago. And now the Browns are like the Redskins too. Yeah. You see a bunch of losers that are in your loser club. All your teams are fantastic to root for. I know. Knock on wood.

It's been a good run. It's probably ending soon, so I've enjoyed it. I've had it both ways. It's much more fun when your teams are good. It's much more fun when your teams are well run. Yeah, I mean, I fucking love the Patriots. I just think they're like... They're very well run.

That's the thing. The older I get and the more I look at sports, I just really think it almost entirely comes down to who owns and runs your team and whether you got lucky with a couple moments like did you win the carl towns lottery you know like if if philly wins the carl towns lottery hinky's still there and his plan worked and it's like we got carl towns this is great sam hicky knew what he was doing you think he's gonna get another job no done i think he'll get another like assistant gm type job i don't think the sabermetric thing is

it's been a rough year for the sabermetric thing nate silver was wrong on trump and hinky fell apart daryl morey and the rockets it's been tough how much do you love tom brady compared to who like Like my children? No, not like that. Is he like one of your favorite athletes? I love him more than one of my two dogs. But I also think I love you more than one of my two dogs. Oh, good, good, good. Olivia the rescue dog.

I need to trade her. Brady's been an unbelievable... We've been lucky. We had Orr, which was... I was really young when we had Bobby Orr. I wasn't alive for Ted Williams, obviously. And then you have Larry Bird and you get Tom Brady. It's like you get one of those as a city and you're happy. I don't know if I'd ever want to hang out with Tom Brady because of his weird eating habits.

But he wouldn't eat your food. No, no, no. He's like a vegetarian now or something like that he's but like he would i just love rooting for the guy because like man like things didn't necessarily go his way to get to where he got to so yeah he's a chip on the shoulder guy he remembers everyone who got drafted ahead of him in the 2000 draft the whole thing yes there there's something to be said which is why i think i I root for Tom Brady so much. And Draymond. I love Draymond. I love that whole story. I definitely can empathize and root for athletes that are traditionally overlooked or the underdogs.

I'm sure that I project myself on these guys quite a bit. What's your best an athlete came into my restaurant and blank happened story oh my god i won't say who okay on the we're in toronto but there's a very good player on the raptors that loves eating our milk bar products and i'm always like hey man like you shouldn't uh do this in moderation be Be careful. Be careful. Not careful? Not careful. I haven't seen him in a while. I haven't heard that he's been in there a while. But in terms of athletes, though, the patron saint of Momofuku is John McEnroe.

Oh, he's the best. I spent like five hours with him in October and it was the best. John McEnroe is the best. Yeah. What a great guy. I just. I wish he. I mean, I love my dad but if i had to

hire an actor to play my dad if my dad got kidnapped or something i would hire john mackerel i just love john mackerel and growing up i i never even really understood tennis but i was like this is unbelievable that my mom is yelling at me for not having a temper tantrum but this guy is well that's what you read he resonated as a torture genius and he was just refused to accept losing and while he was gifted at the net he wasn't this you know rough on adult like person he was just genuine i'm a lunatic and i want to win more than anyone else it was great and tennis interesting. I got a great John McInerney story too. I got a lot of them, but one day I actually wound up at his father's office because he called me. Successful dude, his father.

Yeah, lawyer. And I thought John McInerney left a message. I was like, oh shit, because I had a huge John McInerney Nike poster. Yeah, I remember that one. And man, like one thing led to another and basically he just wanted me to clean his office. And I got all the John McEnroe paraphernalia. And it was pretty wild actually. He had, it was a funny day.

And he gave me a lot of cool one-offs that, you know what was interesting about his dad? This is what I love the most about him. He's like, well, I know you love my son, but you should really root for Patrick too. Oh, I like that. That's pretty cool. That's a good dad. I remember I was in on macro from day one. I was like eight or nine when he started, when he made his first US open run. I think that was like 77 and they used to show his dad a lot with the fist pumps. And his dad looked like a old Massachusetts Senator or something. Like he just had a, had a lot with the fist pumps. And his dad looked like an old Massachusetts senator or something.

He just had a really cool vibe to him. All right, I'm going to fire questions at you. I don't normally do this with the pod. Usually we go more linear. But I have so many things I want to talk about. This is so intense. I didn't expect it to be this intense. It's like Bill fucking Simmons.

And this is really crazy. Why are restaurants a bad investment in 40 seconds? My God. Yeah. 40 seconds. 39, 38. I always tell people, if you're going to invest in a restaurant, throw a dinner party, get all your investors there and bring all the cash and then burn it all. Because that's exactly what's going to happen. And the person that's going to win is the person that's like,

if that's what it takes for me to get my restaurant, then that's what I'll do. It's that fucking insanity that you want to see, but you have to be off your rocker. But if you're not that crazy and dedicated to it, you're most likely going to fail. Would you rather, if somebody asked you,

should I start, should I invest in a restaurant and be the backer for it or should i invest in my cousin's record label what would you pick my god it's like donald trump or my cousin's sneaker business these are all oh my god i can't i I pass. These are all bad investments. Okay, good. What was the worst restaurant idea you were ever pitched? I mean, I think I made them myself.

I did a Korean burrito bar. It was called Sambar. Korean burrito bar? Yeah. That sounds delicious. Yeah, I know. Joe House just got hungry from 3,000 miles away. He doesn't even know what's happening.

Korean Chinese burrito bar. That was originally what Sambar was. And it didn't work? Too weird? Too weird. Too weird. Not weird enough for me. Yeah.

What's in a Korean burrito? I think that you have everything that's analogous to basically like a Mexican burrito place. You have salsa. You have kimchi. You have rice. You have the meats. You have the wraps, whether it be lettuce or, you know, everyone thinks a tortilla is Mexican, but Chinese have mandarin pancakes, like flat pancakes, too.

So I maybe I was. Yeah, it made sense to me. So and it's just and people aren't into it. No, but that led to because we had loans out to make this restaurant work um you know turned into sambar and we we just opened from 12 to 4 in the morning every day and that turned into you know a very successful enterprise that i would never want to go through ever again that sounds like espn story for how the the espn phone led to watch espn the espn phone was a terrible idea that lost them just shitloads of money.

But the infrastructure they built from that actually helped them with other things. Yes. That was your version of that. Although you didn't lose $100 million. Who is Michelin? And why do they matter so much? And why do I have to care that Michelin gave somebody a star? Where did they come from?

So the Michelin guide is from the tire company. Right, so how does a tire company get into restaurants? So they were trying to sell tires in France. And in order to sell tires and to promote the sale of tires, because people travel in France, they put a guide of food together. And now these people are in control of every chef's destiny for whether they have a great restaurant or not. It's less important to a certain generation.

But for me, still, to this day, even though there's top 50 this and all this stuff, Michelin Guide is still super important. And even though it's glamorized in movies, all that shit is not necessarily true in how it happens. But it's intensely difficult. And I think for, again, for guys like me, it's still, even though it doesn't make sense why I care about it so much, I do. Do you know when the Michelin person's in? Do they keep it secret? It's hell on earth. Every, you know, I, oh my God, it makes me so mad that every September, you know that feeling? I was never a good student in school.

And whenever report cards came out, I'd always be fearful that my Asian dad and mom would freak out because their son didn't get straight A's, but like C's and B's and maybe a couple D's. And I'd always be fearful for report card time. And I never thought that at the age of 38 i still have that feeling every september it's like reviews are the worst right um and the michelin guide is so consistent on its dates and you you know we have two michelin stars for co and i've said this before it's like great and terrible because you know we've had like two michelin stars which is amazing for like seven or eight years in a row. Two is the best you can do, right?

Three. You can get three? Yeah, three is like, holy fuck. Who has three? There are, I believe, 150. Like four restaurants? 58 or 150 restaurants in the world that have three Michelin stars. Really? Yeah.

That many? Yeah. So you have two for a bunch, but you don't have three for anything? Yeah. That's a chip on the shoulder if i've ever heard one if we get three that's a problem one day if we ever get three if we're lucky enough because we worked hard enough to ever get three the fear is like well now you're fucked because there's no way to live up to that yeah what if you lose a star oh yeah so that's the fear is like the losing of the star is what drives chefs crazy. Some chefs have even like, you know, there's a famous chef, Bernard Wiseau, that committed suicide.

There are a couple reasons why that might not have happened the way it did. But, you know, the stress on a chef, on a claim need you need to maintain is just like too much better off with two so every once in a while just fuck up a dish yeah which is stay at two which is why a lot of chefs try to like reject the michelin guide so it's a it's a level of stress that stress that is ultimately i think pretty unhealthy uh quick break to talk about casper it is a sleep brand that created one perfect mattress that is sold directly to customers, eliminating your commission-driven inflated prices. It's an award-winning sleep surface developed in-house, sleek design,

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of them tate you were jealous yeah tate's dying he was jealous of my clothes all right back to david chan is there anything i can learn from internet ratings of restaurants that makes any coherent sense at all or is it just all bullshit you have to pick and choose right i mean like on sports blogs right how many of those bloggers actually know what they're talking about not many not many yeah and you yourself probably trust only five people in the sports media yeah if that if that yeah that's pretty much the same in in my food writing and food criticism there's only less than a handful that you really should trust who do you think is the best food or can you even say who do you think is the which food critic slash writer do you trust the most in la la is blessed to have jonathan gold it's not even great i mean i agree i was hoping you'd say that

but i don't know if he'd insulted you no i mean if he did like that's another thing like the guy just knows everything i mean fuck he really does know everything and his what he promotes in la is so cool because he promotes everything and um you know so i i think that la is blessed and very lucky to have jonathan gold la is happening right now yeah i mean i know you know this but i moved here end of 2002 and for a variety of reasons it's just become so much more interesting to be here and even like when we started grantland in uh 2011 it was really hard to get people to move from new york to la and now people want to come here i know and things are happening in different parts of the city have taken off and even since i've been here like silver lake los feliz took off

i would say los feliz los How do you say it, Joe? Los Feliz. Los Feliz. I just can't get it in my head. I mispronounce everything. East LA, all of a sudden stuff happened down there. And like Venice, obviously. Venice is crazy.

Everywhere. Downtown LA. Downtown LA started happening. Now it's like this whole sunset Hollywood area. Bill, we may or may not be coming to Los Angeles. Don't tempt me. Don't tease me. We'll see. Seriously?

Yeah. We've been looking at it. Really? Yeah. That'd be unbelievable. I know. I'd gain like five pounds. It's actually not.

It would be bad for me to be on TV. Burnt with Bradley Cooper. Did you see this movie? Yes, I have seen that movie. Is this like me seeing Draft Day and just going crazy? Yes. Yes. 100% it's like watching Draft Day a little bit.

Just having a, oh my God, that would never happen though. Like you're just like that for an hour and a half. Well, the thing that, there are a lot of things that wouldn't happen in that movie. It's sort of comical and it's sort of based on Gordon Ramsay's life. And people don't realize that before Gordon Ramsay became this TV celebrity, he was without a doubt, a very serious, very serious, awesome chef. And when I saw the clip of Bradley Cooper making, I believe it was a sea bash dish with the slices of zucchini,

I knew immediately, oh, that's a Gordon Ramsay dish. This movie is about Gordon Ramsay because of that dish in the commercial and so you think he was like a consultant for it no he actually what they think was a producer and uh and uh obviously it was romanticized in hollywood and hollywood sort of just fucked it all up but uh it could have been way better but what they did get was the the stress they got that pretty good and they had a couple good temper tantrums they had a good couple temper tantrums and people were like my girlfriend was like is that you know is that real i was like no it's not real no we don't do that at all but it's like pretty pretty real yeah some of that was pretty real the intensity of it yeah i mean

i'm a very competitive guy so you're pro burnt i feel like you're any cooking movie even though i'm sure i mean even though it was like not great not the zeta jones one you don't like that one oh that was that was no reservations that was that was better the martha martha one the one that's based in uh the german original was much better but uh still to this day probably the best cookie movie out there is probably that fucking cartoon. Sorry, I'm cursing so much. No, it's all right. Ratatouille.

Ratatouille, the best cookie movie. My kids like that one. Yeah, yeah. I didn't mind Bert. I got to say, it kind of flew by. My wife likes Bradley Cooper. She was happy. I like the girl in it.

Sienna Miller? No, the other one. Oh, which one? The one who ended up winning the Oscar. Really? Alicia Vikander? Oh, she was in that movie too? She had like two scenes.

Oh, you're right. She was the ex. She was drop dead. She was great. So I gave Jon Favreau a bunch of shit. I was like, dude, you have sex for his movie Chef. Oh, Chef. Yeah, that's another one.

That one I was like was like man you're really uh you're really uh that was like i was really happy that roy and everyone helped out but to me that was just funny it's like he's having sex with sovia vargas and scarlett johansson yeah if you want people to join this industry you're doing a really good job right now what what is it like for chefs with with the ladies because there is some sort of there's like a little power kind of thing going on i remember i'm not going to name names but when i lived uh in a city that was in la um there was a chef that definitely had it going yeah i mean the girls were there like hanging there's a chef that definitely had it going. Yeah, I mean.

The girls were there, like, there's a little bar hanging out after. And I mean, it's definitely a thing. The industry itself is pretty, like, can be pretty loose, right? Yeah. Whether it's a chef and a server and stuff like that. I mean, I've really kept it clean over the years. Good answer. I have.

I think I'm probably the only one. I swear to God. Not the only one, but it's amazing to see. You're never surprised when you hear it, right? Like, hey, I'm dating someone. It's like, is that the hostess? Which is totally like HR hot zone, but it happens more than you realize. Well, it is.

Everyone, I mean, I worked in a restaurant in a bar for a couple years and you just get thrown together it's almost like being in a battalion i view it as summer camp very close summer camp's a great analogy and i think it's fine as a cook because that just happens you're trying to carve out a social life from one to five in the morning every night. And it's a lot of fun. But I think it's I this is where I turn into like a very boring NFL coach. It's like you can't put yourself in a position where you're going to take or like, you know, I feel like it's really hard, whether it's scheduling. And it's something I've really tried to steer clear. And I try to encourage my own guys to like, you know, I can't really even talk about it, I'm sure. Well, part of it is, you know,

you're on the same schedule and a lot of times you're getting done at 11.30, 12 o'clock, 12.30 at night and everyone's like, I need to do, and then that's when stuff starts happening. Yeah, and what's weird is cooking is I think cooler to people now. So yeah, there are a lot more definitely true. So,

um, back in the day it was just sweaty. Yeah. Usually the chef, I mean, that guy's sweaty. That guy looks hot. I mean,

I'm a, I'm lucky that anyone has, has, uh, ever fancied me. So, uh, I,

I'm not, I feel like you're a traditional chef. I know the chefs that are there. Yeah. And it certainly has changed. I think the game has changed for a lot of people. Does it bother you that Vegas has so many great restaurants? You know.

And everyone, but no regulars, basically. But, you know, what's cool about Vegas is because there are so many restaurants, there's an amazing culinary industry there. It's really like the culinary capital of the world, deep down. Everybody's there. You have a place there, right? We will open in the Cosmo soon. Every relevant chef seems like they have a place there. It's tough to pass up because it's a lot of fun.

I think you can be great for branding. And there's a lot of people that work in the hospitality business there. So I think there's more solidarity there than most other cities, quite frankly. Yeah? Yeah. All right. What else do I have on my list? Oh, were you ever in Chef's Table?

No, I wasn't in Chef's Table. Now you're sitting out because you chip on your shoulder. You didn't get asked in the first five, so fuck Chef's Table now? I did. So we did Lucky Peach, and that got repurposed as Mind of a Chef. Yeah. And, you know, I would say life happened. And I wanted to figure out how to run the restaurants and not do TV.

I never wanted to necessarily do TV. But now that we have options, I think that's something to pursue. But we never did Chef's Table. We never did for future seasons of Mind of a Chef. We wound up running Lucky Peach with Peter Meehan, this magazine. Yeah, we talked. We had Grantland. We talked briefly about is there a possibility to collaborate and collide on that.

Yeah, that was very, very exciting. Yeah. And I would have loved that. Like everything else that happened when I was there, it never came to fruition. Sorry I had to but no i mean uh i think we got something in the pipeline and we're excited about it so um although i i um i did some work for chef's table for the chef alex atala from brazil he's in the next season of chef's table which which is on Netflix. Postmates, your friend or your enemy? Man, friend. Okay.

I love, that's the one benefit of living in New York, is you get everything delivered. So it's the fucking best. Okay. But not, does kind of ruin the whole experience of going out to dinner. Yeah, but do you still, do you really love going out to dinner. Yeah, but do you really love going out to dinner? I actually still do. But when you have kids, you end up not going out to dinner almost all the time.

But I still love, I think, the experience of going to a nice dinner where there was real thought and care put into absolutely everything that's going on. When it's done well, going out to dinner. But I cook more at home now than ever before. Yeah. For years, as a cook, I would turn off my gas in my kitchens.

Or I would use it as storage. The oven. Or the refrigerator. Right. Up until last year, I never had plates or even forks or knives in my apartment. But I've been cooking a lot more at home. The best dinner I've had in the last year, what's the place in D.C. that's super hot,

the weird place that's... Rose's Luxury? Yeah. So I went there with Kornheiser and Joe House. Joe House had been there a bunch of times. And then Kornheiser had never been there. Did he have a good time? We had such a good time

and they just kept feeding him and he was complaining about it, but he couldn't stop eating. It was almost like watching when the garbage gets spilled over and the dog's eating the garbage and can't stop. So he had that,

he just couldn't stop and it was just, it was great. And it was a really unique meal, which is what I liked about it. You know, Aaron Silverman just won a James Beard Award for the Mid-Atlantic region as best outstanding chef. And he won food and wine.

He's having a killer year. Yeah. And he used to work for me at Noodle Bar back in the day. And he worked at Hearth. And in retrospect, like, and this is no disrespect to Aaron. I'm so happy for his success. But he's a perfect example of a player that became a much better coach. Way better coach. Because as a cook, he would always ask all these questions he was so curious and it's almost like when you like see an athlete that i think they'll be a really good coach one

day and he is uh he's kicking ass and i'm so happy for him and all the success he's just opened up a new restaurant called pineapple and pearls and um i he's one of the few good guys out there so what's your favorite name you've come up with for a restaurant because naming things is it's so hard momofuku is a pretty good one it's pretty good and people mangle that i wasn't even trying to say it yeah uh and i love that it's the name that keeps on giving momofuku means lucky peach so we got the magazine from there and uh we we launched a fried chicken sandwich shop called fuku from momo fuku i was gonna ask you about that eight hours spicy fried chicken that's it right nothing else pretty much it pretty much it's i i uh yeah it's a we have chicken tenders we got a few you do have other stuff in there there's like four things i imagine it it's like In-N-Out.

So where is it? They're mostly in, we have four locations. We have MSG, we have Citi Field, we have Midtown at Ma Pesh on 56th Street between 56th and we have 10th Street, 1st Avenue and we are going to open one downtown in the financial district pretty soon. Downtown New York. Yeah.

God forbid any of these places were in la hey we're we're getting here i promise you we'll be here soon i don't know when i can announce it if i can ever announce it chen's like no our friend chen is here so you have basically four things in the menu you can only pick from one of those four things well there was a little off the menu stuff i love in and out okay and i've always been an admirer of their ability to promote things one of those four things? Well, there was a lot of off-the-menu stuff. I love In-N-Out. Okay. And I've always been an admirer of their ability to promote things off the menu. You can get, I think, like 64 different combinations. And I think that's a very organic, natural way

of letting people. So you like that? Yeah, I love it. Helps, though. So now you know who the true regulars are when they come in. Does the internet ruin that at all, though? Yeah, but still people don't know.

Like, In-N-Out, I just told someone yesterday that you can get it spicy. Did you know you get it spicy at In-N-Out? No. You see? You have the internet and you don't know that. I have one of my, I'll fully admit I'm not right all the time. A lot of people try to pretend they're right all the time and I'm not right all the time. And one of my worst opinions

That I actually truly believe I like Five Guys more than In-N-Out Wow Yeah And people out here go crazy When they're like What's your favorite? You like In-N-Out?

And I'm like I kind of like Five Guys more The reality is I genuinely liked you so much more Before you just said that I know Five Guys is great too I know Here's the thing

five guys might have a better burger but and definitely better french fries yeah but in and out i think is a more delicious product listen i'm not defending it i can't help where my heart leads me in my heart i drive by five guys and i get a whiff and I get excited. And I mean, it's basically just burgers. It's fine. LA has so many burger places now. I mean, the whole burger renaissance is like beyond a renaissance. There's burger places everywhere. Fast food is like at the apex here in Los Angeles.

Like you can get anything that's fast food. Well, then there's fast food, but then there's like the kind of fancy fast food. And this is an area like as chefs try to figure out how much money can they make from their restaurants, really like you make those places where you get like the $15 burger. Isn't that like the best way to make money?

Just crank those out? Well, the problem is it's like it's not as easy as it seems cranking stuff out. Yeah. You know, scaling a business is really difficult. Because it seems like people like you are now, while you're doing all the stuff you do anyway, you're kind of intrigued by this $8 to $13 price range for things. Yeah. of intrigued by this eight to thirteen dollar price range for things yeah i i mean partly is uh things are changing rapidly in the culinary landscape particularly new york i can't really speak too much out of the country outside dc but um one of my big i'm a i've always been an advocate for cooks and the culinary lifestyle and wanted to take care of them and i think people assume

that i make way more money than I actually do. I think that with labor changes happening, which I'm 100% for, because, again, I always want the cooks to make more money, it's going to be really tough to figure out the next couple years how restaurants are going to stay in business. And I think that one way of doing that is through systems and scale. And that's why you see even guys like myself trying to figure out a way that you can replicate something that's delicious and consistent. And I've said this before, but one way we're going to be able to take care of my guys is through creating a very profitable business. That's when I'll turn into Bernie Sanders and redistribute the wealth, I think.

And what kind of impact did Shake Shack have on that? I think I was amazing. What Danny's done is unbelievable, right? And he's been a huge advocate for his employees as well. And he been a model standard for for how to be excellent in this business and when that happened and i think that was part of like the whole chipotle craze yeah um and i don't think anyone will ever get there again like that but um we have so many employees right now so for me it was more like how do we take care and how do we almost diversify what we're doing? Because I don't,

I cannot predict what's going to happen in the future because the culinary industry. So it's so murky right now. I can't, I can't figure out what the hell's going on. You know, it's, it's really tough to,

to decipher. You know, right now we have a big debate on no tipping. I have a lot of thoughts on this. Yeah. I think it works for a certain kind of restaurant. And I think that you need to have models of hybrid systems below. And I think that if you have anything over 75 seats, I think it really works well.

Anything under 75 seats, it doesn't. And you need to have a certain amount of, I don't know, comfort, which no one has ever proclaimed us to have in our restaurants, except for maybe Coe. So I speak to other chefs that have gone the no tipping, and we all know it's something we have to explore. And I think we have one restaurant right now that is really testing that out for the other restaurants. And I feel really good that I'm able to pay almost everyone. No, everyone on the back of the house $15 an hour. Our servers get paid a lot. I think that everyone could make a little bit more if they were going to get tips.

So it's cool that everyone wants to oblige. Sugarfish does that here. They do. Yeah, it's just check comes you sign it and you're you're done i mean as somebody that worked in that industry like i always thought it was unfair that i made more bartending and waiting tables than the chefs did like by a lot a lot and it was out of whack for so when i started cooking in new york I got paid $9.75 an hour. And I don't think it's gone up that much for many cooks.

And everything else in New York City has gotten more expensive. You can always find another waiter. It's really hard to find the right cooks. It bothers me because a lot of these cooks are coming through culinary school with huge debt. And they can't pay their bills. So it makes me really mad to understand the situation we're in right now and uh something that we're trying really hard this is when i get super serious trying to figure out this no i think this is really interesting because like all right say there's a 200 bill and you say it's 18 flat fee so 18 so 36 bucks on that check basically that would normally just go to the server right

you're saying you redistribute that so that the server maybe gets what 13 14 make more money than the cooks right i couldn't even hire servers that are making 15 an hour. On average, they're making a minimum $30 an hour. And this is at Nishi. I haven't figured it out. And we may abandon the tipping because it was never meant to be the restaurant it is. I had an idea

of culinary that we wanted to explore. But more specifically, we want to see if this model might work. And I'd hate to abandon tipping or go to a hybrid model but you know we're about 60 seats so if we had 100 seats i don't think it'd be an issue because there's economies of scale after you know that a big restaurateur told me one day he's like why do you keep on opening these small small restaurants dave i was like um because i don't want a 300 seat restaurant necessarily this is probably like 10 years ago it's like a kitchen that serves 50 people is the same size as a kitchen that serves 300 people

but i feel that that discrepancy you lose intimacy yeah you lose that that sort of feeling of being in the restaurant you Do you want to be out? So there's one other piece of that too, though. It's harder to get in. It makes people want to get in. Yeah. And if you have a restaurant that passes a certain size and it's not special to be in there,

I really think there's this ice cream place in LA called salt and straw. And it's really interesting how they, uh, how they did it. First of all, it's small. They put this giant table in the middle of it. So when you wait in, you have to kind of line up around this table. So it's almost impossible for them not to have a line that goes out the door. Right.

And people see the line and they're like, Oh, it's going on there. It's human nature. It's so smart. And the line is always out the door because they want the line to be out the door. But as I get older, I feel like we got our master's or doctorate in that kind of service style at Momofuku. And it's something we still employ at some of our restaurants. But as I get older, it's like, man, I don't want to fucking do that. I don't want people to wait in line like they do.

So we take reservations now. And I think that I'm not saying losing our edge, but it's like you can't do what – I can't be like 45 years old and playing or doing what I did when I was 26. It just doesn't happen that way anymore. You know what Joe House does? He hires standers to stand in a line so he can be properly fed. No reservation restaurant. That is something that is – that has changed dining for sure. How many minutes do you want to rant against American Chinese food?

No, I don't rant. We had a great meal at Yang Chao yesterday. Chen said you wouldn't love that place. No. It's fine. You made Chen turn on Yang Chao. Not to sound racist, but it's probably going to come off as racist. It's always a great qualifier.

Great to start off a statement that way, right? I think L.A. And I joke this. I jokingly say this, and I did it on my friend's Great Debates podcast. But it's like L.A. is LA is divided I think in white people food and then everything else. Right. And to me it's you know Yang Chao is this weird

purgatory. It's a tweener. It's like Drayvon Green. It is like Drayvon Green and you can go off the menu at Yang Chao. Yeah it was delicious. There's nothing that was not delicious about it. But if I'm in LA next time it's like, I could go to San Gabriel Valley or I could just go to Koreatown. Yeah.

And get something that was like way more. Unique. Unique. Yeah. But. The slippery shrimp wasn't unique. The slippery shrimp was delicious. I mean, that is an amazing dish.

Well, we got three. Truth be told, last night we had three dinners. Just so you get sampled well peter me and i never been to of uh never been to philippe's french dip yeah which while delicious what i love about it is the total like fuck you attitude of the restaurant which is like my dream it's great i love that i love it so much you're lucky to be here yeah it's like you wait in line like it makes no sense in terms of how the service flows. Yeah.

It feels like a very New York place. And then we went to Yang Chao because I wanted to see if it was that good. Okay. Chris thinks you say it's your favorite restaurant, Chinese restaurant. Yeah. I mean, I don't have a ton of. I know. I have to drive 45, 50 minutes to go to.

But it makes sense now because you like five guys oh man that hurt yeah i get it now you know that's fine i say i told you i'm not always right no they're both delicious i so we had yang chow after that and then we had a massive meal at otium so timothy holling hollingsworth uh new restaurant. I'm going to hurt your feelings even more than this about how bad my opinions are on food. I like P.F. Chang's. Hey, I like P.F. Chang's too. I was in Austin once with Dave Jacoby. We went for South by Southwest, my old Grantland buddy.

We were there the first day. We were like, all the barbecue we were going to eat for four days. We leave our hotel. We're walking down the street. We see a P.F. Chang's. We just looked at each other and we're like in the street we see a pf changs and we just looked at each other and like we ended up at a bar at pf changs and austin you got lettuce wraps didn't you which one you got lettuce wraps what do you what's your order of pf changs i get

a bunch that i love the lettuce wraps i dude i go so far back with general gal i i just love that dude and i'm always getting it i like that people are now going a little gluten-free with the General Gal. Which I don't feel like I'm consuming 7,000 calories. That's down to like 4,500 maybe. Slippery shrimp is not healthy for you. I'll tell you that. Yang Chao's terrible. I almost go into a diabetic coma when I leave Yang Chao.

It's so much sugar. But that to me is what's interesting. Like what P.F. Chang does or even Panda Express. I think that there's room for someone to do it better. And it's not a challenge to what else is out there. But to me, what's more exciting going back to the $8 to $13 range. And, you know, why I wonder sometimes am I doing this to convince myself? Because creatively it's like.

No, do it. Whatever you're thinking, do it. I think it's just more exciting to make things that are for the masses right now. Yeah. Because it's... You can affect change that way. You can affect change, but in a weird way, it's a different kind of challenge, right? It's almost like the difference when you're a writer, you can take a whole bunch of paths, right?

You can write magazine features really well thought out. of paths, right? You can write, um, magazine features really well thought out. You can write columns, you can write blog posts, you can go all kinds of different directions. The hardest thing to do. And the thing that I always loved to the biggest challenge for me that I really wanted was how can I write something that can appeal to the most possible people while also being good. That's kind of what you're talking about. And that's, I always look at like star Wars.

I hadn't, I'm so excited for stuff that is like makes as many people as happy as possible. And that's where I'm culinary speaking. That's where I'm at right now. Um, making food that everyone wants. That is delicious.

Um, and for a long time I thought we were making food that everyone would love but the reality is we were only making it for a select few still so uber's been good for you i'm guessing uber yeah throw a couple a couple extra drinks on the end of the tab well i think that uber's changed la more than any city that i've been to oh my god my people get drunk turning turning everyone i think that's the resurgence of la in terms of dining it has to be attributed to somewhat to uber for no question so i just talked about this with uh i think it was with chris people get wasted well because before it was like you had to do the coin flip are you driving or am i driving

and then you couldn't get you know too hammered because then you have your sober spouse just hating you. Now it's just like, let's go. Let's go to dinner. LA has definitely benefited more from Uber than any other town that I've been in. So have the obstetricians because I think there's been a lot of mistake kids the last few years. It's my theory. Uber's created a lot of mistake kids. A lot of 1230 AM.m i shouldn't have

had that seventh cocktail kids yeah they're all being born do we cover everything chen you happy with that you sure which one oh golf why the fuck do we want to talk about he wanted me to ask he's mad that you retired from golf you're a champion golfer and you you quit golf you couldn't handle it i don't even understand like everything is like things get embellished like why i was a very good golfer was i one of the best golfers in the country no that was tiger woods but you played tiger woods once no i tried to qualify i was qualifying for the big eye in houston and that's when i donned me very quickly that i was like this guy's won it three years in a row And that's when I dawned on me very quickly that I was like, this guy's won it three years in a row and he's a year older than me.

And I was like, this is never going to happen. And Chen said you guys went to a diner and picked up waitresses. That wasn't true in Houston. I won a few tournaments when I was younger. Okay. Um, and I burned out like I, I had a breakdown at Robert Trent Jones when I was 13. I was trying to qualify for the U.S. Air Meter.

I believe that I shot a score that got me about three shots out. Top 10 made the neck to basically EU Advanced. Yeah. And I think I shot like 136 the second 18. Wow. Yeah, I was crying crying it was really bad plus like my caddy never showed up so i was carrying my own clubs and robert trent jones arguably might be the longest golf course from hole to hole in the world so and it was like 110 degree degree day in virginia so i was gonna say maybe temper remember it right

maybe your temper issues weren't like the greatest thing for golf or it would have been great if you'd become a golfer and you were throwing clubs on CBS. That would have been awesome. Last time I played golf, full 18, it was 2002, 2003 in Doonbeg in Ireland and I threw my clubs into the ocean. True story. You just broke Chen's heart. Because like, no, man,

like everyone's, everyone tries to get me to play golf. Everyone. Mario Batali plays golf all the time. He's like, dude, Chang, let's play, let's play. And no, I'd rather go fly fishing.

Are you more chef or businessman right now? Probably 50-50, but you know, it changes. Like every month, it's just different, you know? But like my days of working the line every day and expediting, no.

How many times a year you just have friends over at your house or whatever, and you're like, I'm going to cook you guys something. I did that last Sunday. You did? What'd you make? I got engaged, by the way. Oh, congratulations. Thank you.

Sign a prenup. She's an amazing girl. Congratulations, prenup. Congratulations. That. Sign a prenup. She's an amazing girl. Congratulations, prenup. Congratulations. That's great, prenup. Oh, Lord. And I've been cooking more. So, yeah, I cook pho.

Really? Yeah. There's a place in Beverly Hills called 9021 Pho. Yeah. And it's my favorite name of any restaurant. It's just so brilliant. Every time I drive by, I just want to stop and congratulate them for what a brilliant name that is. I don't know.

Maybe the food's more delicious than the name. I can't back it. So you have poor choice in names and burgers. Poor choice in burgers. Poor choice in American Chinese food. And unfortunately, I back your sports teams. I have good taste in sports teams. That worked out great.

I was in early on when are you getting back when oh man by the way can i just i love sports yeah and one of the highlights of my life and now a 38 year old man was in jeremy lynn when sanity was happening in new york i don't know if people understand what it's like to be a fan of the NBA and to have, and Chris is going to be so upset because he's the guy that helps bring all these guys into the NBA. For his channel, it was the greatest moment of his life. Yeah. That was his guy.

He was the chosen one. Yeah. He was the chosen one. It was Asian sports fan palooza. People were high-fiving each other in the street. People were watching all the games. It was the best it was like one of the great four-week random stretches i went to a couple games at the garden like i've

never seen it like that and my god it all ended terribly and it's all carmella's fault carmella loves five guys um no lynn made a little comeback this year though yeah michael rapaport was crushing his man bun on my podcast yesterday. He's very upset about that. And he was like, look, I fuck with Jeremy Lin. I love that guy, but the man bun's got to go. It was hilarious. I like that the hairstyle thing became his new gimmick for this year.

Man, that's my dream. I tell Chris all the time to scour China and find a 6'6 wingman that more or less is Michael Jordan. And I will sell everything and buy a Winnebago and go to Evergate. So 6'6 Asian Michael Jordan is your sports dream? That is for... New owner for the Redskins or 6'6 Asian Michael Jordan? I will take the 6'6 Michael Jordan. Really?

Yeah. Because my buddy David Cho, the crazy Facebook artist guy, we actually have debates about how awful it was growing up as an Asian American in America because we have no Asian role models. Right. Our only Asian role model was Bruce Lee. And how realistic is that? That's weird.

I never thought about that. Think about it. Michael Chang won the French Open, but it's like, dude, he's five foot six right he did have that one what was the one when he had the cramps and he kept yeah that was awesome right that was great i can root for that these are moments but it's like more exceptions to the rule you know we didn't have comedians you don't have any movie stars it's never been better to be like an asian person today but um for like from a pop culture slash sports hero standpoint who who you know i love len cicada when he was on the orioles but like no one knows you have to drop a len cicada yeah i didn't realize it was this bleak very bleak jesus so you have some asian hockey players

right but no one ever knows who they are. You obviously have some major league baseball players. Chan Ho Park, friend of Chris Chen's as well. Hilarious. By the way, do you know the Chan Ho Park stories? One day, off the record, you should find out what they are. Because they're arguably some of the funniest stories I've ever heard in my life. What about when Y.E. Yang took it right to Tiger?

No, because where is he now? But in the moment that didn't count? No, no, no. We need someone that can sustain success over a series of years and just crush it. Yes. That is very important to me, and I need that to happen. And in the NBA, everyone would say, like, yeah, but like, yeah, I was a glandular freak. Like, he was 7'7", 7'6".

You had Wang Wang. Who was it? ZZ Wang Wang? Well, Yixin Lan was the big loss. Yeah. Because that one actually seemed like he had potential. And it just, wrong team, wrong situation. I think he could have been good on the right team.

Maybe not. Or maybe not. I mean, he was just posting up chairs and got the sixth pick in the draft. There's so many Chinese people. Why can't they produce? Well, see, I thought the big hope was Yao married some, how tall is Yao's wife, Chen? Like 6'6"? And that's the hope.

They're Korean players, but they're like 7'3", 7'4". And this is my big problem i don't want i don't wow that's fantastic i need someone that's more normal size to show their athletic prowess did you ever see that nike um commercial with georgetown remember that one where it's uh georgetown versus unc and uh the unc player is a chinese guy so the best commercial i've ever seen no there's a story that Chris told me why it sort of got taken off the air. I don't know if the West Coast ever saw it.

I don't remember that one. It's the best commercial ever. For me. Maybe not for you. Well, Linsanity, maybe it'll happen again. So you rank it Asian Michael Jordan one. Linsanity Redskins selling two.

People ask me when's the last time I was happy. I genuinely will probably tell them almost always Linsanity. I mean, I'm not joking. That was like for two weeks. It was like the best. Anything to plug before we go? Shit, always. We got the new Lucky Peach issue coming out.

Okay. It's dedicated to pho. We got Nishi. We got milk bars. We got all sorts of stuff. Is there a one-stop shop where my listeners could go look at your website and just go to Lucky Peach? Momofuku.com or LuckyPeach.com.

My listeners can't spell Momofuku. M-O-M-O-F-U-K- momofuku momofuku tell people you know what's hilarious tell people on uh when you're telling someone an operator like what's your email address and i'll say like blah blah blah blah at momofuku they're always like the fuck is this kid's problem what did he just say yeah uh well thank you this was fun i'm glad we finally got to do this. We've been talking about it for a long time. Yes. I'm really, really lucky to be here. So thanks for having me. Thanks to Casper for sponsoring today's episode. If you want an awesome mattress that costs less than the other mattresses and gets delivered right to your house and is risk-free for a hundred days. And if you don't love it, they'll pick it up and refund you

everything. I would try Casper. And if you listen to this podcast casper.com slash bs promo code bs and you get 50 off a mattress purchase thanks to casper and also thanks again to five four clothing for the jacket i'm gonna wear tonight and also for sponsoring today's episode 60 a month high-end clothing membership that will provide you with stylish clothes go to to 5-4-Club.com. Use promo code BS. Sign up 50% off your first package. That is $120 worth of clothing for $30 for your first month's package. And don't forget, we are spinning off The Watch,

and we are spinning off Keeping It 1600 off the Channel 33 podcast feed next week. And don't forget about After the Thrones, episode three on HBO Now, late, late, late Sunday night. Enjoy the weekend. Anytime y'all want to see me again, rewind this track right here. Close your eyes and picture me rolling.