The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 484: Cooking Noodles and Catching Permit with David Chang

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Steven Rinella talks with David Chang and Randall Williams. Topics discussed: Eating David Chang's ramen in an area that no one has ever eaten David Chang's ramen; why Dave named his company Momofuku; the Korean guy who fly fishes the flats in Mexico; pregnancy frogs; the massively irresponsible dumping of 800,000 pogies; how Dave used to be a competitive golfer; when all the sales reps at your dad's golf store are hunters; permissions!; how inheriting success is a curse; a restaurant in Japan that’s been open for over 400 years; a 14th generation farmer probably knows what he’s doing; cooking turtles; the history of ramen; hard work as the greatest equalizer; how working in that kitchen was like working in a coal mine; the overbearing shuffling of plates; balance as being simultaneously committed to two things equally, all the time; opening the original Momofuku restaurant in NYC; permit fever; trout fishing to practice permit fishing; and more.  Shop Momofuku goods at THIS LINK for a generous 20% OFF from Dave Listen to and watch The Dave Chang Show with guest Steven Rinella   Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop MeatEater Merch  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are

without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. We hunt the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.

Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. apparel to support every hunter and every environment. Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. All right, everybody. Joined today by David Chang. Holy smokes.

Excited to be here. You, okay, David Chang, Michelin star chef, Momofuku restaurant group, podcaster, tons of television, like a lot of television started out as a chef. Yup. We just play one on TV. Now you just play one. We just talked about you a whole bunch because as I described to you earlier i had was moose hunting and um we ate a lot of uh we ate a lot of your ramen oh wow a lot of your ramen um with maybe in an area that no one has ever eaten your ramen

and then i got home and got to talking about this and and uh randall weaver here he was saying that that he likes to he likes to eat your the the momofuku ramen because you don't feel like such a piece of shit eating it it's not fried that's how he put it well not just physiologically not just physiologically but in terms of self-esteem and all that stuff. That's what you should ask the marketing. No, I know. I was like, I know exactly what you mean. You don't feel like it just doesn't.

Yeah, it feels like clean and good. Dude, I'll tell you, I sat down and did three packs. Wow. In a sit. Two is really sort of the proper portion. Oh, really? No, we sat down on a three pack i don't know what are you good for randall i don't know i'm i'm thrilled to go home though and tell my

wife that two is actually the proper amount for one person well listen we're gonna send you a whole boatload of the molo product trust me that's phenomenal um no that shit was good and and a buddy of mine we were sitting there after we got a moose uh my colleague seth that i work with he was he went to the over to where we were storing all the meat and he went over to one of the game bags was cutting himself off super thin moose slices skewering them on a stick and then he did the momofuku uh can you say momofuku once momofuku so i'm saying exactly yeah but i've heard every pronunciation of it momofuku is probably the most popular way of saying it they had to know but it's fine yeah sounds like the reason i named it that it sounds like motherfucker sure it does that really is so does it mean something it does because

uh i thought when we did the restaurant, when we came up with the idea in 2004, is to introduce ramen, reintroduce ramen to America because most people know it as instant noodles. The guy that created it was a Taiwanese guy. He wasn't even Japanese. He created to sort of feed post-war Japan in a fast way. Is that right?

And his name was Momofuku. And I thought it would be. Are you serious? Yeah. And at the time, I was still reading a lot of books about logic and tautologies and shit like that man i was smoking a lot of pot back then but like i thought that was sounds good yeah sounds like motherfucker the guy's name was momofuku even though now legally i'm not allowed to say it even though we've won that case don't worry about it and three you know the first concert i went to a second concert i

went to was the almond brothers when i was growing up because i grew up in virginia and why is that because that wouldn't mean to me that i'm waiting for the almond brothers okay no no this explains something i mean my favorite album no no this is all gonna make sense make sense because there was a, my favorite cover as a kid was Eat a Peach. And that's when I remember going there, I remember, I didn't even see, I didn't even know what a vinyl record looked like. And I saw that and be like, oh, that's a cool thing. So that was always ingrained in my head. When I went to the concert and people wearing t-shirts of that same that that that cover of that album so it became something that was like of always i've always associated positive

memories and then i'm in japan learning japanese cooking and i'm learning things words that were mostly associated with food momo means leg so you you know if you go to a yakitori restaurant, you get Momo. Um, and Fuku is like an adjective, lucky. So I said lucky peach. So our logo became the peach. So that's why the Allman Brothers came in. Yeah. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Isn't that funny when you, uh, you're talking about, uh, your Japanese being food things is. I've always struggled with Spanish. Um, but I can oftentimes smoke people on my, uh, that, that I, the wildlife names. Like I used to know like every, like I'd be like, I don't really know any Spanish except if I can name most fish in Spanish and a lot

of game animals in Spanish. Uh, but yeah, that, no, that stuff was phenomenal, man. So he was cooking little moose slices and, and, and dressing his thing up. So did he boil it or did he roast it? We had a big argument. No, no.

He was just skewering his little thin super mousse slices on a stick a little bit in little strips of fat on a stick and then putting them in. I was encouraging him to get it boiling and just drop it in which he didn't want to do it that way for whatever reason and another debate we had well you're the better cook because clearly i think you had a better understanding so sorry your friend this friend i've never met seth yeah he's he's he's on this show quite frequently um he also we had a debate i'd like you to settle this once and for all he felt that you shouldn't actually boil the stuff he'd like to have it be that you would just put hot water on it and then

let it give it a good soak contrary to the instructions which is a three-minute boil seth i appreciate the independent thinking. Out of the box thinking. I'm sure sometimes that out of the box thinking can come in handy. Yeah. But not in this situation, no. Uh, it is not designed.

In fact, I think it should be cooked 30 seconds to a minute longer than a three minutes. Okay. Um, because it is air dried. It will work eventually. It'll just saturate and that's how it can be done, but it should be boiled. We're working on some other noodles where it can work that way.

And I'll make sure to send that to Seth. A quicker noodle. Yeah. He doesn't look foolish because Seth, that was just out of his time. Yeah, he's out of his time. Dude, no, that stuff. Yeah.

I really, really appreciated it. And I had, man, what year did you start in the restaurant business 1999 okay so you had been going quite a while before i went in but i i was i ate in your restaurants early on but not that early um we're gonna get into your whole life story you're big fly fisherman yes saltwater fly fisherman i moved on to although i did a lot of trout fishing this summer saltwater is where where I think about almost all the time. I feel like that would surprise a lot of people who are familiar with your stuff. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that.

There's not a lot of crew people on the flats in Mexico. We've got to touch on a couple things. So, man, one of these, Randall, you've got to take it over on one of these. Are you ready? I think so. Okay, I'll get get to it i'll get to it and you're gonna have to jump in because had some some people i respect a lot were riled up remember i was talking about the guy the climate change guy oh yeah yeah okay no first off guy wrote in to say that we're talking about the number of PhDs out there. And a guy wrote in talking about the great explosion in PhD candidates.

And he views it as a market economy issue. Yeah. The colleges realize they can make money producing these things um but i'm only throwing that out there because i was talking about was it the journal nature yes okay on a past episode and i've been and i've had multiple academics write in very upset with me including some people that count as my friend i mentioned a article that was in Free Press. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, yeah.

An academic researcher who works on wildfires wrote an article in Free Press, and he was saying, I was just published in the journal Nature about California wildfires. I'll point out we're in California right now. I was just published in the journal Natureia wildfires i'll point out we're in california right now uh i was just publishing the journal nature about about wildfires and he said and here's what it takes this is an op-ed

he's like here's what it takes to publish in esteemed journals like nature is you have to push a climate change supremacy perspective in order to be taken seriously by journals meaning uh you know 80 of california wildfires are human caused if you wrote a published paper about that that's not going to grab their interest um electrical transmission like we just saw at the fires in maui the dangers of how we you know transfer electricity can lead to a lot of wildfires. That won't be of interest to nature. What nature would want to hear, what they mandate to hear is they want to hear the climate change connection. Um, and I pointed out this fact, but then it wound up being that this guy got himself in all kind of hot water and had maybe already gotten in hot water.

Um, at the time I brought it up and I only told a fraction of the story and a lot of people were like, dude, you kind of like started off on the first page and ended and you didn't get to the end of the book on this. Do you care to take this up? I mean,

I can only speak to what i read but apparently the journal had asked him to provide they said well did you consider x y and z and he said oh no we didn't have time or we didn't have funding to look at these different factors you know um and he he, he, he responded to the reviewers by saying, we looked at A, B and C, not X, Y, and Z, which is why. And, and so they apparently asked him for the thing that he said they weren't interested in. Yeah.

And then they went. Specifically asked him about the very same things he said that they didn't want to hear about. Yeah. And then he kind of turned around and said they only wanted a b and c and they they didn't ask me about xyz when in fact they had prior to the publication of the article so yeah it wanted to be in like a not smart move for that dude yeah i think it came back to bite him i mean i so just just so so bob you know who you are jim you know who you are these are actual names too

yeah you think they're making up names bob and jim i'm not bob and jim you know who you are i'm not i i have i've um stand corrected yeah not corrected but i appreciate the notes i appreciate the notes i to keep these academic types. Keep them warm. Yeah. Because they provide you a lot of information. On our episode 474, this is more listener feedback. This is a little thing we do.

A little listener feedback. On our episode 474, animal diseases. Someone writes this in. Steve seems shocked to find out about frogs being used for pregnancy detection. This concept was actually developed after a test that is known as the rabbit test. Is it ringing a bell to you?

Absolutely no idea. They used to use frogs. Check this no idea they used to use frogs check this out they used to use frogs you could use frogs to tell if a woman was pregnant that's how pregnancy tests used to be was frogs what do you mean used to be actual frogs was this an accurate way yes yes it was, it was. You could, you could take, uh, you could, you could do, I'm not sure how it was done. There was a swab that you could do of a woman and it would like, there would be like L levels of hormonal, I don't know if it's like the estrogen level, whatever hormone levels. You could induce a reproductive response in a frog with this swab, and that would tell you if that was a pregnant individual. Seems like a lot of work.

Well, these frogs, here's the crazy part. We got in this whole podcast episode with the animal disease specialist, these frogs develop some sort of virus. And now native frogs in this country, this virus is traveling among native frogs in this country, to which I asked, how did they even get this virus? They got this virus from these pregnancy frogs being released into the wild. So this, as this listener goes on,

this concept was actually developed after a test that's known as the rabbit test, the test, which involved subcutaneously injecting blood or urine of women assumed to be pregnant into rabbits or mice then dispatching the rabbit to determine if there was follicular activity on the ovaries this is the origin of the same and he's acting like this is gonna illuminate something for me this is the origin of the saying the rabbit died when referencing

a woman who had been confirmed as pregnant not myself not ringing any bells no i've never had that happen maybe we should do this take place yeah i didn't do a lot of work on it we could repopularize that one i think this is a misnomer this listener goes on to say as regardless of the woman's pregnancy status the rabbit had perished wayne wayne wrote that in thanks wayne did he uh where's he from did he give a location he didn't give any location that would have been interesting i'm gonna start using that man yeah i don't know if you know about my neighbor but the old uh rabbit has died fish spills louisiana this is a serious issue and you as a as a fishing angler will be curious uh it would be good to know i don't want to give the guy's full name

a guy wrote and he's from louisiana he's in the navy he's currently stationed in san diego um however he's originally from south louisiana where he points out there is a quote massive problem with pokey boats menhaden this is the fish of many names menhaden they call them pogies in the gulf they call them Menhaden in Chesapeake Bay. They got a handful of other names. Bunkers and other ones. Bunkers and other ones. So if you're sitting there at home and you're like, never heard of a pogey, but I know a bunker.

Same guy, same fish. Massive problem with pogey boats fishing too close to the coastline and wiping out our populations of game fish. He goes on to talk about, um, he, he sends along the forwarded email blows what the state president sent out from a, uh,

from, uh, uh, a fishing conservation organization. And it gets into this, uh, it gets into this pokey boat habit where they are dumping. Try to find the link here.

Dumping enormous numbers of dead fish. And I hadn't realized this when these, when these pokey boats are operating and part of the problem here, so I'm on the board, i'm on the board of an organization called theodore roosevelt conservation partnership and trcp where randall's worked um they've focused a lot of energy on the menhaden the unregulated menhaden harvest in chesapeake bay i think they're now involved they've also focused on the fishery in the gulf but the Chesapeake Bay one has been a really hot issue when they're doing these when they're doing this pokey netting apparently during the process of netting the fish die so when they're hauling them up the fish are dead and they'll now and then have these breaches and

they need to report how many fish are killed when there's a breach or a spill. And it is just a litany of insane numbers of millions of fish dumped. And I couldn't believe when I got to reading about this. I mean, I knew about the lack of regulation on this fishery. It's like often international interests operating without regulation, killing a forage fish that drives the whole ocean ecosystem so that it can be like ground up for fish oil and pet food. And like knocking the legs off the stool on marine resources. One of the reasons they have to report a lot of these fish spills,

this blew my mind, is because they caught too many. And sometimes the nets get, their nets will get so full of pogies and redfish and all kinds of other game fish that they don't have the machinery to hoist it. By the time they find this out,

it's all dead anyway. And so they'll need to abandon what's called abandon the catch and then file a report. Some of these officers are in trouble now for not filing the reports. Then file a report and saying, hey, what we were doing worked better than we thought. Heads up, we just dumped 800, 000 dead pogies and redfish on the beach it just blows my mind that this is a that this goes on yeah this if you ever see photos of these

big catches and like a commercial manhattan harvest the scale of it is unbelievable and it's one of those things too where it's like a lot i'm so worked up i'm gonna put my glasses a lot of times when you talk about allocation and like people using a resource in different ways there's like some nuance and some gray area but i think this is like one case in which there's most folks agree that there's a bad actor here and it's these boats that have this enormous footprint isn't this happening to most fish cotton nets right they have a a charter and a license to catch say cod but they catch all kinds of other species and they can't do anything with it because they're not allowed to so they just check it back in the water dead yeah it's common and there are a lot of like like you know like salmon purse

in alaska why it's a very responsible fishery but some of this stuff is egregious so this is all the stuff this guy's referring to point in the news so here's an article um here's an article about the louisiana spills three massive fish spills that coated waves and beaches off the southwest coast of Louisiana last week has renewed calls for tidal restrictions on the Manhattan industry. Manhattan, how do you say it? Manhattan. Manhattan.

Two Manhattan fishing companies dumped an estimated 850,000, that's more than I'd catch in a full weekend of fishing an estimated 850,000 fish in the waters off Cameron Parish during three incidents over four days the fish formed rotting rafts that either floated into deeper water

washed up by the thousands near Holly Beach, one of the few communities in the sparsely populated parish amid the dead amid the dead menhaden also called pogey were hundreds of redfish and then it gets into contributing to sharp redfish population declines that the industry is contributing these redfish declines and there's photos of just beaches littered with the stuff. These companies are now required, they're supposed to go around and clean up all their dead fish.

The first of the three incidents happened on September 11th when the net of a vessel fishing for Omega ripped and spilled an estimated 200,000 dead fish about two miles east of Cameron Bar. The other two incidents happened on September 14th. Another vessel released 350,000 fish after its net broke. Around the same time, a West Bank vessel caught, quote, an unmanageable load. Rather than lose the whole catch in the net, the captain decided to let part of the catch go

they dumped between 100,000 and 300,000 dead fish on the beach follows up from the summer before when they dumped a million dead manhattan near holly beach manhattan near holly beach mind-boggling numbers it really is i just looked at the photo that's insane yeah yeah it's really something all right that's all on that happy note so uh tell me uh what what was your you you described that you grew up um in in what you call the preppy neighborhood no i i grew up in uh i was born in alexandria outside dc but my father had a business and i had relatives that lived in richmond and i could not understand that why richmond was so goddamn different than where i grew up because it's i always say that when you get to richmond or uh winchester so two hours south of two hours

west of northern virginia or dc area that's like to me where the South actually begins. Yeah. Then everything else is the mid Atlantic. It's basically the North. So I lived in Northern Virginia. Um, but all I did playing, all I did was play golf when I was a kid. Yeah. Was your, your old man was in the golf business?

Yeah. It's crazy. Do you still golf now? I picked it up again during the pandemic after maybe 30 years i'm not playing how old are you turned 46 okay yeah oh so you didn't play for 30 oh no i'm like yeah i gotta do the math real quick so i was you quit young 14 years old was when i stopped playing competitively but i played many tournaments mostly you know in the south yeah you. You were a child competitive golfer.

Yeah. Most of, I always say. You've been pretty good at it? I mean, you've been pretty good at it. Yeah, I won the Virginia State Championship a couple years. When, I always say my old man was the, now if you go to a golf tournament or any golf course, you're going to see a really Korean dad yelling at his kid. I always say my dad was the first he pioneered that oh yeah oh yeah because he wanted you to be he wanted to be

like good yeah he wanted me to be a pro golfer so um you know i had three brothers and older sister but uh i i you know supposedly i had the most talent amongst everybody so he really pushed me what was his what was his how was he in the golf business? He's a supply, like a distributor. Yeah, he got, so we came to America in 1963, which is funny because most people, they had the, the, they repeal the Chinese exclusion act, the immigration act. So all of a sudden you had a lot of Koreans coming in that were mostly academics. Right. And, uh, engineers.

My dad was not any of those. My dad just hustled and came here and didn't speak any English. And he got in, that's a whole nother story how he got a visa. But he came here in 1963, not an academic, and he worked in restaurants. Where did he come from?

What part of Korea? Born in North Korea. Okay, that sounds curious about it. Yeah, yeah. So my mother as well, um, she lived in Kesung. So my mother side came from extraordinary wealth. Uh, my dad came from real hardcore Christians, like from nothing really.

Um, so polar opposites. Um, and when you say North Korea now, people are like, oh, that's, but they don't understand. That was like Vermont, you know? You know, now it's not. Hey, you hear North Korea now and you just think of Dennis Rodman. Yeah. So he came here with nothing and, you know, he just worked in restaurants for like 25 years.

He worked his entire life in restaurants for the most part in America. And then somehow got into the golf business and that's how it all happened. Yeah. What was, when you were raised, what was, what was your awareness of outdoor, you know, not when I say outdoor, I mean, of course you play golf outdoors, but somehow on outdoorsy in my view, uh, what, what was your awareness of fishing? And we would go crabbing. We'd go fishing a lot in the Chesapeake. Um, I never went

freshwater fishing in terms of hunting. My dad had a golf store and all of his sales reps were, um, yeah, they were, they just, they would take videos of bow hunting and I would watch that all the time. Seriously? Really? They would, so they would, um, I remember this guy, JC, uh, Todd, like all these guys, they were all hunters. Yeah.

Um, Eddie was the repair guy. He also hunted. Um, that was so long ago. And, uh, I remember when the handheld camcorder became a thing and they would like you know record these things and in that area especially back then now it's so these like Korean dudes or not Korean oh not Korean dudes your dad your dad didn't he wasn't like uh your dad didn't just hang out with Korean dudes because he was from Korea oh he hung out with my dad hung out with Korean dudes and everybody, but the salespeople were totally different. Got it.

And I remember that they really loved, they liked working there specifically because a lot of the people that would shop at the store lived on really large plots of land. So they were able to not only- That's a good hustle. It's a side hustle. I'm feeling the said guy. So they would, you know, if you're a good salesperson, you get to know everybody, especially repeat customers. Right. And at the time, and this is how it all happened.

Tyson's Corner was literally farmland. When I moved from my original house where I was born, we literally lived on like a farm. There's nothing near us. And now Tyson's Corner is this like just suburban retail sprawl. It's really gross. And you would never know that it was farmland. And back then it started to get very, very wealthy too, because it was the premier shopping

center outside, you know, Washington DC. So McLean, Potomac, really the suburbs that became very, very wealthy and huge plots of land. So these people would also, they're not hunters, they play golf, but they'd always complain about deers eating something or whatever. So this is really what happened. I think one of these guys must've got convinced a bunch of other people to learn how to sell golf gear. And you're going to get permission to hunt online.

Dude, this is going to, I used to have a list of like the most, like the most hunting friendliest occupations. And I recently met a guy who does ag loans. This guy's like, listen, you want to talk about permissions so a guy that does agricultural loans you're working for the usda ars because the vacation policy is just absolutely insane um firefighters that work four on four off that's pretty good but i'm gonna add a golf sales rep yeah and you probably look really respectable you've got your golf That's pretty good. But I'm going to add a. Golf sales rep. Golf. Yeah. It's crazy. And you probably look really respectable. You've got your golf.

Yeah, they're always in khakis and a polo shirt. And like, but these guys would just always, when it was the hunting season on, they would always just go bow hunting and they would almost sell their services as like, we can exterminate all the deer from the land. I remember being as a kid, all this happening. I was like, and I always asked my parents, like, you are not hanging out with those guys. What was your reaction to it at the time? Like, how did you?

I remember seeing this guy, JC. I mean, I remember seeing a video, but like, it was so early on. I don't even know how he did it. But he's like, Dave, check this out. And I mean, that was the first time i saw a deer shot with bo was on on his home video on his home video i would remember i was sitting on a tripod golf folding chair behind the cash register and i remember exactly when it happened actually Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.

And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew, our northern brothers. You're irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.

That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function. As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.

As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com meet. onxmaps.com meet. Welcome to the OnX Club, y'all. When your old man wanted you to get into

he wanted you to be a professional golfer meaning i read that as he wanted you to live out yeah his fantasy man i have no idea how the hell he came up with that fantasy it was proxy it was like a proxy weird yeah yeah when when you when you uh got into restaurant work was his initial thing like oh brother he thought it was um what did he call it a hobby he's such a dick he's like he's just a hobby but you know i tried to drop out of college to do there and i didn't know if i remember going abroad and trying to go into cooking school there but i didn't know anything there was no internet there was no way to say there what do you mean there in the uk one of the great chefs of all time peter marco pierre white was literally running a restaurant

called harvey's maybe like 10 minutes away from where i lived i didn't know but you know today with the internet i probably don't like oh i'm gonna try to get a job there i had no idea so i tried to apply i didn't get in that was my first attempt to like enter the coloring profession um so you know you wanted to enter like that. You don't want to enter as some dude working at McDonald's. I never got a chance to work cause I only played golf.

The only thing I ever did was play golf for like 14 years of my life. I played competitively from age five to 14. I got recruited to play golf at all the top high school prep schools. Um, and I chose to go to one good man. I was pretty good. Yeah.

And I burned out. I burned out. I had a meltdown of epic proportions. I was trying to qualify the U S amateur, not the U S junior amateur, U S amateur sectional qualifying was at Robert Trent Jones and, uh, Manassas, Virginia. And, uh, I, my second 18, I had a total meltdown and I never recovered.

I was a huge basket case. When you say a meltdown, you mean like the meltdown, the dude in a Royal Tenant bombs? Yeah, I actually use that as an example in a journal. It was years ago. I was like, when I saw that, I was like, that was, that was me.

Like a, like you had a meltdown, meaning not sort of a prolonged, I mean, you had a meltdown meltdown. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Like all of a sudden. Because, again, this gets into the nerdiness of golf. Robert Trent Jones is one of the longest courses in the world, particularly from hole to hole.

It's just people don't walk it. They play it in a golf cart. My caddy didn't show up. It was my friend, Jason Dollard. I remember that. Didn't show up. And I played like really well the first 18. And it was also like a sweltering Virginia hot. It was like a hundred plus, a hundred percent humidity.

It's just not nice weather to play golf in. And I remember being like, if I played well in the second 18, I had a shot of maybe making the next qualifying round. And I felt bad. This guy, Chad guy chad mosley holy he was my second 18. i haven't thought about you got all the names i haven't thought about this in years i feel like rain man right now um i think talking about a therapy session where you're like you're coming repressed memories i think talking about all the the sales reps triggered something in my head because i didn't remember these names in Anyway, this guy who wound up playing golf at UVA, very good golfer.

He never, he was always so mad at me because I should have DQ'd myself, but I kept on playing and I think I was like crying. I don't know what happened, but I just had a mental breakdown playing golf and I just never recovered from playing competitive golf. As a young kid though. Man,

like, but that's all I did. I didn't have a normal childhood no no i'm not criticizing you for having a mental breakdown i mean it's just putting it's just thrusting yourself into uh your your family i mean that's just intense you know uh our little my little boy plays soccer and and they were there was reason i didn't read about heard about it there was recently an email. Oh, it's a quiet Saturday. Asking people to chill.

Parents. Not like a lot of loud cheering. I mean, this is 35 years ago. It's a different time. It's hard to picture driving a kid to that, to break that issue, man. It happens a lot in golf and tennis. You hear about it? I feel like there's individual sports. Yeah. Especially where you have to begin at such a young age. Immigrant parents too. to like break that issue man it happens a lot in golf and tennis you hear about those individual

sports especially where you have to begin at such a young age immigrant parents too it's like push push push you know man we've had a whole series of immigrant parent or children of immigrant parent we just had a we we just had a guy on who came from vietnam Tao, who became a, he's a competitive fly tire, like a master fly tire. He came from, his parents came from South Vietnam after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam. Then we had a Hmong chef on who was another cold, a cold war refugee from among dudes a cold war refugee from laos who became an american chef um and they both talked a lot about immigrant parents where son tau said um there's three ways this can go you're a doctor you're a lawyer you're not my kid it's pretty much pretty much the same saying yeah i can totally relate so me choosing to um become a cook wasn't just for my parents it was a point in my life

where i was like i hate everything i'm doing something that is effectively back then because cooking is cool now it was like social suicide to some degree right like is that right in my world i went to prep school i went all this thing nobody i knew would even think about becoming a cook that was ridiculous that's exactly why what if you use the word subversive oh yeah it was total rebellion yeah and then i found out when i started cooking i'm a hyper competitive person i wound up playing other sports um i never really played team sports until I got to high school and I loved it. There was something about working in a kitchen. And listen, anytime you walk in a kitchen of any sort, if it's fast food or not, it's hard. But when you walk into a place that's trying to be one of the very best in your town, in the world,

it's a different ballgame. And there was a level of seriousness and competitiveness and desire to constantly improve that resonated with me simultaneously, all of these professionals that I was looking at as like demigods, almost everyone was dead serious, but also the funniest motherfucker I've ever come across and probably couldn't do their laundry properly because they didn't know how to do it. Their life outside of the kitchen was in total shambles. But you put them in whites, put them ready for service. They were like F1 race car drivers, you know?

And I love that dichotomy. And I love that it was everyone came from all sorts of upbringings backgrounds parts of the world it was uh coming from like this homogenized background that i sort of grew up in this was the polar opposite and i loved it you know getting to work with people that didn't speak english you know people that just immigrated from mexico or what I did see with working with a lot of the prep teams and the dishwashers, they always remind me of my dad. That hard work mentality. It was like, this is the only job they can do. So hopefully they do it so well that their kids don't have to do it.

Yeah. Yeah. so hopefully they do it so well that their kids don't have to do it yeah yeah that that that perspective i think is is something that is lost on a lot of people um i think like i saw it my own my own dad you know he never finished high school right but there's this like but i just don't know if that idea that i'm struggling for words because it's a hard thing to phrase up. But that idea that I'm like sucking hind titty right now so that you don't have to. Because I think that families or however you track families and lineages at some point in time you get out of that

right and then and then it's like the i i i worry that that you create like a decline like a decline of the empire because like right now for me to in any way ever act like i'm sucking hind titty so that my kid don't have to i mean i have the you know as my wife says man you better be careful who you complain to right it's so like to to see and then my kid's not gonna like i can run around look at sacrifices you know i'll run around look at sacrifices like my dad was raised by italian, fought in the war, right? Grew up super, super poor. And that created like a drive, right?

Absolutely. And then you wonder like, what happens next? Because then everything is opulence and decay, man. I guess that's a hard part of it. So I hope my kids aren't listening. How do you as a parent then institute some kind of struggle that's not like crazy? We do it through just chores and discipline and long hikes and shitty experiences. It's manufactured. in some way it's

manufactured i found some of those recently i'll take my kids to do stuff they're like why do i have to do this you know and i'll sometimes say that let's just so you can hang out with cool people when you get older they'll appreciate it that's the truth they'll appreciate your tenacity yeah man that's but it's like it's it's man you have to manufacture it it's not it's not like that it's it's you somehow move beyond yeah you worry about what happens when when you've moved beyond the struggle i mean you know you gotta be careful who you bring up the unabomber around, but that was one of the Unabomber's big gripes was that everybody had it so damn easy now. And it gave us all this room for all of our neurotic behavior.

Not that he wasn't a little bit neurotic. There could have been other ways he could have communicated that. Many other ways. Yeah. I, you know, inherited success is very difficult you know it's just as difficult as i would imagine inherited wealth right like it's a curse yeah it's like just gonna be worried now um okay i wanna keep going i don't wanna hang up on that one earlier you were telling me you uh in your training as a chef, you wound up in Japan.

Yeah. And you were telling me how you wound up, somehow they had it pegged that you were interested in prepping turtles. Yeah. This is like after I- Through some kind of weird misunderstanding. I've worked in Japan a bunch. You know, first time I was not cooking, I was teaching English. Then I come back, and long story cut short, second time around, I'm working in Japan a bunch. You know, first time I was not cooking, I was teaching English. Then I come back and long story cut short, second time around, I'm working in Japan cooking.

And then I opened up a restaurant and I come back and they invite me because now I'm, you know, a person of note or successful. They invited a bunch of chefs, you know, three or four of us to come down. And we're in Kyoto, right, where there's restaurants that are 400 years older. Isn't that wild? Older than America. Right. There is a restaurant that's almost a thousand years older. You're kidding.

No. I remember being in a bar in, I remember being in a bar in Oxford and someone pointing out, this bar has been in business longer than your country has existed. That's amazing, right? I never thought, it makes total sense,

but I just never thought of that. I don't know. I just never thought of Japan having that. Their food hasn't changed in like a millennia. Crazy, right? Especially the food in Kyoto. Wow. Is it good?

It's not just good. It's like going to the Library of alexandria almost for food right they're like maintaining traditions that go back hundreds of years yeah yeah i remember it had nothing to do with kitchen but one of the farms there that a lot of the places use i was eating strawberries and it was like dead winter and it didn't look fancy in fact it looked sort of dilapidated but you eat these strawberries and i was eating strawberries and i was like that's like the best strawberry ever had in my life like and then he's like oh the farmer's like oh eat this one over here under

this other pile of stuff tasted totally different and he's telling me why it tastes different i'm like i have no idea because of the translator and i'm like why does it taste good and then the translator goes oh because he's like the 14th generation farmer. No joke. Right. When you start thinking of it that way, it's like, oh, this person knows so much more about growing fruits than anybody else. Yeah.

Particularly in that area. Probably not as good if he moved, you know, a couple of towns over, but in that terroir, nobody's going to grow stuff better than this guy. Okay. And when you understand that, that longevity is incredible.

Cause like, yeah, you, most of them, you know, you go to most Americans, man. They can't, you get back four generations and they're like a little hazy on what country they might've come from. Oh yeah. I don't even have to go that far. It's gone. 14 generations. Think about that.

That's wild. So I think when I got there, again, I was, I think about all that I learned there and what I saw, but one of the things I got somehow communicated was, oh, Chef Chang, he wants to learn how to, you know, cook soupon, which is Japanese soft shell turtles. And I was like, cool. I want to learn it one day. And then the day after, the day after, I was like, there must be some misunderstanding here, man. I'm never going to cook this when I get back to America. Yeah. I've never cooked it since. How, uh, walk me through, like, what is the, what is their, what is the preparation?

So you take these things, they're like yellow or white, um, and they have like sort of a soft shell. And then they're. I mean, how many pounds is one of these things? I mean, probably like four pounds. Okay. Tiny. They can be bigger, but I don't even get the tiny ones. I don't even know if they're farm raised. Not, no, they pounds, they're tiny. They can be bigger, but only at the tiny ones. I don't even know if they're farm raised.

Not, no, they're, they're wild. And then their, uh, their diet is cleaned. So it's like, and then you take the thing and there's like, not like almost like a thin skewer, not pointed. And you sort of agitate the hell out of the head until it bites it. And then you grab it with your left hand and it's like this and it's again you're like pretty traumatic because it's very phallic seeming and then you basically yank the head as far as you can go and you take a you know short

deba like a japanese butcher knife and you you slice it right in front of your groin area and it was very weird oh i got yeah it's like doing a like a circle it's like a yeah a bad dream to yourself almost right and i was like this is not i don't first of all that was a lot to process just killing the turtle and then um you cut around it pop off the shell and i don't remember we're talking about organs. I just remember it all feeling like it was moving. Like it was an alien. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, it's very watery inside. Yeah. And anatomy that I just, I didn't even know what was what, you know, everything looked like an intestine. You know,

what the hell is happening in there? And, uh, you don't need any of that or, you know, um, so you basically scoop all that out but what they really wanted was the meat under the shell like there's like a lining of that you know

and the feet right yeah um and the neck but mainly what you do is you would blanch it and then you peel the skin off and then you would make it into a broth. So any part of meat attached to it, you would again, chop it up. And it's in Kyoto of delicacy of this beautiful, clean broth, uh, soup with like turtle feet, basically. Cooked down though. Yeah. And it's gelat, it's delicious.

And I know somebody listening that's probably, again, I had no idea that in Michigan people ate turtles. I just didn't think anybody ate turtles. I had no idea that Michigan people ate turtles I just didn't think anybody ate turtles no idea I assure you it's it's really wonderful and it's delicious so that's that was my I must have done like 50 of those that you had your fill yeah I was like oh so that uh what do you told earlier I thought that was like when you're in your younger years. No, that happened when I was like 30. Yeah.

How did it, what did that path look like for you to, you know, you came out of being a golfer, decided you're going to go down and be a cook and a chef. At what point did you get where you're going to take the leap leap and uh you know try to open your own place so i think it's important to note like go back to college so i i i went to trinity college in hartford uh i had a great time i i i had a wonderful time i partied my ass off and i did terribly in school what were you supposed to be studying anything to get me into law school or investment banking or anything but that liberal art school there's like 1500 kids neskack new england and what i wound up so you're being groomed to be a banker or something like that, right? But- Yeah. Or something in the corporate world.

Yeah. And all my friends are doing those things for the most part from college. I wound up, the classes I wound up doing really well, and mainly because I took these classes because they were like, you know, three in the afternoon, you know? like things like that were religion and philosophy. Um, and I came from a very hardcore Presbyterian family.

Um, a lot of it was from, you know, my dad's side of the family. Um, and that's where Christianity started in Korea was really North Korea of all places. So my dad's side, they were like the first Christians in Korea, like hardcore. That was just how I grew up. So I was pretty rebellious to that idea as well. So I wanted to study why people were religious. And I studied a lot of things about philosophy and things that were meaningful to me, but really makes you gainfully unemployable when you graduate.

So I, there was nothing i could do and besides those were good grades but my other grades and other classes were terrible so like i couldn't really get jobs that i wanted i i um so i moved to jackson wyoming in the summer of 99 that's where i worked at jackson old resort lodging and that's where I learned how to fly fish. So I worked the graveyard shift. And I just was like, I'm just going to learn how to fly fish. So that's what I did.

During the daytimes, I would just drive to McCoy Creek by myself and I would just figure out how to do that. And that's when I caught that bug and moved back, went on a move to Wakayama to teach English. And I only, this is just give the example of my personality.

Everyone's asking me what I was going to do after graduating. I had no fucking idea. So I went to the career fair and I took the first job they offered right on the right side of the hall. Like the, I can't remember the cafeteria where they're setting up all the job fair stuff. And it was teaching English. And I didn't want to teach English, but that's just what I did because I could tell someone, I at least have something to do. Anyway, that was short lived, but that was an important moment because when I lived in this really hot, it was almost like the Jacksonville, Florida of Japan, right? Industrial, super humid, tropical climate, not much to do um but there was only one place that only one there was two

restaurants in my small town um and one was this ramen shop and i was like oh i tasted a ramen shop taste great ramen for the first time like real real delicious ramen and i never had anything like that i've eaten a lot of noodles in my life. Is ramen definitionally Japanese? Ramen translates to lo mein from Chinese. Oh, okay. Yeah, because the noodles. That's what I always. Yeah.

But the origins, like most things in Asia, are from China. Okay. And it's turned into a variety of things, and it's uniquely Japanese now. Got it. But it found its origin. Yeah. a variety of things and it's uniquely japanese now got it but it found its origin and it yeah i mean you know the the dried blocks that's momofuku ando the guy that created instant noodles okay so that that the way most americans is just in their you know coming of age encounter ramen as you know like a plastic wrapped dry block that's not ramen yeah but that but that i

mean that's what people know and when when you do that you have the association of it being like a chinese food yeah it's like you know how most americans probably think taco bell is like mexican food it's not right so you know that's what i always say to anybody that's younger like you can't connect the dots till after the fact you just got to keep on like chugging along and in the moment when you're doing something you think you're a complete failure and everything sucks i had no idea that that moment in that crappy town in southern japan eating ramen would come back to be a massive moment for me anyway i come back i try to get a desk job i do terribly i hate it it's now uh 2000 no right before 2000 i just i had a lot of things happen i couple i three friends

die in a year uh there's a lot of stuff going on my family uh health all kinds of terrible and i was just like i don't want to do this anymore. I don't know what I want to do. Were you a good cook? No. So even personally, not for your friends, not for your family? My mom never taught me how to cook at all.

She's a great cook. My mom, to her day she died, refused to give me a recipe. I was not, and still to this day, I say I'm not a good cook. And everyone goes, oh, Chang, you suck at cooking. I think I'm not a good cook. I'm a really good cook, but it's not something that comes naturally to me no um so i just i got really

drunk at the christmas party i told all my bosses how much i hated them and uh i literally pulled office office space you know that you know i'm just gonna quit and i think and i wanted to burn every bridge possible so i could never go back to what is a possible corporate job and i didn't know if cooking was going to be the thing but one of the things i learned in school was this idea via negativa which early christian is gonna be crazy it's how late on me man i'm ready for it early christian theologians would meditate on how to know god right um but god is ineffable god is impossible to know God, right? But God is ineffable. God is impossible to know. So they would think about what God was not.

God is not that cup of tea. God is not that table. And you would just go on and on and on. And the more you would think about what God is not, you would get closer to God, right? In some weird way. It's a good place to start. I was like, well, I don't know what the hell I want to do.

So I'm just going to try a bunch of things. And the more I try, it'll get me close to what I want to do. I just got to keep on moving along. And I'd done a bunch of jobs in my life and I was like, you know what? I've always wanted to cook, had a few false starts. My dad really tried hard to make sure, I never worked in the culinary profession. I won't bore you with some of the stories, but he did go out of his way to make sure, like my first

job, I tried to get a cooking job. He, he like secretly sabotaged it, you know? Um, and now I understand if my kids wanted to come and cook, I'd probably do the same thing. It's too goddamn hard. Anyway, I get into cooking and go cooking school and I start working full-time immediately. And I'm pretty allergic to work at the time.

Next thing you know, I'm working like, I didn't take a day off for like a year. I was so immersed in it. And I realized. Doing what kind of food? Just like the technical? I was working for Jean-Georges at the Mercer Kitchen. And I was going to cooking school from 8 o'clock to three o'clock.

And I was working from four o'clock to one o'clock, uh, working for John George, which is sort of like, uh, modified contemporary French food. John George being one of the great chefs from Alsace. And he's been a mentor and a great, great culinary figure. And the weekends I started working at craft for Tom click. Yo, just answering phones because I know I wanted to work there because of the crew that was assembled there. I want more people, a New York genealogy of kitchens.

And the only way I could get into that kitchen was answering phones and they needed need me. They didn't was answering phones and they didn't need me. They didn't. In fact, they didn't out want me. So I just answered phones on the weekends. So I literally worked every day. Like front of house phone answering.

Okay. I worked every day for like a year till I could like get my feet in the door there. And, uh, seriously. Yeah. I'm an,

I fucking grind, man. You know? And, and, uh, and i was allergic to work so i was like holy shit like i'm working my ass off and i don't know if i love it but like i can't imagine doing anything else so for me i don't i think it's bullshit when people say oh i love what i do i love it it's like 100 i think that's a fucking crock of shit it's like 51 you love it more than you hate it yeah you know nobody wants to get up at like four in the morning to peel potatoes but

you know you do it because it gets you another goal so i did that and i just was like a sponge and it wasn't there are cooks that are much more naturally gifted what i love about cooking which is what i tell anybody that's worked for me or anyone that's thinking about doing it. Um, if you, if you pour yourself into this hard work is the greatest equalizer in cooking. If somebody is better than you, if you practice and if you put yourself like fully into that situation, you will not only get even with that person that you view as I view everything as a competitor, because I am just that kind of person because a golf everything's a fucking competition you will

not only even up with that person or peer you will then exceed that person on hard work alone you know we had a we talked to a chef recently and he his his ticket to success early on was that he would show up. Which he said really differentiated him from his dad. It's true. But at the time, too. He's like, that was my secret. In the morning, I would just be there. And everything else just followed.

100% the truth. Showing up in a job that's so fucking physically tough. Yeah. Nobody wants to do that work. Yeah. So I felt lucky because there are a lot of people that were so talented and have done amazing things. And I just, I feel that was an instrumental moment for me. And, you know, the thing is, I didn't know know nobody thought i was going to be good

all right if you if you had to put like odds on anybody in that that kitchen i'm not even i'm not even i'm part of the rest of the field odds you know who's gonna be successful right so there'd be like 15 people on odds of who's going to be very successful. Oh, yeah. I would be not even making an individual lot. You're in the everybody else category. Yeah.

And, and I understood that. And for that entire time though, I was just trying to find things that I like to do. And I like, I did eat a lot of noodles, whether it was ramen or not, because of where I grew up in Northern Virginia, there's amazing Vietnameseietnamese population korean food chinese food so i ate a lot of delicious things and but you were drawn to the contemporary american and french shit oh yeah i wanted to was that because that's what you thought success would say or it's got you what

you like to eat because that's where the best war yeah yeah that's where the best war the cell at that time the really celebrated players were from that world and there was another chef called out and his name is alex lee and he was this six he's a big chinese guy and chinese-american and he ran danielle's kitchen in upridge side and he was a badass right intimidating as fuck spoke the worst fluent french possible in a long island accent but all these french chefs and sous chefs like served him i was like to a lot of asian kids growing up like he was the fucking real superstar right so i was like all these places you're naming man at some point i've been to like uh i've been to these i kind of forgot forgot about them. Yeah. I remember like Daniel's and like someone hovering

like all the time, someone like changing your forks and shit out. Yeah, but I didn't want to eat that food at the time. You know what I mean? Like that's the funny.

So the most like overbearing sort of shuffling of plates and shit and like what fork and it's like, my goodness, but you people. Disconnect. Just go away for a minute.

The people eating there and the food you're making and the people making it, very different. But the reason why people are making that food and drawing that talent, because you're working with the best ingredients, the best techniques. And back then, to learn how to make any dish, like one dish, you had to like work a year there. You couldn't go online and learn anything. Yeah, I got you. You actually had to like spend time and maybe the chef would finally teach you how to make something you know that's the way it was um but yeah man to do a thing for future generations to understand is there should be like a you're like a library of congress project where you try to so future generations can understand how shit

went before the internet do you know what i mean totally i think about that a lot like because people are gonna lose track of if you wanted to know something it was hard you it was hard to find you didn't know it at the time because everybody thinks that what they exist their existence is totally normal but um if you wanted i remember like talking about a cooking thing trying to figure out like how mountain men would cook beaver tails dude did take you four years to figure that shit out now it's like my kid could figure it out watch some youtube video watch one of your videos oh yeah just everything it's just like it's just so many years of knowledge that was hard earned is now in this five minute edited video yeah it's just like it's just so many years of knowledge that was hard earned is now

in this five minute edited video yeah it's an amazing thing the comedian what the hell is his name joey diaz talking about he's trying to describe dating you know before the internet he's talking about how you used to have to go up and throw rocks at your window to try to wake them up. It's like, yeah, to learn how to make shit, like you couldn't, it was. It sounds wild, but yeah, you would have to work at a restaurant to learn how to do one thing. Yeah, if your mom, your mom had like six cookbooks

and if someone made some shit in your house, it was because it was one of those six cookbooks. I mean, think about even on the cookbook level, right? Like at the time, a lot of the progressive stuff was happening in France and i won't bore your audience with like food nerdery on the chefs but i would have friends working at some of the top places you would want to be at they would send postcards right about like hey i'm learning this but there's not enough to fit on a postcard about like what the hell is happening you know so so i do think we're

talking about inherited success or wealth or knowledge. I think that that generation, everything that preceded the internet, there's a level of creativity that is better in that generation. I'm not saying, cooks today are fucking more knowledgeable

than they know more. And I'm not trying to, I can imagine all these people, oh, fuck you, Dave. We're just as good. You are. But the originality and creativity of the older generation from, fuck you, Dave. You're telling we're just as good. You are, but the originality and creativity of the older generation from, you know, pre-internet is because we had to struggle what the fuck was

happening, you know, think about it, use our imagination, we go to restaurants after service and just look at their menu and be like, how do you think they're making them? What do you think that sauce is? Oh, I've never heard about that. And we then go to Chinatown, drink some beers, eat some food and talk about, how do you think that sauce is oh i've never heard about that and we then go to chinatown drink some beers eat some food and talk about how do you think that dish is being made it was awesome yeah but now that camaraderie and talking about and imagining it's not on a youtube video while

that's amazing that difficulty of acquiring that information is a beautiful thing. Yeah. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes. And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join. Whew. Our northern brothers get irritated. Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking high and titty there, OnX is now in Canada.

The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking. That's right. We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast. Now, you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service. That's a sweet function.

As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team. Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more. As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet. onxmaps.com slash meet. Welcome to the OnX club, y'all. Another one, just to drive that point home is i remember uh long ago before the internet was like

populated the way it is really struggling with when you'd see the glazed roasted ducks the chinese style the hanging and just to be like if i could only know i'd have to learn Chinese. I'll tell you one thing. That's one of those things that even if you can see the video, it's still fucking hard to do, man. But just be like, how would anyone ever figure that out? So hard and so delicious.

But yeah, man, I just wanted to learn how to make noodles. So if I was a better cook, I probably would have gone to France. Because a chef would have said, hey, you're so good. I'm going to send you to my, my mentor. But no chef I worked for was ever going to do that to me. Yeah. You know, because I was a hot mess. I was just not good enough.

So I just said, I'm going to focus on something where nobody's focusing on. Yeah. And that was ramen. Weirdly. And that was Ramya. Weirdly enough, that was my thing. I would get, you know, books from Japan. I'd get going Craigslist being like, can anyone translate these books? And I'd put in the time and understand what exactly what's happening. I would get magazines, know what was happening in Ramya and in Japan at the time. And I got a job working in Japan.

That's a whole nother, I lived in a homeless shelter. It was fucking wild. It's really wild. Because that's the only place I could afford to live, right? But I learned so much there and I learned a lot about Japanese culture and how fucking insane it is and fucked up it is living with homeless people. That's a whole nother podcast that I don't think anybody should want to listen to. But, you know, that proved to to be because i wasn't good enough i went somewhere else and i got some

domain expertise that literally nobody had it gave me an advantage so come back and at that time did you define it in your head as noodles ramen i just wanted ramen okay ramen but i wound up making soba i tom clicky and marco canora helped me got a job at the park hyatt hotel where that lost in translation movie happened so when i watched that all those people in there are real employees that i work with oh really yeah even the swimming instructor i was like i knew all those people um and, and I learned so much. And when I learned what I learned at that hotel was instrumental because one of the restaurants, the New York grill, they were serving food from, uh, contemporary New York

restaurants, but made with Japanese ingredients. I'm like, wow, that's crazy. So that flipped the switch for me a little bit. I was like, wait a second. Like, I don't know exactly how this is going to play out down the road, but it, I'm going to remember this because I thought you have to make everything as a facsimile. If you're going to make Italian food, it's got to be with Italian ingredients. Yeah.

That like shattered it for me. Anyway, I come back and, uh, 2003, I come back to America. And at the time, this is like peak, like beginning of peak fine dining in America. Beautiful time in American dining in New York. You had Thomas Keller. What did you say the peak is? 2003?

2004 to 2015. So at a 10-year period, it was like peak fancy fine dining. But that was the beginning of it. And you had many great restaurants opening up. And I just was trying to get a job at per se uh thomas keller coming back to new york uh after uh many years opening of the french laundry and a lot of my chef that i worked for was going to be the chef there anyway in the meantime the people that i used to work for said you got to work for andrew carmelini cafe blue because they're like that's how it is like you know people trying to make for said you got to work for andrew carmelini cafe blue because they're like that's

how it is like you know people trying to make sure that you develop into a great chef and i get my ass kicked there it's so fucking hard so fucking hard but give people an idea that they haven't worked in this atmosphere what does getting your ass kicked look like to this day it's the hardest job i've ever had and but like what like if you said i got my ass kicked working at the salt mine so and i'd be like oh i can picture that it was it was intentionally run lean so when i say ass kicking it's not physically getting your ass kicked it's the workload that's fucking kicking the ass um but a workload of physical yeah most places today would probably have i would say that that kitchen you were each person was doing the workload with probably three

people in this essence while there was a butcher um that was about the only help you would get a lot of the bigger kitchens you have a kumi maybe, maybe two commis, like an intern. Right. Then what's the word you use? Commis, C-O-M-M-I-S of the French brigade system. So an assistant, then, um, you have a, like, you're running like the meat station, you might have a, uh, uh, entremetier. So someone doing your vegetables inside. So like you're the manager, it's almost like a bank, right?

You're the managing director of your group, right? But all these other people work for you and in a kitchen, it's all top down. So if you're working the saucier station, you're going to have all these other people in a big kitchen doing really high end dining cafe at the time. It was intentionally Spartan. Like there was nothing that worked equipment wise that was done on purpose. Right. Um, it was as bare boned on as an operation staff wise intentional, right.

Because it produced a certain mentality of like, fuck everybody. Fuck you. Fuck this station and fuck everything everything everything by our sheer mental like prowess our technique with everything working against us we're gonna fucking win good and it was that that kind of hardcore it was like i don't i never want to approach anything to like special forces but that's sort of what it felt like you know it was like that kind of fucking hardcore shit i was like jesus is so fucking hardcore um and it's also dumb shit i remember like okay like i got a bundle of uh sugar cane you ever break down sugar cane yeah well i mean just as no i mean not what is any pressure on you i've seen it done like you know like i've

hussed rice too but i mean i was like aussed like a handful of rice all the time. So this menu, and it's awesome, man. And I love AC and Dania. It's just like was a formative period for so many of us. And in that kitchen, you know, Rich Teresi, Mario Carbone opened up the, like Teresi Carbone. So many cooks came over there. Come around to, why are you breaking down sugar cane? So like each station, you have four menus and a special menu. So cooking is so stupid where the better you are, the more work you get too, right?

Which is crazy. So in these four tasting menus, you have a voyage, you have a seasonal, you got a vegetarian, and then you got a classic, right? A classic French menu. And plus you have daily specials. You are responsible for like 10 to 12 dishes potentially with nobody helping you out and you got to feed and you might be you're working lunch service and dinner service on five of those days so you need to prep out for maybe 250 people a day potentially you know 10 courses for 250 people that's a lot of work yeah and a lot of intricate work yeah knife skills and stuff like that and everybody's that way everybody's got this

crazy workload going back to the sugar canes it was called sugar cane shrimp on the voyage menu and i he would come in i would dread about it the next morning because i'm like shit we don't have a bandsaw that would have made it easy i have no tools whatsoever to break down sugar cane you know what i have two cleavers in a mouth not only do i have to break down all the sugar cane which you haven't seen it's like you know eight feet tall and there's like a hundred of them that's how they're getting it in yeah so fucking so stupid huh and you're reducing that to like skewers you break it down and it's got to be a perfect toothpick that can skewer a shrimp and they're buying it like it like some dude cut it out in the narrative yeah it's like an hour's worth of work in one bite you're like fuck no kidding man so like shit like that right and and like that's just one dish and everybody there

had super labor-intensive dishes is the money goodness at this level no i think i got paid eight dollars 25 cents an hour so you're hourly oh yeah and what's the promise nothing no one gets into this business to make money you just want to be have street cred you want to be the fucking baddest best person there yeah anyway and your social life's probably baked into it too in a weird way there's no social life that's what i'm saying it's like just drinking yeah it's just meaning that when you fall into i never worked in the restaurant business but when you fall into this world, that sort of becomes your. It's not that way anymore. Oh, it's not?

No way. That's who you hang with. That's who you date. Thankfully, in one regard, the work-life balance is way better. And it's just the way it was back then. And it's not anymore. But man, we would work. Like the industry's a little friendlier. Oh, it's become way more it was back then. And it's not anymore. But man, we would work. Like the industry's a little friendlier.

Oh, it's become way more professionalized. Yeah. But I don't, there's no begrudging. That's just the way it was. And I'm happy that I was able to like experience that. But man, we would get off work at like, I don't know, break everything down, one o'clock. We would get there maybe six o'clock

so sometimes like you go out just enough and then you'd go back you drink and then you would sleep in the locker room and wake up and just do it again yeah that's not hyperbole like it was a lot back then because no one cared about it it was like the least cool profession there was nothing fabulous about cooking and it was a lifestyle that people chose and i was not good in that kitchen either i was very i struggled it was so hard for me what what made you not good? I wasn't as good as everyone there. As good fast? Good as everything. Good is also mentally

just being organized, never being in the weeds, not making any mistakes. Being efficient with your time. You know, when I can see, it's like a dance, right? Like literally a professional choreographed dance. A ballet almost. When a perfect kitchen is running, everyone's doing their thing.

There's no talking. There's humor. A healthy kitchen, in my opinion, is always someone making another person laugh. Laughter is a huge part of it. But at the same time, it's like you're seeing a good team. It's efficiency. Nobody's moving in a way that you don't have to. It's efficiency movement. It in a way that you don't have to it's efficiency movement it's

dishes coming out perfect everything's tasted and great all these things and for me i just it wasn't wasn't my wasn't my bag and i had a lot of shit happening in my life too right so i was like i gotta fucking unplug i can't do this. So in that interim, I go home, help out at home with my mom. I'm like, you know what? Fuck this. I'm just going to try to, you know, September 11th happened too. That was also a big thing. You were in the city then.

Oh, yeah. That was like, I remember coming out. I was in the basement of Kraft. I mean, even though it was a year and a half. So after spending 11thth like three months later new york was still fucked up for like 18 months 24 months after it but i remember i'll never have leaving like 17th street union square and seeing people covered in dust yeah i was just like what the fuck's happening and so all these things and again i had all these things happen sure it wasn't like for me it was difficult and i just was like i needed something else to do

so i was like fuck it i was extremely depressed and i was like you know what a lot of my friends at the time were going to business school i was like 25 26 and i remember like oh they're getting loans out or they're getting figuring out oh it's probably like 200 grand for two years i remember like oh they're getting loans out or they're getting figuring out oh it's probably like 200 grand for two years i was like i'll figure that out on my own i'm gonna even though i have no idea what i'm gonna do even though i've never even achieved right i've been cooking professionally four and a half years nobody would do anything like that i also knew that if i continued in that path of what it was the traditional way, how people open restaurants was exactly this way. Especially if you worked at a place like Danielle or Cafe Balut,

a wealthy patron would come in many times, get to know the chef and be like, Hey, you know, I want to open up a restaurant in Palm beach. You know anyone? And the chef would be like, yeah, I got a great cook. Here you go. That's how you get your own opportunity. And their motivation is,

is in some respects, social. Exactly. And for a cook, that's how you got a restaurant. That's how you became a chef. There was this, this is a different time and era.

Well, even though it wasn't that long ago. And I remember looking again, I'm a very competitive person, like the field. I'd be like, I think I'm like number 14 here. Honestly, I looking again, I'm a very competitive person, like the field. I'd be like, I think I'm like number 14 here. Honestly,

I was like, it's going to take 14 patrons. And even then, I don't think I'd be like nominated. Right. I was like, there's like 14 people ahead of me talent wise on the ladder. So like,

I gotta just do something else. And that's when I was like, screw it. I'm going to open up a ramen bar, a noodle bar, which didn't exist and i tried to work this is how uh where the state was uh in noodles and ramen in america in 2003 i had to work at bally's casino in new and landing new jersey to work at a noodle bar because there was not one on the eastern seaboard.

Just to see what it's like. But at that time, what year is this again? 2003. Was there, was kind of like the ethnic explosion? No. So was it that, you know, the sort of cultural elevation of, you know, the taco truck, the banh mi joint? It was there. It just wasn't cool.

Okay. So it was- The gatekeepers were still- It was there, not as like, not like the cool kids were all going to- It wasn't cool yet. Food wasn't even cool. The word foodie didn't exist. There was no cell phone. There didn't exist you know there was no

cell phone there was no cell phone there was no smartphone technology and there was no chat rooms no bloggers no blogging that all happened around 2003 2004 breaking out was hard yeah um and it was all about being in the new york times and traditional gatekeeping. Um, and while it was there, think about how hard it would be to learn in your city when there's no internet, you know, it was so hard. So, I mean, I come back and we open up, nobody wanted to work with me. I had to hire, I got my first partner, Kino Baca from monster.com. Who his girlfriend saw because she was in a corporate job and he had just come from Austin, Texas, and he wasn't getting the love from Monster.com, who his girlfriend saw, because she was in a corporate job. And he had just come from Austin, Texas.

And he wasn't getting the love from working. He was trying, he came to New York because he wanted to get the street care, working at the best kitchens too, but they didn't give him any love. So he's like, screw it, like I'll work with you. And that's how it all happened. And we almost went out of business.

I raised $100,000. And we were going out of business so i i felt like at that time every day was like it felt like we're not going to make it to the next day like you're going to burn through your investment not just day like how i was living too so hardcore and hard but there's a i can't remember who wrote this passage, but it's like, Hey, like everything we did was like a one way ticket. We ain't coming back. And that's how we made every decision. And by doing that, we made every decision you're not supposed to do.

And some of those decisions were so counterintuitive that they became mainstream decisions today of how you would operate a restaurant. So a lot of it was trial and error, making mistakes, a lot of luck. We were so lucky and I won't bore you with all the different things that happened along the way. Um, but it was 600 square feet, the size of one car garage. And we, we went off, we, I remember, um, three months in, I didn't even know what sales tax was. I knew nothing.

I remember me like, oh, I got to pay taxes on this? What the fuck? It's none of your business what I make. How do I? You know? I was like, so dumb and such a novice at anything that happened. But, you know, every day was a war. It felt like a challenge.

And I remember being told that we had about two weeks left of cash. Right? And at the time, there was a lot of cancer my family and I was like huh I've seen it happen enough where someone has given some kind of like cancer diagnosis and then they start fucking me like shit like I gotta like do things I gotta like live I'm gonna do anything I can so at that time I was thinking we were still trying to operate in the confines in the structure of a traditional restaurant but when that diagnosis came in that we're going to fucking die we're like fuck it fuck it man let's just go let's do whatever the fuck we're gonna do happened to coincide with spring so we stopped being whatever we thought

an asian noodle bar needed to be. We just started to make good fucking food. And that's how it all happened. Caught lightning in a bottle. We're blessed to have some of the best and brightest work in there. And it just happened, man. And it was a wild time. That's for sure.

What was your first place, Momofuku? Noodle bar. Yeah. 163 First Avenue. 600 square feet upstairs, yeah. All in. I live next door. That was a lot.

I mean, that was a long time ago, but there's just no way you could have predicted that it would have happened, yeah. Wild ride. At that time, you probably didn't do anything just for the fun of it 10 years of my life i felt i honestly would tell myself especially when i i think an important thing that happened i started getting like mental help too but um i would tell myself i work in a coal mine that's how i viewed my job yeah i'm working at a coal mine and that's my job.

Living next door, you probably saw the sun like. Every day. And I did. I never slept because our kitchen was so small and we're speaking, we started to get super busy. I had to cook all the food at night. So from like, I would go back, you know, I'd probably go to bed and not go to bed.

I was at the bars for sure, but I would wake up and cook things at night in the, in the convection oven we had downstairs, um, and get ready. And that happened. God, it's hard for me to like recall all that happened. Cause it was fucking insane. I worked like a crazy person. Uh-huh. Yeah. No, and I remember like nobody, I'm not going to fail because I did not work as hard as I possibly could.

And I remember thinking, if I have to, I remember even before opening it up, if I have to declare bankruptcy, then so fuck, who cares? You know, it doesn't matter. It's a one-way ticket. Everything was like, let's go. Earn the ships. Everything was all in. clear bankruptcy then so fuck who cares you're not you know it doesn't matter it's one way ticket everything was like let's go earn the ships everything was all in let's go and you can do that for for only so long before it catches up with you yeah what do you think of like now when you hear people talk about uh worklife balance and this emerging movement against perfectionism? I think there's a lot of, I think about it a lot. Now I don't live that life and I don't even cook professionally really anymore.

I do mostly media. I sort of needed the, and I don't mean cook professionally really anymore i do mostly media um i sort of needed the and i don't mean this in a terrible way you know this sounds terrible but all the things that happened the pandemic but for me one of the positives was it helped me like really reset um i have two kids moved out to los angeles we were gonna do that anyway but it gave me a lot of time to reflect on um that pursuit of perfection and i think of a lot i think about this a lot particularly with sports um i wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze right we're so dedicated as a culture to at least i was to the pursuit of perfection to being number one and we celebrate that all these self-help books and all these books about achieving greatness our society

is about celebrating these few individuals right that do something extraordinary but nobody ever talks about like you know the proverbial metaphorical mountain peak you know whatever it talks about coming back down and a lot of times i felt like if you get to wherever you're trying to go oftentimes for me it was you're going to celebrate by yourself because maybe nobody wants to celebrate with you yeah you know and i found it to be an extremely lonely journey and i think about that a lot about work-life balance maybe i think we've definitely over corrected over index the other way but there's something to be said about a younger generation like no i don't want that life that sucks i don't blame them why would

you want to work like the way i did working you know on the upper east side 90 hours because the whole country will fall apart i know but there's got to be a better balance. And for me, balance has always been how I think about, and this is, again, this logical thing I learned in college, right? This paradox, right? I believe balance is fully committed to two things simultaneously. It's not about finding an equilibrium 50-50. I think you've got to be committed simultaneously to two things

and understand work-life balance. I'm a big believer in it, but like we have to also work our asses off at the same time, right? Trying to find the split, I don't know. That's a great point, man, about balance being that you're committed to two things all the way, all the time. Just look at a scale. Think about the physics of a scale. Yeah. Not that you're half one, half that.

When I'm trying to sell myself to my wife, I'll point out to her. I'm trying to explain that she actually has it. It's not as bad as it might seem. She's lucky to have you. Yeah, she's lucky to have me. I'll point out. I'll be like, dude, you got to look at, you know, I'm very dedicated to work and imagine the opposite. I'm super dedicated to my family.

Imagine the opposite. That's got to be worth something. Book would tell you got to split that by 50%. You know what I mean? You can't do that. I think that is your balance. Yeah. So, I mean, I've. Look at the bright side. gotta split that by 50 you know what i mean you can't do that i think that is your balance yeah so i mean i've i've just thought about that a lot of different ways that balance

i see in food right i think perfectly i'm a weird fucking dude man i think about things in weird fucking ways uh perfectly salted dish is similar to a lot of things I've learned over the years, particularly from school, but it's not a logical problem, but perfectly salted dish, if you think about it, if you put out 10 cups of water, each varying scales of salt. From none to too much. Somewhere in the middle. What is the middle?

Is it going to be like 10 milligrams and 10 milligrams of salt and water? No, it's going to be what you think when you taste something like. I think it's going to be six, number six. Maybe it's not. Maybe, probably. But the actual moment in your head when you think of balance, it's not, ah, this scratch that's itched. Oh, that's perfect balance. Yeah.

It actually is this living thing in the sense of I taste something salty, and this is what I try to teach cooks. So imagine telling this to a cook who's 18 years old. What the fuck are you talking about? He's like hungover. He's on his peyote. You're going to taste it, and it's going to be, no, that's under-seasoned. And then you think about it, and you're like, no, that's too salty.

And then it oscillates back to, no, I think that's, I and then you think about it you're like no that's too salty and then it oscillates back to no i think that's i could use more salt and then you think about it so far it's like no that's too much salt when it see sauce back and forth back and forth that's fucking proper salt it is taste something it's a simple test and that moment is alive as crazy as it sounds that's a great point and that's what you want that's fucking balance it is both simultaneous that's good man hey well there's one last thing i wanted to ask you about you know talking about balance is uh part of what you know you part of what a little bit of our behind a little this is a little behind the scenes here um i like to interview and have on guests i especially love to interview and have on guests who've you know excelled in their fields or done something really cool.

But what makes them eligible is that the litmus test is they have to participate. In my mind, they have to participate in the fields, you know, the disciplines, hunting, fishing, or else this place would just be a shit show. You know, there'd be no way to control who comes through the doors. So during those years of just hustle and driving yourself, you know, to the mental edge, um, at what, at what point did you, when did you find fishing, like your grown up version of fishing? When did you find fishing and what did it, what does it come to mean?

There was a break. I mean, when I first started fly fishing, what I realized was I liked it because, you know, and I did jujitsu for a while. So I say it's not chess. It was like jujitsu with nature, right? Every situation's different. It's constantly changing.

And no matter how expert you are if you really are thinking about you're like i don't know fucking shit like this is impossible but i'm also an addict and i'm an adrenaline junkie and you know when i first understood i caught my first trout and it was like that fucking big but i did it on my own there was no guide it was like the best feeling in the world and i was like oh i could do this i like this i didn't the world. And I was like, oh, I could do this. I like this. I didn't think it was something I was gonna continue to do.

And I actually, even when I'm in Japan, I got like a through eight rod. I was gonna do it. I never got a chance to do that. And when I started cooking, there's like three or four years- So you didn't fish in Japan. I had a rod ready to go,

but man, I never went because I was in the South, not near the North. Even still, let's be honest, I probably, never went because I was near, I was in the South, not near the North. Even still, let's be honest, I probably would have gone anyway. And it took some time for me to get back to, at the time I was doing a lot more winter sports too. But once I started to get back out to the Rockies to fish, that's what I worked towards. Those those are like my one like 10 days of like i gotta fucking get there if i don't do this i don't know what the fuck's gonna happen i gotta get there i don't even know how i'm gonna how am i gonna get there well you know i can afford it but i gotta do it and that just became something i continue to do on an annual basis yeah sometimes

biannual basis and uh at some point like mike dawes who's at west bank anglers now in jackson you know i would continue to go and made some more money and i would you know have more trips and and such and then i got my brother into it and then i just sort of made the not that i listen i am not someone that ties their own flies i don't actually don't have the dexterity to do it and there's so much more for you need to learn on trout fishing but i got to new zealand and i was like what the fuck is this south island that's the have you been yep it's the best man well i was shit talking new zealand earlier today well you know something? Just earlier today, I was telling someone, I said, when I'm on a plane that long and I get off the plane, I want shit to be way different.

It wasn't different enough. And I'm like, man, these guys are, this is a lot like I'm home. But not for trout fishing though. Yeah, it's the same damn fish. It's not the same thing. It's not. It's like, you mean to tell me that I came this far and there's still rainbows and brown trout? Yes, but it's not the same.

There's no birds of prey. Like I said, I want to see people with bones in their hair, man. I want to see like, you know. Dude, for me, it's totally different. I disagree, man. I think for me, it was totally different. Different, different everything. And they don't follow any of the same patterns of fish. i was like whoa and it's sight casting it's the first time

i did sight casting for real you get sight cast in a spring creek but like fishing to like a eight pound brown trout that's in like six inches of water in the middle and you just had to walk a shit ton to get there yeah one there's one brown shot per kilometer now you're making it seem cool yeah because it is fucking cool listen i i liked it i had a great time did stuff there i'm sure i'll go again but like i said i just felt like when i got off the plane i was a little bit dismayed that they all because you see my angle they spoke my language i was like is this talking english so that was when i was like oh shit you can you can English? Come on, dude. So that was when I was like, oh, shit, man. This is crazy shit. You can hunt for fish. Yeah.

And that's when I was like, okay, Daz got me onto saltwater fishing and did bonefish. And there's great bonefishing in Andros and Seychelles and other places. But, you know, within 10 hours, that's like my wheelhouse for travel. I was like, all right, like we're going to, I need something more. And that became like permit fishing. And travel. I was like, all right, like we're going to, I need something more. And that became like permit fishing.

And listen, I think I'm. Like permit specifically. Yeah. I got permit fever, man. And I think I am, I think I'm a good angler. I will never think I'm, I, when I, I mean, I just went, I caught more permit than anyone on the trip and everyone was a good angler. But I'm not like the pros, man. I'm not even, i suck compared to the

best man so i think i'm pretty average at it and it's not even i've never i've never caught i've never caught a perm i hate i hate it though i don't love it because it's so fucking frustrating it it drives me insane because it's so goddamn hard. And that's why I love it, man. I'm after that pain. Yeah, I would tell you a funny permit story that happened to me recently. We were spearfishing in the Bahamas, and we were in probably 40 feet of water at surface. And here comes a permit, and he goes into a cave. And I was saying to the guy, I was with Cameron Kirkconnell.

We're talking about it. You know, he stuck our heads up out of the water. And I'm like, holy shit. He goes, no, man, that's normal permit shit. For that permit to be on a flat is weird for him. This is what he's normally doing. He goes, your idea that he like is on the flats. He's like on the flats for a minute now and then. They want a deeper water.

Yeah. He's like, that's like what they do your experience with them up there is like not his normal plan you know he'll check that shit out now and then it's funny man when i started to do that and i remember showing people um the reason i got into some like just shooting some guns at animals and stuff because i was with somebody from new york and i showed him a photo of a permit they're like you didn't catch a fucking permit this very successful person and i was like no i did he's like bullshit where's the photo photo doesn't count i was and i got like 30 of them he's like oh fuck and he took me on all these fucking fun

trips oh really the permit fishing has opened my doors to a lot of things yeah uh the one permit i've been on a boat to see landed was even disappointing my brother danny we're in belize huge school of permit come by he hooks one we're jumping up and down hooting hollering high five and he gets it in it's foul hooked in the fin man so he didn't even like no it didn't count it was the most deflating like yeah we were so excited that it would be like oh just it's like it wasn't even the one you were at you know it was like his neighbor got snagged in the fin but it doesn't seem like you love fly fishing though it doesn't seem like that does he like fly fishing i fly fish a lot i don't hear him talk much about fly

fishing i fished i fly fished a lot this summer because we my i camp with my kids um we spent a lot of time in the summer on a drainage where you're not allowed to kill cuts and the the fish the the the the trout the the primary trout that i'm interested in is cutthroats i wouldn't cross the street to catch a rainbow i like that's fun to catch though i like cutthroats love cutthroats and you can't kill cuts where we like to fish cuts so i don't want to hurt them so we just fish them with uh barbless dries and we like to sneak up on them find them it's like you know catching one you don't know about doesn't count we like to identify them observe him name him how clear is this water you're fishing very clear all right and we like to learn like at what cadence does he sort of drop back in his hole because you're in montana and go forward

and then we catch him and then it becomes deeply personal and then you let him go and there's some fish that i even told my boy i banished him from catching that fish anymore i'm like that fish leave that one alone we're gonna harass you know don't catch him the rest of summer and um and i find a great amount of pleasure in that man pleasure i never knew i would find man i was trying to find my first permit for you but i want to see one see god that's a real permit yeah yeah but i got a bunch and i don't know where the fuck i put them all anyway great um yeah i never thought that that would be my thing a permit fisherman the wildest thing robin man and like i was here's the thing like i go i go i'm lucky enough to go trout fishing a bunch this summer. Probably like 14 days on the river.

I go trout fishing to practice my saltwater fishing. Practice your permit fishing. What if the ocean moved really fast? Or baby tarpon. Like, love catching baby tarpon. Because that's basically steamer fishing almost, right? Yeah. So that's the kind of asshole I am. They like this fucking guy you know what is he doing he doesn't even care about catching the trout so so what uh because uh you're an ingredients person you're a food person

um how often do you catch fish and eat it in salt water it's snook you know snapper you know sometimes barracuda but less so because of all the secretarial risk yeah um snook is awesome okay um probably one of my favorite eating fish the the snappers you catch down there when you're catching yeah i mean in the manger i caught a huge snapper this summer and um i have a photo of it i don't know where it is but you'll cook one up oh yeah we grill we split it open butterflied it um cooked it over fire and it was awesome and ate it with some tortillas it was sublime you know great and snook i mean most people don't sort of like a striped bass but that's a amazing eating fish um yeah that's the only time permit i want to eat a permit but that's the livelihood of all those guys down

there so i can't i want you so bad they'll hang you for eating permit you better you'd be better off eating a person i really do look for on the water floating permit that a dolphin is eating because they only eat the head oh yeah a lot of times so i'm always like hoping that we're fine yeah let me know guilt-free permit consumption so that's because i've heard this is like talking about like we're just talking about a recipe on a menu like i've only heard what a permit tastes like yeah yeah it's like because it eats crab and shrimp and clearly i could go eat a fucking pompano or something but like something down there or something i dream about well someday when you send me a photo send me a photo of a headless permit and i'll know

i'll know that it happened all right well david chang man thank you for joining um next time you're in your grocery store i I'm talking to you listeners. Keep your eye out if you're heading out backpack and keep your eye out for Momofuku ramen. If you want to have the lightweight meal. And if you want to go for the real deal, find the restaurants. You can go to shop.momofuku.com and uh i'll try to get you guys a discount code i don't know yeah for sure we'll give you this and then tell people tell how people define how how best to find you and how to find your restaurants and um you can visit us at

momofuku.com and all the media stuff we're doing uh at majordomomedia.com and my uh social media is at david chang all right. Thanks for joining me. I really appreciate the time. Honor, guys. This was fun. Thank you. Thanks. Hey, everyone.

This is still Steve, but I'm not with Dave. Dave Chang, the guest you just listened to, followed up after the show with a kind gift for y'alls. Right now, you can get anything you want from Momofuku at 20% off by using the code MEAT20 at Momofuku.com. Meet 20,

20% off. Get yourself a big old pocket full of ramen noodles. Momofuku.com. Meet 20, 20% off. Shine like silver in the sun. Ride on. Ride on. Ride on Ride on Ride on

Ride on Sweetheart We're done beat this damn horse to death So take your new one and ride on We're done beat this damn horse today. So take your new one and ride on.

Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. OnX Hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians. The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K topo maps, waypoints and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out OnX

if you visit onxmaps.com slash meet.