The Watch - Breaking Down the 2020 Emmys and What They Mean for TV. Plus, Dave Chang on His New Memoir, ‘Eat a Peach.'

Episode Date: September 22, 2020

It was a ‘Schitt’s Creek’ sweep at the Emmys on Sunday. Does that speak to the power of the Netflix bump (8:52)? Plus, the ‘WandaVision’ trailer shows that Disney+ holds the power (28:00), breaking down the latest episode of ‘The Boys’ (37:44), and Andy interviews Dave Chang about his new memoir, ‘Eat a Peach’ (44:43). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Dave Chang Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Heineken. Heineken original lager is made with pure malt and their famous A-Yeast, which makes Heineken an all-season, all-the-time kind of beer. Your boy needed a Heineken after that Eagles game on Sunday. Would I describe myself as an Eagles fan? I think I'm in a codependent relationship with the Eagles. And it was not a satisfying day in our relationship's history on Sunday. But they've given me so much that it's okay. but I did need to crack a hyacanagan after the Eagles lost to the Rams.

Maybe your team won, maybe your team lost. Either way, pick up a pack or have it delivered today and drink responsibly. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line of Shits Creek without a paddle. It's Andy Greenwald.

Nothing like the day after the Emmys in Hollywood. I feel a little flat-footed today, Andy. Do you? Like, yeah, just not the best day to not have watched shit Screek. Yeah, well, a couple things. I think, first of all, I'm just going to say this based on nothing, because unlike previous podcasts where we say we have a great show, and we've actually banked most of it,

we're all flying blind and flat-footed here. We haven't done anything. But I think that between conversation of the Emmys. Yes, and the boys. Yeah, right. And the boys. And an interview that I haven't done yet with the host of my, favorite podcast on the Ringer Network.

The Dave Chang show. No, okay, yeah. The great David Chang, author of his memoir, New Memoir, Edipiece. I'm excited for that talk. I think this is going to be a great one. Yeah, and just a little admin. So today we have Andy's chat with Chang.

Thursday, we'll talk third day and then we'll have my conversation with Catherine Waterston. We recorded that last week, but I thought maybe it would work better on Thursday once people had a chance to see the second episode, which is airing tonight on HBO.

So I agree with all that. I think just think your admin has been stellar. I've been trying to get it done a little more at the top of the show before we dive into deep talk about what car you should get and my chicken. I got to admit, yesterday I spent, I made a choice.

Okay. The kid was pretty much on the couch from 830 to 8.30 last night watching sporting events. I watched soccer, golf, pro football, pro basketball for a very long time. And then I just watched like horror movies with my wife at night. So like I mostly

watched the Emmys like piecemeal. Like little clips and stuff. I feel bad because we are America's premier television podcasts and many people have been saying that. But I literally have watched like 15 minutes of Shits Creek. It is a blind spot for me. I did not anticipate it being the story of the Emmys night. I didn't anticipate it.

having one of the most, like, was this, has anyone ever swept every category like this? I was hoping to do the research on that before podcasting with you, but again, as you said, Chris, we are the premiere. It's not like anybody else does the research. It's, I'm going to say it. No one's ever done that before. Not in my memory. What's the last movie that did this?

Did it English patient it? Like, you know, that just sweeps all the major categories? It swept, but writing, supporting, acting, series, yeah. directing. Okay. So a couple points to yours. Should come as a surprise to no one. We had very different Sundays. Did not spend a moment on my couch. Yesterday was a day for deep kitchen reorg. And then also, long-time listeners of the podcast, or just you, because I don't remember what I say on the mic and what I don't say anymore, may remember that when I left for Albuquerque last summer to make the TV show, I had an office in my home. And when I came back,

there was a kid's playroom. Not an aggressive act at all. Took it in stride, totally normal. Then at some point in the fall, when I was still posting the show, I went out for one of my trademark runs around the neighborhood. I know Chris and others are big fans of when I do sport talk on here. Came back from, you know, a pleasant, slightly taxing seven-miler and no longer out of playroom, but my younger daughter now had her own bedroom.

So this is the sort of way decisions happen in the house. but because that happened relatively quickly, she went to bed every night after, you know, reading Pickles the Firecat or Alexander, the no good, you know, very bad. When you come home and you were trying to explain like proper procedure and norms to your daughter, is she just like Moscow Mitch, baby, this is how we do it.

Wait, which one? The daughter who got her own room? Just jamming it through. You have to understand. Lame duck, baby. Listen, elections have consequences. You elected to go running. You turned you back.

I did. Oh, we laughed for the tears. I don't know if I can't keep talking to the tears. So the big issue was for her, not that she was aware of it, but I think it was going to be a factor long term that while I, you know, we laid her to bed every night and read stories or sang songs and there's a perfectly appropriate picture. of like the alphabet on her wall, there was also a very adult-sized bookshelf groaning with the texts of like Elmore Leonard and James Crumley.

Yeah. And just other. A lot of guys like packing heroin. Just a lot of really important tomes written by dead men about how to behave like monsters. So just day drinking and drug smuggling. So yeah. So that coupled with.

with the really like what I like to call the Russia genre surprise of the earthquake that rocked our world's Friday night. It made me think that not only was this bookshelf toxic to her perspective on the world, but it might actually be fatal. I moved an entire bookshelf in like thousands of books. Okay, many dozens of books yesterday. And let me tell you something. It is corrosive, this belief that you and I and others have where I go through cycles of thinking there's no such thing is too many books until you have to move bookshelves, then there's too many books. So that was my Sunday, finally

made it to the couch. That's because you and I, you and I still are hanging on to this idea that we're going to wind up living in like Howard's End when this is all said and done. Yes, it's beautiful said. And we're just going to have a library of all the books. I literally have said that to my wife before where she's like, what, like you've read some of these crime novels like two and a half times.

They are not great works of literature. what are you doing? In some cases, you have two or three different versions of the same crime novel just for the cool art, what's up? And I'm like, you just never know. We might move into a manner. It could happen.

The idea of either of us wearing smoking jackets, holding those tiny little sniffers of cognac that Anthony Hopkins just like wraps his meaty paw around in the Merchant Ivory film Howard's End, and then perusing our bookshelf with pride, and then casually thumbing down from the shelf, a well-worn copy of Jay Crumley's border snakes. It being like, family, hazah, come around and learn about the time.

Just see like a stately tracking shot comes in on me as I put down my brandy and lift up a mass market paperback with a scantily clad lady on the cover. No, no, the cocaine wasn't for recreational purposes. Ryan's revenge, yeah, right. The cocaine was to dull the pain of his shattered nose. You have to understand. He was trying to survive. in the desert. Okay, so all of this setup, by the way, great job hitting the admin first.

Kaya's nodding right now. All of this setup was to say- Emmys in the first three minutes, so it's okay. Emmys. That when at the time came to sit down to watch the Emmys program that I thought I had recorded and then discovered I had not recorded or that my DirecTV had not functioned appropriately, which is normal. My only recourse was watching it like I was eating egg noodles and ketchup at the end of good fellas like a schmuck, meaning watching the three-hour broadcast of Vec commercials until 11.20 p.m. Pacific time. So not only am I dragging slightly, Chris, I watched all of it. So if you have questions about how it went down, you thought we were just going to hit the high points, let's talk about all

of it. Let's unpack it. I sent you a text and I was like, bad day for both of us not to have watched Schitt's Creek, for two guys not to have watched Schitt's Creek. And you're just to have watched Schitt's Creek. And you He's texting me back, who's the other guy? Yeah. You did some, are you, are you on some sneaky Schitt's Creek? Shit? I, you know, I, I, I don't normally consume any content without telling anyone about it, um, desperately to prove that I'm still relevant.

But actually, I have given Schitt's Creek a go. And I made, I've watched a couple. I mean, I'm, I don't know my shit, but I've seen enough of the first season that I would love to watch more of it. And I could talk with some familiarity with it. Yeah. I haven't not watched it. This is a show that has come to its conclusion. Its final season has already aired on Pop TV. Pop TV a thing. And it's now going to be broadcast on Netflix next month. So the final season, it's been on. The final season. Yeah. But this is a show that I think definitely had a huge Netflix bump in the way that we see with some of the AMC shows of the past where

it had trouble finding its audience, but pop TV, at least according to the people who make Shits Creek primarily Dan Levy, was just like, they just let us go. They let us have it. And when it got to Netflix and people started binging three, four seasons at a time, it really did develop something of a cult audience. It clearly permeated whoever votes on Emmys. Because this is an unbelievable sweep. I mean, now, is it, if you look at each category, it's not that difficult to make the argument for why Schitt's Creek should have won in all these different categories in a vacuum. Nothing was undeserving. The totality of its sweep, like we were joking around earlier with our lack of research, is if not unprecedented, with very little precedent. And so what do you chalk

that up to? Is this like a group of people meeting Emmy voters, home? crushing multiple seasons of Schitt's Creek and just being like, this is all I want to talk about because I know a couple of those people. They don't vote for Emmys, but I do know people who are like, I'm only here to talk about

more from Schitt's Creek. And then it just sweeps past your Michael Douglas's and your Rommies and everything else. I love the idea that the pandemic has turned all of us into Andy Reed, circa 2004,

just crushing tape at 3.m. I know. I know. Okay, I have an answer to your question about Schitts Creek that actually also functions as a segue into my overall commentary about this year's Emmys. Okay. Which is to say, yes, you could go point by point and you could say all the individual ways that the Schitts Creek final season coronation turns into Emmy gold. One of which is, as you said, final season coronation. Award shows love doing that in something's final year.

attention is drawn to it. People think, oh, this is the best work. It's time to celebrate something that's given us a lot of pleasure. Two, Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara are not national treasures, international treasures, and have always deserved many awards and have generally been the type of performers who are loved and celebrated, but not necessarily on a mainstream stage. They don't necessarily get the silverware to show it. Exactly.

Yeah. This type of show also is exactly the chicken pop pie, except directly injected into my veins comfort food that people want from their streaming services. It is deeply funny, quotable, memeable, et cetera, but it also is serialized and goodhearted. And its success is the same reason why Mike Scher comedies do very, very well on Netflix. I mean, the Office and Parks and Rec did very well on NBC too, but speaking about how the industry is going. Sure, sure. All of this makes a lot of sense. But also, ultimately, I think it's victory, has something to do with the fact that this may be the most comprehensive and honest Emmys in history, precisely because I think people watched the shows.

And I think they watched the shows because they're home. Yeah. And they watched the shows. and there wasn't as much competition and they were able to focus and they had things at their disposal. And while there was an FYC campaign for many of these things,

I don't know that they were as flesh pressy as usual. You know, like it was... That's right too. There were virtual events, but there wasn't as many come down to Netflix, hang out at this huge warehouse space

where you're just going to get canopays coming out of your ears and like, and spend time with these different actors, showrunners, what have you. Maybe if you get a selfie with moderator, see Ryan, gripping Estella by the bar. You never know.

Unavail this FYC, honestly. Yeah, you took yourself out of contention. Yeah, I was just like... So the thing that struck me, I mean, we could continue to talk specifically about Schitt's Creek for a moment, but let's tease out what you're saying here about the honesty of the awards.

In general, I watch the show, and I do want to make sure we circle back to talk about the viability of this broadcast as a show, because that's always fun to talk about as well. And the, and the, um, there's quite, there's a lot of variance in how people received or appreciated or enjoyed it, the broadcast last night. But I looked through the winners, as I alluded to, I watched them all.

And can I be honest with you? Mm-hmm. No notes. No notes. Me neither. There are, you know, would it have been cool if Darcy Cardin won an Emmy? Yeah. That would have been cool.

She deserves one. Would it have been nice to see a good place recognized by more than a nomination? Do I think, you know, speaking of things I don't talk about much in the podcast, do I think what we do in the shadows might really be the best comedy on TV? Yeah, probably. Yep. Almost at the second season, it's fucking incredible. Everybody should watch it. But am I mad that it didn't win?

No, I'm not mad. Same thing to basically all the acting awards. I think the Emmys got it right to a degree that is unprecedented in award shows since I've been paid to have an opinion about award shows. They got it right to the extent that it's hard to get mad about anything. There's nothing to get mad about. I would have liked to see Trevor Noah break through, and I would like to see Top Chef win for the second time in 10 years. But do I think RuPaul doesn't deserve an award for the show that is so meaningful to so many people and they adore it?

Yeah, give it to RuPaul. That's great. Let me ask you this then. Is an award show good if there's not disappointments? Well, it's an interesting question to ask. and I think the answer kind of is impossible to give because this wasn't a normal award show. I'm not sure. Did the feeling good,

did the good feeling that came from seeing deserving winners win, was that amplified then by seeing their homes, their families, their spouses, or kids, or loved ones celebrating with them, would it have been less satisfying for a parade of people who we think are good getting up on stage? it's almost impossible to say. There was something that just naturally, to me anyway,

I know some people didn't like the show, but I thought the whole thing was pretty charming and pleasant. And so there was nothing in it in the entire evening that made me feel particularly snarky anyway. I wasn't predisposed to be like, this is running too long or this is indulgent or whatever. And from the parts of the, you know, the Kimmel-based banter and the acceptance speeches that I watched,

which was not complete, but was a fair amount, I'd say that they had an incredibly difficult job to go online. television on the Sunday after it's just an incredibly tough spot like I think people are not really here for celebrity narcissism and a lot of uh I thought that the the political statements that were made were made directly and were made in with sincere passion but something about the fact that they were happening in these small spaces rather than in a large auditorium after going through the entire red carpet process and everything else it just felt a little bit more like to the point. And I think that was welcome. Yeah, I agree. I mean, given the scenario that we're living in. Being in being at home, being in, you know, like Anna Winger and the unorthodox team who I was so thrilled to see Marie Schrader win, an Emmy for directing unorthodox. But like, it was like three in the morning for them. Yeah. And they were sitting there in their homes. And so just the reality of where everyone had to be and how they were denied the simple pleasure of celebrating with their peers or crew.

that's political. There's a reason why that is. So it was, it didn't need to, you didn't need to make a bigger deal out of it. And in terms of the broadcast, I mean, I think we talked about it when he hosts the Oscars. I think Kimmel's amazing at this. And I think he's a very good sport. And some of the bits worked. I thought Letterman was great. I thought Randall Park with the alpaca was actually legitimately funny. But the other thing that I was struck by was the Emmys did, tried really hard to, rise to the moment and represent not just the television that we have, but the television that we as a society would like to celebrate. And so there was a large premium placed on inclusion and diversity all to the good. What was remarkable then is that if those segments were programmed almost as aspirational or as a hedge, the awards kind of lived up to the promise in a way that was not cynical, in a way that was not overly determined or planned.

And that was, in and of itself, was pretty thrilling. If you look at, what was the run of actress winners, where it was Regina King, Uzu, Aduba, and Zendaya, back to back to back, three brilliant performers of color winning the lead actress awards in their respective categories, that's something to be proud of. And it also has the benefit of being accurate and true. Those probably were the best performances in those categories. I mean, you could quibble. There were a lot of great performances, but pretty amazing. And I thought that that made me feel

hopeful about the industry and about the entertainment, this segment of the entertainment world at large. Yeah. I mean, I think that my issue with the Emmys has always been one of the calendar for the most part. The two main things I've always had a problem with are, A, like the calendar doesn't make much sense to me, and B, you can just feel certain victories are the consequence of pressure applied from within the industry. So hence, you just get awards where it's like, nobody's watched the show or nobody cares about this show. And I don't even know if the person winning the award even cares about this show. It's largely a, you know, Kaminsky method type conversation.

I was going to say, name names you, coward. No, no disrespect. It's just like, that's what I'm saying. And so to just watch this Hugh pretty close to, I wouldn't not even say critical opinion. I would say of the people that I talked to in my life who watch television, they watch that they love succession, succession. They loved Jeremy Strong on succession. Like these kinds of things just kind of like really.

made sense. So I guess kudos to the Emmys for just kind of getting it right under the weirdest possible circumstances. Yeah. And then when things diverge, they diverged in a way that felt I mean, you're not going to, even people who gave up on Ozark at a certain point,

people who may co-host this podcast with you about Ozark Fanatic. I love Julia Garner. You know, I think she's one of our great young actors. And I'm not mad that she won. I think it's terrific that she won. And I think that also. She's awesome on this show. I mean, she's just, she's truly the soul of this show.

And Ozark does represent, I don't mean, I don't mean this to sound like high-minded or whatever. Like, Ozark represents a type of TV that is extremely popular and extremely well done. People really watch it, you know. So it's good when popular things are rewarded also. I mean, I guess we could go, we could go block by block. I mean, we've said it before the Dan Levy party for Schitt's Creek was really wild. The only thing that it made me one. and this is the only thing that I'll make it all was the way we talk about nepotism in this industry is a little odd, only because he's really talented and great and did a great job with the show.

But when he's up there being like, ha, ha, I dropped out of school. And then my dad gave me a TV show and let me run it, even though I had no experience. I'm like, people have burned Lena Dunham at the stake for less. You know what I mean? Yeah. It made me question who gets hit with that club and who doesn't. Oh, yeah, sure. Sure. So, but I don't mean to say that to take anything away from him because he made a great show. Yeah. No, I mean, I don't really have a ton more to say about the Emmys. I was going to ask you a little bit about Wanda Vision because they did drop an ad for it during this production. But if you have any other Emmys notes, we can hit them.

Yeah, I just want to do the other two sections, just because, like, Watchman cleaning up was, you know, I think everybody would have predicted that. It led to everybody in nominations. It felt like a gimmie. I think I had made a, I think if I remember correctly when the nominations came out, I made a little bit of a shot for Mandalorian. But yeah, it makes sense. I mean, Succession is the show

is a, it did not, not dissimilar from Schitt's Creek is a show that I think had a slow burn in the first season reached a fever pitch in between one and two and then became one of the closest things we have to a water cooler show, ratings

aside, I know that seems stupid, where it's like, while it's on for the 10 weeks, it's on, it's the only thing people want to talk about. Absolutely. And I think that I'll shout him out again. Dan Levy tweeted something today about, it's just a gentle reminder that TV shows need time to grow and become the shows that

they're going to be. And that Schitt's Creek was on no one's radar after the first season and now it's the toast of the town. One of the nice things about the Emmys, unlike the Oscars, is you get a second go at it or a third go at it. Right. And so you get the feeling that, and it doesn't always work out this way, of course, because Steve Carrell never won an Emmy.

but for the office. But what we do in the shadows getting nominated gives me hope that in a couple of years it will be the one being celebrated, for example. You get another chance to do it. And so Succession,

I think when we were talking about the Emmys last year said that feels like the show the Emmys want to reward that show, but it wasn't there yet in the cultural consciousness. Now it is totally deserve thrilling, a clear, I mean, it should win that category.

Right. The Watchman thing, I just want to return to for one second, to say that it feels like a done deal because it racked up so many nominations and it was such a triumph almost a year ago. And then it predicted the dystopia we live in. I just don't want to short shrift it because I think that that show, even the further we get from, it feels more and more like a miracle because the degree of difficulty is just unspeakably high. And the way that Damon and his collaborators executed it and with the spirit,

of not just spirit of inclusivity, but the spirit of recklessness almost with which they, recklessness sounds like it wasn't done intelligently. It's not even the right word, but there's a lot of spirit in that show and playfulness and what the fuckness, you know, and it came together. And just to think about it when former watch guest, yeah, yeah, Abdu Mateen won, which is a great moment, well deserved. And just the way that he framed the show. You could frame it so many different ways. And comic book fans might like it for one reason. And Regina King fans might like it for another. And he said, this is a story about a God returning to earth to basically to worship a black woman in the body of a black man. And like, there's so much more going on here, you know.

And even on another level that I was thinking about, the like the Dr. Manhattan character, as created by Alan Moore, is Jewish. And to have this story taken over by Damon Lindeloff, Jewish man and then steering it forward, there's something kind of moving and exciting about it. And it's a one-season thing. Everyone's going to move on and do great work. It's pretty amazing. And I think it would be worth a revisit at some point because of all the things that are like live wires forming one brilliant squirming space squid of achievement. I think that when we take a step back in a couple of years, we'll probably look at Watchmen as a little bit of a turning point for the way these kinds of stories are executed on TV.

because I think we're only going to get more of them. The demand for any kind of comic book IP is not going to go away anytime soon. But it's kind of like that time in the late 90s when, you know, action movies were the corner of the realm. And so you would get Steve Buscemi and Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich in these, you know, in these Michael Bay-esque movies. Now it's like the same thing for comic movies where I think everybody is just kind of to the conclusion that this is, if you want to work, this is the kind of stuff you have to do.

If you want to tell the stories you want to tell, you have to figure out a way for them to fit into this world. And given the success of Watchmen, given the success of the boys, which I know not necessarily aren't, it's not like one is happening after another. There's a lot of contemporaneous stuff. And what I've seen of Utopia and I, you know, other things that we know are coming down the line, I think that we might be entering a kind of a golden age where we've figured out a way to do these kinds of shows really well. Whether it's talking necessarily about the social issues that Watchmen's talking about and the issues of race relations that Watchmen's talking about,

or whether it's something as odd as what Wanda Vision looks like, or just something that's as well done as what Boys is, you know, I think that they've got a handle on it now. And it's kind of cool to see, especially if that's the thing everybody wants to watch, that's the thing everyone wants to talk about. Thank God these shows are actually good. And before we move on to Wanda Vision, speaking of Dr. Manhattan, shouts to watch legend Billy Crudup.

Never been on our show. Wish he would be soon. Did you ever get to watch more of Morning Show? Is there a super cut where I could just watch him? I'm going to try and find one for you because Crutup on Morning Show is, I can't even do it justice to describe it. I love him so much as an actor. I loved him in the pilot.

New York Theater Adderall coursing through the veins of that show and just doing all sorts of stuff. There was a tweet today that said, my love for Billy Crudov's performance in the morning show, I'm paraphrasing, has only grown since I realized that the show still works if his character is a ghost. Yes, it's true. It's true. I mean, incredible.

So glad about that. Okay, so let's talk, this isn't the Super Bowl, but in some ways it is for TV. We can talk commercials. Wanda Vision. I don't think this is just me missing the distinct... site of Atlanta or green screen. I don't think I'm just missing new content when I say,

does this look good? Yeah, yeah. If this is the way they want to do it, if Disney is going to be like, if you're going to do a plush show, we'll let you take it to the outer banks. That's pretty cool, man. So this show seems to be happening

in some sort of, what, dream realm where Vision and Wanda are stuck in a TV sitcom? Yes. So basically, Wanda, we know, has reality warping powers. So has something happened that has caused her to seek solace in a completely made-up world where they are either in like a leave-it-to-beaver-style 50 sitcom or it looked like they got into the 70s at some point with the backdrop. But then it's also the MCU. Unclear. The great Matt Jackman directed it, who was nominated last night for his work on. on the Great. The cast is really wild and cool. Obviously, it's Elizabeth Olson and Paul Bennett. This kind of speaks to the Armageddon, the Rock, Con Air thing that I was just talking about.

Because it's not just those two. It's also Catherine Hahn as they, quote, nosy neighbor. It's Fred Melamid and Deborah Joe Rupp as, I guess, other neighbors in this weird suburbia. Fred Melamid is in the MCU? Great. Does that make a serious man Canon? I hope so.

but then also if you read about it, and I don't really want to read much about it, but a bunch of cool hangers on from the movies are in this also, including the aforementioned Randall Park, playing the agent that he plays in Ant Man. Tiona Paris is in it, and she is the grown-up version of the girl in Captain Marvel,

who presumably is being set up to become a superhero that for a while was actually known as Captain Marvel and is now known as something else. You don't care about this. Doesn't matter. I care about Tiona Paris, though. Cat Dennings back from Thor the Dark World. So her character is up in this piece? Yes.

Wow. So I gotta go back. So like the funniest joke that Feigey has played is how we all have to go back and watch the second Thor movie. Apparently. That's a tough hang. That one's a tough hang. But apparently it has like all these like plot lines that are going to come up again in the new Thor movie. Remember an end game where they were like, we're going back in time?

Where are we going? The dark world. We need one more run at that apple. But yeah. Look, I think I said before when they announced the show that probably the best Marvel comic I've read in a decade is Tom King's miniseries vision. Yeah, you were saying that. You were saying that because I don't really get a shit about vision, man. Like, I never really...

But this isn't that. Like, that is a story where it is about vision going to suburbia, but he creates a wife and children who are also synthoids like him and tries to live a normal life, not with Scarlet Witch. I cannot recommend that comic book enough. Everybody should check it out. You don't need to read other stuff to read it. It's just you just get it. You'll love it. But it seems really weird and cool.

And I never thought I would say that. Yeah. So one of the thing, of all of the, hey, I know you're watching TV and you're using your TV to watch an award show, giving awards to people on TV. But let us introduce you to our TV service that you might like to pay for commercials because they all had one. And they all seem to have been farmed out to the same company who like had a cherry pick two years. worth of content to come up with some cool lines. Which service made their case

the best, do you think? So HBO Max was there, of course, Netflix is there. Amazon, I mean, all of them. Peacock was there. I can go first and say FX on Hulu

does a really good job selling itself. You're buying all the black narcissists stock? Hulu itself did a good job on itself. Peacock's weird Peacock like uses scenes from the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with Johnny Depp to be like

come check us out right it's kind of anarchic also a little bit of a tough weekend for Peacock because they are I don't know if you know this but they are with the Premier League they're putting like pretty big games only on Peacock and people are like are you fucking kidding me and then also there was like all this stuff with the Peacock app on Roku with the US Open and but it's on I mean, that's the big thing. It got on Roku this weekend. Yes. It had not been. That's pretty big. I think it just did, actually. It may have missed the U.S. Open.

So the one thing that I have to say, though, that made no sense to me was there's an HBO Max ad. And I'm sorry to keep hammering on them a little bit. But it's a weird, weird, weird tightrope there dancing. Because the ad begins being like, yo, we've got Lovecraft Country. We've got insecure. We've got the third day is in the commercial. And then they're like, also there's a gardening competition show. Yeah, it's weird. It's weird to have those things bunched up against each other.

And there's un-pregnant or something. And they're doing this thing where the first few shows I mentioned are HBO originals. And these other ones are Max originals. I'm not buying it. I'm not buying it. Like you can't do that dance forever. you can't say we have two distinct brands and we've jammed them into one product

and you get the best of both when one is something we know and one is something you're just telling us about. I don't think it's gonna work. I didn't get a change. I saw the Wanda Vision trailer. I didn't see a Disney pluse ad. But for me right now,

it's pluice season. Because between Wanda Vision, Mandalorian, and I don't know if you've seen the trailer for right stuff. I was about to bring that up. That looks fucking great. Like,

I know I said I wasn't leaving this planet, but technically they stand, they stay within, if you could still see Earth, I think you're never setting foot on this planet again. I think that was probably, I think you'd probably like that one back. Yeah. Because I would, I would.

What did you think of the right sub-trailer? I just have a question about it because what is the motivating factor here? Was it that the movie was too much of a movie or it was too short to get the full story or that the movie was too much of almost 40 years old. And so everything has to be remade.

I guess I'm just, it's just sort of odd to me because the idea... I mean, the movie is very well regarded. It is very good. By some, for some people, and I count myself one of them, I would, I would say that you wouldn't want to mess

with that movie too much. That's what I'm saying. If I was just, like, doing it, I would be like, oh, it's not like there's like a hot new take on the right stuff that Phil Kaufman didn't have. I do...

think this will probably be more granular. And it doesn't look like there's a ton of Yeager stuff in this. And there's a Chuck Yeager plays a major part and write stuff. It's the Sam Shepard part. But so far, at least in the trailers and stuff, I haven't seen much of the test pilot aspect, which is such a huge part of the Wolf book and also the Kaufman movie. And was a major thing that was like when William Goldman was working on that, if you read Adventures in the screen trade, he talks about like we've got to have, if I remember this correctly, it's like you've got to have the Yeager section. You know what I mean?

Just like any good night out at a bar in New York City. Yeah, you got to have the Yeager section. This new version, I'm not sure what else it's bringing to the table. It does look good. It's Nat Geo, we should say, and so it's going to be, so it's part of the Disney Plus suite. It does have 100% more Patrick Fisler. Yes.

Which is good as far as I'm concerned. Great actor seems like a really good guy. Yeah. And Patrick Adams. There's just not enough Patrick's in the Philip Kaufman version of right stuff. So they have to remake. I think that's clear. But it is interesting.

Like, I guess I'm curious what the audience is, because Apple has the show for all mankind. It is obviously doing an alt-history version of the space race. But it is still playing some of those same chords on the nostalgia piano. So I have a take on this. I have a theory. Okay. Disney pluse, obviously, a family deal. Like, if you're on Dattington Island, you want to have this service for your kids.

they are directly appealing to those who Daddington Island was named after. I mean, this is when Daddington just gets those precious few hours alone at the end of the night and just wants to soar, baby. Just wants to go zero gravity and just float above it all. And I got to say,

this 1960s American space program has proven to be a very durable mythology for America's dads. I'm super into this vision that you're presenting of American male life. Yeah. Where it's like the episode of Mad Men

when Don Draper bails on his kid's birthday and just goes on a bender and then comes back at the end of this missing day with a dog and like all is forgiven except in this version, the dog is a tattered DVD of Apollo 13. That's what it's like. Fascinating stuff.

I'll be curious to say. see. You know, there's a lot, well, there is not a lot coming down the pipe, but there are a couple things that are keeping an eye on for the next few months. You want to do Boys today or you want to save it for Thursday? Yeah, let's just talk quickly about Boys. We can be fresh for next week, episode 205. Yeah, so another very solid episode. Boys does have, I think, a little bit of a mid-season, you know, go to the bullpen, see if guys are getting warm yet for the last few episodes. So I think that there is a little bit of a, you know, we talk to Ayakash, would you want them to have dropped the hammer yet and really pushed her character to limits by now? Well, I think we all know where

this is going. At least you can kind of see a little bit. She is still, there's still a lot of like, well, what if I tell everybody you did this? Well, what if I tell everybody that you did that? There's a little bit of like kind of backstage whispering going on. And I'm kind of like, let's get the attention We are wire. I mean, I think that our wiring, not just us, but I think TV viewers, our wiring has changed or been changed for us so radically over the last few years that watching the boys work or watching it kind of slow cook feels odd. Obviously, the show is built for binging and yet they are laying it out week to week, which I appreciate. I also, though, find myself being like, I guess so used to event television or weird aesthetic. journeys in the midst of a season where this is the bottle episode where Saul is going to be in the desert and this is going to happen, that watching the boys just continually just go to the plate and have solid at bats feels strange. Even though the groundwork that these solid at bats lays is potentially result in a much

bigger reward. So, okay, so at the end of last episode, Billy Butchers in a dark place. and everyone else is worried about him. So how are we going to crash them back together and how are we going to fix these relationships? I'll tell you one thing. I haven't read the comic book, but I promise you,

Garth Ennis was not like, let's take an episode to make sure everyone understands why Billy and Huey care about each other. Sure. That is not foundational texts to what the story is. Right. And yet, it kind of works. And it works to the point where you're like,

the fact that he has like a cockney aunt who's also a drug dealer for no established reason who doesn't mind when her house is napalm bombed. like, okay, we're watching these very, it's like watching a, it's like watching an old, kitchen sink television drama, but being performed on the Mandalorian's

hyper modern space age set. Like there's something, its heart is so old fashioned, even though it's wearing these new fangled clothing. It feels a lot like a show that's built for the long haul. It does not feel like a show that has evacuated the white the whiteboard in the writer's room already you know that there is a pace to the way that they're rolling things out there there's a pace to the way they want to do their seasons there's a pace to the way that they want to set things up over the course of several seasons that doesn't feel like a lot of tv feels

which is you know maybe we'll get to go do another season but we'll worry about future us can worry about that you know this feels way more like we know we're going to be here for five years also eight episodes. So we're way past the halfway point in the season. And what's happened so far? Well, a lot, but also not very much. That's what I'm saying. It's like we are still basically, I've really been enjoying this season, but we're still basically talking about like Stormfront's meme army and whether or not homelander's approval ratings are high or low. But as you said, they're, I think, cannily aware of what they're working with and working on. Yeah. And you have a villain in Homelander,

who is the most powerful person on the planet except maybe Stormfront, as we've now learned. You kind of can't, you can't walk too close to the edge of that because you can't walk it back, right? Like, if you have a confrontation, like in this episode, how many times can you have butcher standing in the same room

as a superhero who should kill him within 10 seconds and have everybody survive and get away with it? You know what I mean? So they have to be very judicious with how they use those moments. And they can't have that many. conversations. That's right. That's a really good point.

But that said, the moment where Homelander massacred everyone in Vaught Plaza and then we're in his head, either that was a really sneaky trick by the show or bravo to the show because I gasped because I thought they were going to do it. They might. I actually thought they were going to do it. And I thought that was going to be the major turning point of this season.

And as you said, they might, they could. That's within the realm of possibility for the show. And them understanding their power levels, I think is kind of interesting going forward, considering so much of the show is about power imbalance. Last thing about it, I just want to call out a moment that made me happier than, well, nothing makes me happy anymore because... Is it going to be M.M.'s T-shirt? No, I loved his T-shirts. His Dr. J. T-shirt? Is better.

Did you notice when Stormfront was having one of her catty confront? confrontations with someone. I don't remember if it was the scene with A-Train. I think it was the scene with A-Train. When she's drinking her smoothie? Yes, her smoothie. Do you see what Starbucks had written on the side of her smoothie cup? No. It said storefront. More of that, please. That is so funny. That was also right after Home Leonard had commented on the Joss rewrite that the seven movie had gotten. See, I just feel like they're starting to get a little more cockier with that stuff. And I think that the show is better for it. Okay, well, we can wrap it up right there.

Andy's got his conversation with Dave Chan coming up next. Please, if you haven't already, subscribe to Dave's podcast on the Rer Podcast Network. And we'll be back on Thursday with a conversation about third day. I'm sure some other stuff and my interview with Catherine Waterson. Until then, Greenwald? Let's get into it. Yeah.

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by Heineken. Heineken would like to remind you that it is time for seasonal beers again. That's right. If you thought a cold, crisp summer Heineken was something just wait until you taste the Heineken Fall lineup, or autumn, depending on your zip code. Is it a new product? Many people are asking, no. Just the same great tasting lager that's perfect for any season.

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It was great to have an autumn Heineken rather than a summer Heineken. Heineken original logger is made with pure malt and their famous A-East, which makes Heineken an all-season all-the-time kind of beer. So pick up a pack or get it delivered, whatever your style, and drink responsibly. I am so excited to be joined on the watch

at long last by a great chef, a restaurateur, TV personality, host of my favorite podcast on The Ringer Podcast Network, the Dave Chang Show. He's now also a memoirist. I'm holding up his book as if this is a TV. TV talk show, Eat a Peach. It's Dave Chang. Welcome to the watch, Dave. You are too kind. Thank you, Andy. It's a real pleasure to be here. You know I'm a fan because you know when you were so generous,

you had me on your podcast. All I wanted to do is ask you questions. So now finally, I get revenge. You get revenge, right? That was a great podcast when you came on the show. So glad that we can do this. It was really great for me, too, one of the best conversations I had. And also now having talked to you about my experience trying to be creative and, you know, the experience that you have making something and how that experience is almost private. How do you communicate it to everyone else? Now I've read your memoir. I feel like there's a lot more, there's a lot more meat on this bone. Yeah. So I want to, obviously, there's a lot to talk about. I do want to touch on your TV shows, too, since that might be a particular interest to watch listeners. That might be how they know you

first and foremost. But I have to start with this. So a lot of the memoir is about your own struggles with mental health and you're very forthright and honest in a way that I think is really going to help people. You're talking about issues in an industry that famously doesn't talk about stuff much, I think. But people do know you from a TV shows. They know you from your restaurant. So I kind of wanted to start with this. There's not very much food in this book. No, absolutely. I don't think we go into really any food. I mean, there's some casual conversations. There's me getting angry about food, but it's not about cooking at all, really. It's about everything else but cooking.

And it's funny, having read every comment online because it's like restaurants, it's some of the most negative comments are, there was no cooking in this. It's a terrible chef memoir. And I'm like, okay, I'm okay with that. That I'm okay. It is amazing because I think that

even in the most like hard-bitten books by cooks, not cookbooks, there's always kind of like the Proustian moment, right? Like even the only of the time I had a cook on the show to talk to was Eric Rappare for his memoir, which is a really good read. And most of the book is him just getting absolutely hammered and roasted in like the toughest restaurants in France. But there's still that chapter at the beginning where he talks about like the chocolate bar and the baguette that his mother would make him after school.

And it's like that's when he knew that food was comfort and food was possibility. we don't see that here at all. No, I mean, that's why he's a much better chef than myself, because maybe I didn't have that Proustia moment. But that memoir is great if you want to get a sense of the hardcoreness of the French brigade system, and he worked under Joel Robichon. And there is a lot of descriptions of food. And we have a little bit, but I didn't get into cooking because of some,

movie-like romantic thing that changed my idea of what I was going to do. The irony is I got into cooking, like many people in America got into cooking in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s because they had nothing else to do. They couldn't do anything else. But let's talk about that, because I think that one of the things that emerges in the book is, and it's actually something that if you've been paying attention to you, and I thought I was, you know, since noodle bar opened, 16 years ago. I thought I was paying attention. I was wrong. You've been telling people from the beginning, I am not a great chef. I'm trying to show you the way that I think about things. I'm trying to show you a way that motivates me to get better either as a person or as restaurants or as an industry.

No one wants to hear that. Everybody's like, great chef, great chef, David Chang, innovator. You've been trying to tell us that this wasn't always about the magic plate of food your whole career. Yeah, from day one. I've told people and they're like, oh, no, it's false modesty. I was like, no, no, no, this isn't an neurosis. This is what I believe. And do I, am I a really good cook? I've learned to become a good one. But I've seen a lot of great cooks and I'm not as naturally gifted as they are. So I've had to find different ways and avenues so I can remain competitive or win. And I think it's been a blessing that I, I'm not, when I say naturally gifted, I'm good. I'm just not air repair. Right. And. And,

And because of that struggle, I still want to be as better or better than Eric or pair. I just have to find, again, totally different ways of thinking about it. And that's been encouraging to say the least because when I started cooking, there was only one way. There was only one way you're going to be successful. There was only one way to get good reviews. There was one way to do everything. And I guess I can take some pride in knowing that whatever has happened, both good and bad in my career. I think it has, I don't want to use the word democratize, but it's certainly made it clear to younger cooks entering this business.

There's more than one way to get to that. I was really struck by, there's an anecdote in the book about how when you found your way into restaurant kitchens, what sort of electrified your brain was that there was a tax. physical way to mark improvement, right? If you were naturally gifted or however you want to term it, you could buy in bulk carrots and potatoes and a knife and spend all day until you were better, right? And there's something kind of, it's just something pretty raw as I don't mean to make a pun, but it's pretty raw. Yeah, that was, that's exactly it. We've tend to glorify cooking in a way that makes it seem that we're creating rockets for SpaceX. We're not. It's a little bit of science,

a little bit of entrepreneurship, it's a little bit of craft, it's a little bit of everything. That's what makes, I think, cooking so beautiful and also stupid at times. But what I admired most early on and got me sort of hooked into cooking was I can get better at this, even though I'm terrible at this. The only thing that is needed is I can't get fired. So I need a place where I can work. But if I just repeat the task, because that's what people don't understand cooking is. It's repetition. It's only repetition. You do this one thing and do it over and over and over and over again. So it's very much Mr. Miyagi, you know, karate kit, do it over and over and you will get better and you will not understand how things connect later on. And that certainly was the case for me. So,

I, I, I, uh, compensated for my lack of natural talent with just stupid, stupidity, grit and stubbornness. And that pays off in cooking. And yet it's still so deeply misunderstood now as it was then. And I went back and I was reading some articles that I, you know, voraciously devoured at the time. And there's the Rob's profile view when Sombar was open for New York Magazine. And there's this paragraph here that I really read differently in, you know, when I compared it to the way you write about it in your book. So I'm going to quote here, by then, Chang had his eureka moment at Wagamama, eaten at hundreds of ramen bars, trained under New York's most acclaimed chefs.

And though he might not have realized it, he was developing his own culinary personality. So suddenly, this is, then now, however many years later, this is 13 years after that article, I read your memoir. And all those decisions, I don't think there was a eureka moment where you were like, aha, I must open, I must change dining in America by opening a noodle bar. It was much more about your mental state at the time. And a place where you internally were and what you needed to do to survive. And that story doesn't sell.

That story isn't communicated in magazines. It had to be this romantic night's journey, right? In some ways, yeah, exactly that, Andy. And, you know, if you sort of parse out that article and that Wagamama moment, And it's almost trying to make it seem like a Proustian moment. And what happened was, and I think what was different for me versus maybe some of my peers was I had an idea and it wasn't necessarily me being a great chef. It was some kind of, it wasn't ineffable, but it was a feeling like, wait, everybody else in the world eats really well. In America, everyone that eats well is rich and snobbish.

And if you told someone you're a foodie, that word didn't even mean anything. back then. It was just elitism. And that was, if there was a eureka moment, it wasn't that I, I have to like make this happen. It was, oh, I have, I see this. This is a void. And it gives me meaning to explore if it's true. Yeah. It wasn't like, I have to make this happen. I had no idea. and tie that in with my sort of mental state back then, I needed something that was beyond me that was so impossible and immovable in terms of an idea that I could just work at it.

But I had no idea if it was true. It was almost like an experiment. Less about this beautiful, divine idea that a lot of artists say they have. But it also was really candid. and wise because I was thinking back to that time and planning where I was going to eat dinner was not part of my life. Even as someone who I thought I had good opinions about things, I thought I liked things. But I actually had this conversation with Chris a couple weeks ago. Like how different

what our lives have been, circa when you open noodle bar, 2003, 2004? If instead of, if when we got out of this F-trained subway stop from Brooklyn at First Avenue, if I just turned left and gone to prune and had a martini, instead of drinking my dinner at high fire library, instead. And the idea that young people with a little bit of income from their jobs or whatever would spend it on food or treating themselves well, I don't think it's possible for people who are that age now to realize how that wasn't a thing in this country. It's very hard to explain to anyone younger what it was like before because it's so commonplace. Like how could it be any different? And there's no record of that zeitgeist moment. You can't recreate that in movies.

You can't really recreate that in books because it's a feminine. Food is there's nothing to go back to. It's not like music or 70s bell bottoms. You can look at photos of food, but some of that's still contemporary. So no one has any idea why food wasn't meaningful, you know, 20 plus years ago. And you're right. It's a strange phenomenon. But I'd argue that one of the reasons why is not necessarily food was important or had to be

discovered, that's just the way like cultural evolution was happening. Like if you could mind fashion and have, you know, the Bravo show and you could have a show about, you know, duck dynasty and duck calling shit, right? Right. I think we were at the like the precipice that anything and everything could be seen as interesting. It just needed a platform. So it wasn't that cooking was cool. It just was the next thing that had yet to be discovered. And I guess to some degree you were in the right neighborhood for it, which wasn't because you could have, that's where you could afford to open. Yeah, I was, I was just stupid lucky. That was really, yeah. That is a recurring theme in the book as well. I'll push back on that to some degree. But the general theme that I was sort of touching on

about like needing that Proustian moment, this need to romanticize things in, in the food world in particular, wherever it may come from. I wonder if you think about that now. I wonder if you think about that now as being kind of pernicious or even having a negative effect. Because I think that, you know, one of the words that was most put next to Tony Bourdain's name, especially after the years after Kitchen Confidential, was that he de-romanticized the kitchen. I would argue the opposite, that he actually romanticized it because what he did was say, this is a pirate culture, you know, this is for outlaws. Not everyone can survive back here, but if you do, the rewards are incredible. And obviously, he spent the next 20 years of his life, complicating that in really beautiful ways.

but this idea that this is an outlaw place and there's romance to it or you can have these like epiphanies. Is there a line to be drawn between that kind of magical thinking and the fact that as you argue so strongly and well in your book that this is an industry that doesn't have health care, right? That this is an industry that isn't professionalized. And am I right to start to draw those connections? Well, 100%. And I hope that those connections will make sense to people. and this is just the beginning of the conversation of, again, professionalizing it. And this takes time, right?

And we need to understand what Tony was talking about. And you're absolutely correct. He unintentionally glamorized the profession. And I was already cooking, like my first year before the cook kit, I mean, before his book came out. And I don't think anybody expected to have this sort of massive impact on how people, thought about food, whether you were in the profession or not. And I think Tony really just gave voice to have a lot of cooks thought, even though Tony never cooked in fine dining kitchens.

And I think that's also why he was such a good conduit for the culinary world because he wasn't of that sort of inner circle, but he he longed for it and he cherished it like they were a band. So he had that access because he wasn't of it. he was the perfect sort of voice for it and people cared about it in ways they never cared about it before. But it takes time. If we don't change our opinion about the culinary profession in 20 years in a completely

different way, then I think Tony would have been really disappointed because I know this is going to sound like a non-second tour in a crazy comparison, but since we're in the ringer podcast network, the way I've been described. to people is, because I've been watching so much basketball, if you hear some of the announcers and there's a hard foul and defense is getting better, and some of the announcers are like, well, that's ridiculous because in the late 80s, the Detroit Pistons would have been like, this is not even basketball anymore. And people, Berkeley, a lot of the older guard, they romanticized nostalgically about how it used to be. Even though it was ugly,

gruesome basketball and hard fouls and punches thrown. If that happened today in the bubble in Orlando, people would freak out. But everyone tries to compare it to this one thing. I think all of us want to make one sort of perfect platonic ideal of what we think food could be or basketball could be. And we try to compare it to previous generations. I think it's really hard for anyone that's not of the culinary world, which is most people, to understand these real, sort of milestones and times and places of cooking. And it happened in eras. And if you take what happened up in the 70s, 80s, 90s, all the way up to say 2006, 2007, and you compare it to 2020,

it's going to, you can't, you cannot make that comparison. It's literally like watching like 1950s basketball. You cannot make that comparison. I can have this conversation with you, but who in the right mind that doesn't care about food is going to take the time to understand that? most people like my wife, if I try to tell her about 1980s basketball, she's like, I don't care. I don't care about that at all. Why are you telling me at this? Because it has no meaning to me. And that's the hardest part about cooking. It has so much meaning to some people. And what Tony was doing, I think just encapsulated a certain time and place in cooking that most people still feel is what cooking is today. Well, it's an interesting point you bring up, too, because you're talking about is the difference

between the people who care about the nuts and bolts of something behind the scenes, in the case of cooking, literally how the sausage is made, or at least how it's pan sauteed, versus those who just want the end product, right? And, like, they want basketball. They want it, they want a nice product at the end. So expanding on that idea, if we talk about, because what we're talking about on one level, I think people who read your memoir or who pay attention to this stuff closely will know you're talking about, like, the French brigade system and a certain. way of paying your dues and just getting ground to dust, a system that, you know, definitely it didn't encourage. It certainly allowed abusive behavior to go unchecked. If we're coming out of that, hopefully, what's the end result for the user?

Do you know what I mean? So for someone who's a fan of food and a fan of cooking and maybe even watches your show or pays a little bit of attention to this, what is their awareness of this and what could or should they be noticing? Like, do you think it's different on the plate as things change behind the scenes? And also, I should know, we're changing two things. We're talking culture. But also there's the bigger point about, like, we need people to have health care.

Like, we need to professionalize it in a different way. This is such a difficult question to answer, especially when it comes to food. People don't want to pay more for food, but they want to make sure that however it gets made. Like, it's actually very similar to, you know, when you see a sneaker manufacturer get called out for how they make. make their shoes in, say, a third world country and it abuses cheap labor. People don't care ultimately, in my opinion. They do, but they can just sort of plead ignorance. And I feel that majority of people are like, just give me something cheap and delicious. I don't really care. I mean, just look at how we treat the environment. People don't really care. They care,

but not enough. And I think that's certainly the case with food. And the reason why I am not necessarily optimistic about this and the professionalizing and making it more equitable for all parties involved is it's going to cost money. Yeah. And people do not want to pay more money for food. I remember doing something with Kraft Heinz, the giant conglomerate of food, and I was asking about organic ketchup. And they had all of this data. And they said even people that want to support the environment do not buy organic ketchup because it's just like 75 cents more expensive. That's what it comes down to. It's it.

There's a thing I read today, I don't know if it's an older piece, but it was going around. And also, I don't generally read the AARP magazine. Not yet anyway. I don't think either of us qualify. But Ruth Reichel, the former New York Times critic and also food memoirs to as many Proustian moments in her writing, wrote about how food has just fundamentally changed and how when people are like, oh, Thanksgiving's like my grandmother's recipe, they're lying. It's not. Food is different. But she's saying when she was growing up and she's a good bit older than us, her mother.

her mother spent like 30% of the household income was spent on food. He went to the farm next door. They, you know, as part of a community. And now people spend on average 7% of their income on food. And if you're purely, purely capitalist,

right? Like that's, okay, that's better. But also, we have no connection to farms and people are obese and everyone's health is bad and we're eating crap. So how do you,

I mean, now I'm asking you to solve all the problems. I didn't plan to do this to the very end of our conversation. But, but you're right. Like, again, like all of a sudden putting things through this lens, which is definitely more the lens that you've been operating under as an owner operator and things not just in the kitchen. But like there's a reason to look at things that you've been looking at, like whether they were delivery apps or other ways to get food to people, right? Because it is all one story in a very complicated way.

And the story is a food system that's completely and utterly broken. Yeah. And it's incredibly depressing, but I think we need a focus on it. As hard it is to look at all of the failures of it, we can't fix it until we know what's wrong. And I think that's actually sort of the problem in what I just said. We actually know what's wrong and everyone points out what's wrong, but very few people actually have the answer. And I think the answer for me, it's just got to pay more money for food.

and I have restaurants in Australia and Toronto. I'd say two quasi-socialist states, right? Ontario, Canada. But Australia, things are way more expensive. But everyone has health care. I think you can pay for Coke and chopsticks. It was something like 12 bucks. So certainly things are taxed because a lot of these things are imported.

But nothing will change for the workers in any profession. that is not like corporate environment unless I think there's government legislation. And there are, for example, on holidays, if you work on a holiday in a restaurant, which is why many restaurants close on holidays, it's three times your overtime. So you made $15 an hour, you're now making $45 an hour. And it's priced in accordingly. You know, it's not perfect, but people know in those countries that if I pay more money for food, I know that there's a reason for that.

It's going back into the other citizens. I mean, I don't know how it's going to work. And of course, there are a lot of people that are like, we need to fix this industry. I think the easiest way to fix this, it's not the only way is to put more money into how the restaurants are able to pay cooks and the servers. Get rid of tipping and all of these things.

So, you know, I don't want to depress the audience. Because I can certainly go down this road and say how, you know, this is only to get worse before maybe never getting better because of fast food. But we'll see what happens. Yeah. I mean, it, but to hear you talk about it, to read the books, to read your book, to be living through the moment that we're living in, I no longer think that it's like a boring cliche when people say that they cook with love. Because honestly, you have to fucking love it to do it. Because this is not a field that is. that has the infrastructure, like, to survive, right? I mean, we, and I promise for people listening, we will, I will steer this out of total dystopia, but I think Dave and I are both living in it right now in a lot of ways. You know, if this pandemic is a black light that's just point out, you know, I'm not the first person to say this, but it just has shined on all the inequities in our society,

like just look what happened, what's happened to restaurants and to the food chain in general, right? And this idea that we just won't have them anymore. if things continue to go like this. And other countries seem to understand that and have bailed them out to a degree and looked at them more closely. But we're not built for this to happen. We won't have them anymore.

There's no other, right? I mean, that's just where we're at. Yes. It just shows you how poor the economic foundation was for an independent restaurant before the pandemic hit. For example, you couldn't, even if you were a successful restaurant owner, it's very difficult to get a loan from a bank unless you're personally guaranteeing it. And that should tell you, having spoken to a lot of people in Congress, which they won't outright say,

a lot of people that are on the left have a hard time wanting to save this industry because it's not that it's not worth saving. It's just that it's going to happen again. So there's certainly conversations about what can be passed law-wise. to fix the restaurant industry. I'm optimistic, but I'm not too optimistic about what that might happen. Well, because it's so, like you said, it's fundamentally broken in a lot of ways, right? Like the culture those romanticize is broken, the economics are broken, and it's been a skin of its teeth. Well, yeah.

Business forever. Andy, your listeners are going to be like, Jesus Christ, I don't want to listen to this anywhere. I'll just add one more thing to that. the reason why it may not get fixed and most likely won't and why the airline industry and the hotel industry and every other auto industry continues to get bailouts is because they make money. Right. And most restaurants don't make money. And the restaurant, if it's McDonald's Burger King, Domino's were hemorrhaging money and not

looking good, there would be a bill pass. But the reality is, the. the big five to 10 restaurant chains and groups in this country are killing it right now. Yeah, right. And there just cannot be any busier. And a lot of it's easier to handle in a COVID world because they're already professionalized. They already have the infrastructure is in place to adopt new things. So if you're an independent restaurant, you're competing against publicly traded companies with access to public markets.

How the hell are you going to beat that? So this is going to be the have and have-nots. And people that will survive are going to find themselves battling against, you know, the Big Mac. And that's a difficult thing to do, which is not, they're not going to get cheaper. I mean, more expensive. Their food is going to get probably cheaper. Yeah. To drive out all the competition.

Well. So your listenership, they should support one to three restaurants that they care about. And I know money's tight for a lot of people, but if you do have it, spend as much as you can and just prop them up, you know, and spread the word because you got, you only have so many bullets, try to save them for the ones that you can save. So we need to set the floor for the industry, right? Yeah. You have to. And then that's planning for the worst. And hopefully we never have to go past that. And I would say, not that we have to put a, you know, smiley face on the end of every point here. But if there's any silver lining from the last few months, one of them has

been, for me, just increasing my personal relationships to my local restaurants that I love, because I know them now. They know me, you know, and we've dropped this illusion of cool and things that used to be part of the currency and said they're like, well, we're selling the wine now because that's how we make money, you know? Or I know we were plating it this way before, but now it has to go in a box. So what would you like to be in that box and how can you help each other, you know, or even connecting. making connections that didn't exist before. Like I'll shout it out on the podcast. My favorite local restaurant is this is a kayak called Subaki in Echo Park.

And Courtney and Charles are every week driving down to Chino Farms and bringing back farm boxes that they usually would have put in their food. And now they're saying, if you want to buy the ingredients, we'll do that for you too. So all these connections are being made in a way that is individually kind of beautiful. But yes, institutionally, it's deeply disturbing and depressive. Yes. I do want to, in the spirit of brighter times ahead, the other thing I wanted to focus on from your book that I found really moving. And honestly, it's one of the reasons why I also just have taken so much from following your career, listening to you even from a distance before we'd even met was, and it's certainly been more pronounced in the last few years.

You've been, you've changed a lot. And we don't know each other really or had it before. But even I know, you know, whether it's from press or from your own, you know, very open conversations on the podcast, you've been undergoing. a lot of self-work. And I, my favorite podcast genre by far is men roughly my age talking about therapy. Like, so, so you, Marin talking to Springsteen as an all-timer. But anyway, specifically, what is it like to make to make amends? What does it like to try and change?

Because I know it's, you talk very candidly about struggles along the way, but from a macro forest perspective, it's really significant, I think, and worth talking about it. moving. You know, Andy, thanks. And I don't know exactly how to articulate any of this other than it sometimes it feels like you're a childhood actor that made it, right? And you've been out there for the world to see and grow. And, you know, along those ways, along the way, you've made some really bad decisions.

And people are like, oh, my God. It's like Britney Spears shaving her head and being like, oh, man, she's in so much trouble. And having talked to enough people, a lot of people have felt that about me, especially in New York City where people are like, wow, this kid's in a lot of trouble. Emotionally, we're going to look after him and we're going to keep tabs on him. And I think this is just a confluence of events as to how this growth happened that was, I want to say unintentional, but you couldn't have designed it. It was having an open kitchen.

It was being in the mental state that I was in. everything was an either or a proposition. It was not having enough money to hire PR. So you just did it yourself. Being so busy, so crazy busy that the easiest thing to do was just to tell the truth. It wasn't because I wanted to tell the truth. It was easier to tell the truth. So I didn't have to keep tabs on anything. Right. And then obviously therapy. And I think a lot of the change that I have been going through, I was going through much earlier on and I knew about it. I knew about my anger like super early on, especially when I started cooking. This anger wasn't around until I started cooking. And a lot of it was working with my psychiatrist, identifying certain things and then somehow waiting for

it to become actionable in my life. Because in my mind, a lot of this grows, happened years ago. But for me, it takes years for it to actually come to fruition. And along that way, I've just been transparent as I can be in front of the public. So at some point, you know, people realize, I guess you've just grown up. And, you know, I think when I've seen myself representing the media or from a lot of of magazines or newspapers perspectives. A lot of it is they think that I'm still 29 years old, yelling at everybody and dropping F bombs every other word, which I still do, and that I'm this

obnoxious asshole that thinks he's a creative genius. And I don't think I've ever, I've probably been all those things without me thinking that I'm a creative genius. And the only thing that has changed is along that way, I feel like I've gotten that platform. and I've been much more open about it with my psychiatrist, where I've just been like, who fucking cares anymore? You know, I'm just going to, all these thoughts that I've had in my head, why am I just going to keep it on the side of my head? Who cares?

I'm just going to, it's just, again, easier for me just to say, this is what it is. Deal with it. But that said, though, you're talking about things being actionable, because even back, and I'll just reference it again, that 2007 New York Magazine thing, in that piece, you're saying things that track with how I think you still feel now and feelings that are in the book where you talk about wanting to share the success with your cooks,

giving other cooks a platform to succeed, you know, we, not I whenever possible. But there was definitely a time, again, as an observer from the outside, when suddenly it started to become clearer that what was being exported as Momofuku restaurants would open in different places wasn't necessarily pork buns or attitude or backless seats or whatever the cliche would have been at the time, but that, you know, what you were doing with a DC restaurant, what happened when Paul Carmichael went Australia, not that I've gotten to eat that food or gone there, but I would love to someday when we're allowed to travel again. And more specifically, what you did with Cowie in New York was use the platform in a way, right? Like give these chefs and the regions a chance

to shine and express themselves. And that feels more actionable, right, than maybe it did 10, 13 years ago. Absolutely. And I think it was just growing up. And, you know, we talk about in the book, it's hard to grow up because growing up sucks. Let's just be very frank about it. Growing up is about having responsibility outside of yourself. And it's totally understandable why you want to shirk that responsibility. Growing up is understanding, at least for me, that just because something is good for me and is reasonable to me doesn't mean that anyone else will agree with that. And for a long time, I thought, what's good for me is good for everybody else. What's good for me is good for my company.

And if I think I'm good at anything along the way, it's just making some serious fuck-ups and failures. And I'm too competitive of a person to continue to try to make those mistakes. When I get extremely mad at myself, it's when I've realized that I've made the same mistake over and over and over again. but hubris prevented me from seeing that. And that's when I know I have to overhaul it. So, you know, I live in a world of sports analogies. And, you know, there are years where I've missed the playoffs when I should have made it. And I'm just like, shit.

You know, I review the game films and I'm just like, I've got to change this. I got to change that. And I do that. I really go back in time and I try to look at things and be like, I should have behaved this way. I should have done that this way. And I think when you do that, what, 16. years, you gain a lot of wisdom. And I think that wisdom has actually made me less creative in a lot of

different ways because you begin to get like hurt. You, you accumulate all of those scars and that pain. It's natural why you don't want to feel that anymore. And I was so selfish, you know, for so much of my life that it took me a while to realize that, oh, I'm a selfish motherfucker, you know, and I need to learn what it's like to be truly grateful to give. And the growing up was hard because I, again, Andy, I don't know if I'm here if I didn't have that year of 35 in my life, right, where everything imploded. Everything that I thought worked for me began to be the reason why I may not be around anymore. And again, like sports, it's, if you don't evolve, it's like the Los Angeles Rams.

Last year, Sean McVeigh didn't really evolve and they missed the playoffs. and I don't want to miss the playoffs. As an Eagles fan, thank you for reference. I appreciate that. Leave the Eagles alone, but you get the idea. I do, and it's worth noting that one of the takeaways from the book, and I have to think this is intentional, is that during the time when you were,

and I was there, you were the toast of New York City, and all restaurants were chasing you or chasing some coolness that they associated with you or your restaurants, and if you left the city or left the country, there'd be, you know, raw wood bar restaurant, on serving what I mean, it was everywhere. You didn't seem to be that happy. Like, you did not seem to be enjoying it.

I mean, you talk in the book, you were living in an apartment across the street from noodle bar with the gas turned off so you wouldn't have to cook in it. And to stick with a sports analogy, at this point in your life, are you taking, can you take pleasure from dishing out 30 assists and not scoring? Can you take pleasure from coaching? Because, you know, what Anjo is doing at Kaui, again, you were very open about that. able to listen to that process as you shared with on the podcast and then talk about, you know, in subsequent podcasts and in the press, do you take a different kind of, can you pause and can

you take pleasure from her success there? I can. And I do. And that's when I will be grateful. And I will have a sense of accomplishment when it's about someone else. I have so much self-loathing for myself that it's been incredibly difficult to ever appreciate anything that's happened that's good. And that is not hyperbole. I have this weird neuroses where I cannot for the life of me see anything positive that's happened in the past. It's always like, oh, that fucking didn't work out. And I'm so focused on the negative because it's not that I like, again, like, I love winning. I just hate losing way more. And, that's all I focus on. And that has driven me to the point where it's hard for me to appreciate

anything that's good. And one of the things that I've learned over the years is a form of happiness for me is when it is in service to others. And that's what I have to remind myself of because I continue to forget that very important part of what I think is happy. So, you know, it's a work in progress. And I love putting people in position. of success. And yeah, like if, if, you know, my days of cooking are done, right? They've been done for a while. And I think it's funny.

When I talked about age 35, I studied every chef. And even the obscure chefs. And I had like a database, really, the only time I ever made an Excel spreadsheet about all their great dishes in life. And almost everyone made it from age 27 to 33, 34. and like a mathematician or something like that. There's certainly exceptions to the rule. And it was very clear to me that at a certain point as a chef,

you don't get better. You actually get worse. And then I had to ask myself, is that because your idea as a chef hasn't changed or doesn't evolve or more specifically, probably what happens is you now have to deal with life. Life catches up with you. And people have kids and you can't focus all of these things.

things. And then one thing about cooking that makes it difficult for people as they get older to stay relevant is it's physical. It's so physical. It's so draining. So in some ways, it's very similar to a sport. And I have never wanted to be that player that was like retired way too late. So in some ways, I feel like I've always been transitioning myself. Even like when I open restaurants, I've created a lot of restaurants that were like the dream scenarios for me, like Australia, Sydney. That's a dream job, even though it's in a casino. The kitchen's amazing.

But I forget that I'm creating it not for myself for somebody else because I know that I've already lived that life. It's important for me that someone else has those experiences. It doesn't mean that I don't want to feel that the accolades and the glories, but that's not going to service me well in the future. So, yeah, I really tried to be a coach. And I think in some ways, I'm a much, and that's what a chef is. I think I'm a much better chef than I ever was as a cook.

And the truth on top of that is, I was a shitty chef for a very long time that people thought was a really good chef. Yeah. Well, that, what you just said, that is the undercurrent for like the first three quarters of Evita Peach of your memoir. It runs through it. like a subway wire. But I wondered also what changed at a certain point when instead of,

maybe I'm going to ask it in a way that makes it sound like this was a conscious moment. Maybe this moment never happened. But where there was a transition from, what am I doing in this room with these geniuses? What am I doing in this room? I mean, we were just talking about her. And in the book, you meet her, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Why am I meeting this Titan of American life?

Why am I getting these opportunities to, well, if I'm here, I might as well do something with it. And that's kind of the spirit that I noticed in Ugly Delicious when that started. You know, where I felt like up to that point, you'd seem reluctant about embracing celebrity, which is a gross sentence to say out loud. Yeah. But suddenly, you know, there was obviously when we lost Tony, there was someone needed to pick up some pieces of his mantle that wasn't all on you.

But that show to me is such a triumph. And because it reflects points of view that just, weren't being reflected. And so instead of saying I shouldn't be here, you said, well, someone's going to be here. Is that a, is that a too simplified reading of it? It's, is, is, am I romanticizing it? No, no, no, no, no. I was laughing because it's, Dave Cho, the artist said it best. And I say it in the book. And I think a lot of people could sort of say, even if you're not Korean American, it's like, Dave, nobody would have chosen you to represent Asian Americans. Let's just be very frank about this. But you have the opportunity, so don't

fuck it up, right? Like, we don't have anyone else so don't fuck it up. And I feel that's the way I looked at a lot of things. And you're right. After what turned out to be mind of a chef, which was not supposed to be a TV show, I stopped doing all media.

I didn't do any TV. I stopped doing late night shows. I had done a lot of TV. And I sort of dropped off the face of the planet. I didn't have any social media presence. And it took me a while. And a lot of it was like, shit, I got to do.

some media to get business going again, but also I was given an opportunity and I was like, I could make the self-serving or I could make it, everything is a little bit self-serving, but if I could get in line with doing something different and making it pragmatic and not trying to make everyone happy. And really the philosophy of media is very similar to how I open up restaurants. we're going to try to do a different point of view. We're going to try to say something. More often than not, we're probably going to fail and it's probably going to piss a lot of people off.

And added with the fact, I just in constantly looking at scenarios and situations as who fucking cares, right? Like, as long as you don't hurt someone physically or yourself, you know, and you try to do something that is good for people, who cares? you know, why do you think people are going to remember you? Like, just go for broke. And if you fail, failure's great. If you succeed, that's what we all want. Just I don't want to land in between failure and success, right? I hate landing in the middle and I'm totally okay for swinging for the fences.

And it's almost always, it always happens when I try to compromise that I fuck shit up. You hate finishing eight and eight. That's what you're saying. Oh, man, it drives me insane. So what makes, I guess I just want to talk a little bit about ugly delicious because this last season, the second season's four episodes, is really special TV, particularly, and obviously I'm biased on this, but the kids menu episode where you were anticipating fatherhood and you spoke to chefs who have integrated families into their lives and talk about what kids eat or don't eat and your own fears are very, you know, front and center. every time I think, and I consume a lot of food media, and every time I think that it's done, like there's nothing more to do, of course there's something more to do. And often it's the thing that's personal, is the thing that cuts through it all. Yeah, I actually listen to your podcast

where you talked about it glowingly and thank you again for the nice words you said about ugly delicious. And, you know, I all credit to Morgan Neville for making that happen. Again, I get too much credit, it. But if it was up to me, I would not have made that episode because no one really wants to be that personal. But then when someone I trust like Morgan is like, this is going to be good and it's going to be, again, useful for people because people can see what it's like. And we always say the word Trojan horse. Like, Dave, you can be a Trojan horse, even though you're a chef and you're talking about your first child with your wife, where I think it's going to connect with other people and other fathers and mothers.

And, you know, it's hard to disagree with an Oscar winner. And, you know, and I, you know, the argument I could see my dad, if he was still alive, he would say something along the lines of, well, Andy, it wasn't good enough because they didn't win the Emmy. Right. Yeah, I wasn't going to bring that up. That's certainly something he would say. He was 100%.

Well, that's, you know, great. But it wasn't that good. You didn't win the Emmy. So I guess that the obvious follow-up then is about, because you asked me a lot about my relationship to having formerly been a critic and then making something and being on both sides of it. You yourself have now been on, I didn't know there were this many sides to an industry and I think you've now been on all of them. Where are you? Like, are you creator? Are you critic? I have no idea what's going on, Andy.

I have no idea. I really am as confused as anyone else. and I truly have less confidence in anything I ever thought I believed in in the past, right? And I don't know. And, you know, part of me is just survival, like from a restaurant's perspective. Part of it is trying to be a better. I mean, I wear so many hats that I don't even know. It feels like I am just a mess.

So, no, if I feel this way, I can't imagine why anyone else wouldn't feel the same way. So, you know, I don't know. And it's such a small, whatever I do is so small in the cultural context of things that if it was larger, I think it would be debilitating. If I had a larger platform, it'd be really debiliting. I think it's just small enough where it allows me to sort of, you know, screw around and experiment. What do you, what's the difference between what people would say to you when they, like, okay, it's 2005, noodle bars, 2005, 2006. there's a line in front of noodle bar every night when it's about to open. Someone sees you smoking a cigarette or something on the street and wants to talk to you.

What's the difference between what they would say to you then and if they see you now from a six foot social distance wearing masks? Right, right, right, right. But like who talks to you now and what do they want to say to you or what do they want to ask you? How is that changed? Well, I think then I probably would have said something unkind to someone that came up to me. I'd say like, I probably would like, just leave me the fuck alone. I probably would have said that. Because I have a hard time accepting that anyone would want to, you know, I still have that

weird thing of not feeling comfortable because someone likes my food. Even though I want that praise, I'm still wildly uncomfortable with it. And now someone came out to me and just wanted to talk about it. I don't know how much has changed in that regard in terms of how I'm perceived by the public because, I don't know, being well known, it just screws with your head. And if someone came to me now, I'm going to try my best to be nice. Right. I don't know. It's very strange to think about younger Dave Chang and what a short fuse I had. And I'm still that person. I'm just trying not to be that person. I just kind of love it, though, that this constant,

that I didn't even realize was there was that, you know, 15 years ago, if someone had come up to you and wanted to talk to you about, like, you know, the greatest, you know, Skaiman noodles in Tokyo that day or whatever, or today if they wanted to talk to you about food, I feel like your interests aren't really about that, you know, I just feel like, I mean, you love food. There's no question about that. I just, I, it has to be, there has to be a time and place. And I, I, I just don't know if I have the, a sense of self where I can accept that people want to have that conversation. And a lot of those conversations for me are still in my head or with people that are in like a certain circle. Right.

And I don't, even though I talk out loud on a podcast, I'm just a walking contradiction, Andy. And it's so, it's so exhausted. Well, we can leave it at that. But I'll say again, what I said to you off, Mike, it's just like talking. You are very public with being a contradiction. And I think everyone secretly is a contradiction. And I think it's really, I think it's really helpful. And I think you're very generous with, with the nuts and bolts of your lived experience.

And I think it communicates even to people who aren't lucky enough to eat the food of your restaurants, which, by the way, when they're open, are generally kicking ass. Well, yeah, you know, I, you know, that's the one regret I have, Andy. And I was talking to someone that used to work for me. And I think I mentioned it on another, on my podcast. but it hurts me that I am never in a moment or present enough where I can accept the compliment or I can be, you know, I can show gratitude or be thankful because I'm always, I sometimes feel like I act like Bill Belichick where just enjoy it. Don't be an asshole.

You just won the Super Bowl. Smile. And he's like, no, no, no, we got to get the draft or something. And I hate being that person. And that, that, that, I really mean that, man, that so much of who I am right now is a systematic deprogramming of everything that I thought that I was in my prior life. And, you know, I remember asking Tony about this. We were at the Chateau Vermont because he loved staying there. And I introduced him the Dave Cho that night, not thinking that.

they would have this fantastic friendship either. And we're just drinking, smoking, cigarettes, and all these people. There are real fucking celebrities there, too. Yeah. But there's something about Tony that made him accessible. And if you're like Brad Pitt or something like that, you can't go to that fucking table. That's Brad Pitt. But you could go up to Tony.

And I was like, Tony, after like the 15th person, I'm like, Tony, like, are you serious? This is ridiculous. To the point where someone at the chateau asked Tony, I'd like you to, follow me and they put them in a room so they could cool down the room so we could come back. I was like, this is crazy. They're real A-list celebrities and Tony's the one that had to be treated like John Lennon. And Tony came back and he said, I was a middling line cook for most of my life with a heroin addiction and I shouldn't have the success that I have now. So if people want to come up to me and say, thank you or I love your work, the least that I can do is be thankful. And I've

I've never forgotten that because I've talked to people that have worked for me. And however I've worked as a person as a boss is just grind it out, grind it out, work harder. It hasn't changed from tourneying or peeling carrots or potatoes. Just do it over and over and over again. You'll get better at it. Never be in the moment to accept praise or success because that moment is fleeting. You're always trying to be focused on what's around the corner. and however I work is incredibly productive.

It works. It's got a really high win rate. But it comes at a cost and it comes at a cost of happiness. And I think as I get older, especially as I try to teach my son, I don't think I'm ever going to teach him the kinds of success that I thought was success. I think success is actually finding your own meaning of what success is, not the success of what culture dictates. And, you know, like, I hate it when I find somebody that worked for me that says,

I didn't enjoy it myself because I didn't, no one told me to appreciate this or that. Because I've had a lot of people that work for me go through a lot of success. And they just pushed and pushed. And it pains me to see that because I wasn't a better leader. I didn't teach them well enough because I didn't know. better myself. So, you know, I think moving forward, I really just want to be a better sort of source of information for people and tell them, like, don't listen to me, man. Like, really, else end of the day, Andy, like, I say, just don't listen to me. Do what you need to do.

Well, but I think listen to what you just said now, because I think that was, I mean, even just to make a personal for a minute, I also really struggle being present and saying, like, this was the good time. This was the thing to enjoy because I'm always like, well, what's next? What's next? What's the next one? And you have to do better for the next one, right? And the one lesson I had when I sat down with you in January was for some reason I enjoyed making a TV show. And I never enjoyed anything while it was happening before my entire life. And that that was the reward, you know, and something about not just us, the society, right, is kind of broken and forgets that.

So exactly what the lesson you just said, I think, and I think the lesson that is underscored by the book, right? That instead of idolizing this like totally unprecedented, totally fortunate, blazing run of success. to the New York restaurant world. I feel like a lot of it sucks and was hard. Yeah. And I, I hate, you know,

it definitely is Eastern religion. You know, it sounds new agey and all of that. And I realize that. But I think there's, there's something to be said about finding success on your own terms and being comfortable with what you have. Like,

if you could find that mindset, like, that's, that's the life. lottery ticket, man. Because I now know a lot of billionaires. Like, I truly know a lot of billionaires. Yeah.

It's crazy. Like, I actually think I know, like, most of those billionaires that you read about. Yeah. I only know one of them that's crazy happen. Wow. You know, and, and one of them is crazy happy because his entire job is to give away his money. Right. Everyone else is, I got to make more money.

I got to be higher ranking on this Forbes list. All this stupid shit. You always need more. Yeah. And I like, to find that inner piece where you're like, no, no, no, that's the, that's the reality. It's not finding that inner piece. At least this is what I think, Annie, I would love for, if you agree, it's, it's not something that you reach and it's a plateau. It's constant fucking work to keep that piece.

Especially if you're wired a different way. Yeah. If the wiring, just, if you let go, then the old wiring takes over. And I, you know, again, I don't even know if this is fair or reasonable, but for, I have, thought of you a bunch of this year because when we sat down in January, we definitely both thought this year was going to go differently, a lot of different fronts. That was right before everything went when Haywire. And I just remember a little bit of what you were saying. You know, you were, you were moving here. Your son had been born and, you know, you were very happy with him. And

the restaurants were like, even like Major Domo was doing really well here and it found its voice. And there's more TV to make and more opportunities. I mean, I for some reason, projected, maybe because this is what I was thinking too, that you were like, this year is going to be a year of steadiness, you know, or of a different level of contentment or of calm. And of course it wasn't.

And we can't predict that. Can I tell you the weirdest thing? And yes, I've lamented, you know, the things that have been lost. But I don't think I would have ever spent this much time with my son. I don't think I would have ever changed sometimes every diaper a day,

you know? Like, that would never have happened. Yeah. And I mean, I calculated it. I was like, man, I probably spent more time with him in seven months that I probably would have in 20 years, maybe. You know, if you think about all the hours spent.

And if that's the silver lining that I got to be a better dad, then I don't want to say anything is worth it. I'm not trying to find any equation with all the terribleness that's happened in the world. But there's no way I could ever have found that time at all. Like maybe if I was 75 years old and not able to move, but to be able to still like do stuff, that's, that's awesome.

And that has truly been the only really good thing. And I'm weirdly grateful for the shitty things that have been happening because it's caused me to be home. Yeah. Well, I think that's hugely important. And I think it speaks to both, you know, the way any of us need to survive in the world, which is we have to find our reasons to be happy, but also, you know, not to strain my arms trying to wrap my, wrap them around this entire conversation, but the industry, our society,

all of it is kind of broken and that it would take a breakdown for any of us to reconnect with things that really matter in a way that wouldn't have been possible before. I mean, I think that that's worth shining a light on. And I think that that's something that, you know, I know on your podcast talking about the book, you mentioned that you had the opportunity to rewrite stuff but didn't, which I think was the right choice, I think those alarm bells are ringing loud and clear in the book, which is why I would recommend it to anyone, even people who don't, you know, who haven't eaten the pork buns or whatever.

Well, I appreciate it because it's, it's, you know, it's weird having this book out there. It's weird that people are reading it up with in, and the times we live in right now are so, they're just fucking terrible. They're just downright terrible. Do you ever feel guilty that you have moments of joy? Of course. Yeah. Yeah, because we're also trained to be like, oh, well, if I feel too good at this moment,

I've got a box in my pocket that I can take out if I want a hit of misery. Yeah. Like, as if I'm not doing being a responsible citizen by not reading about what Mitch McConnell said today because I was actually enjoying dinner. with my family. Right. Yeah, it's like we owe a debt. Like to be agitated is somehow appropriate or noble.

And it's actually, I don't think it is. And we should be agitated about many things, but to be perpetually agitated. Right. I mean, in some ways, this is what if you're an academic, you'd probably do, right? You're, you're, you take a sabbatical to acquire a new skill set. Right. This has been, uh, uh, accidental sabbatical. and forced sabbatical.

A forced sabbatical. And it has certainly caused me to rethink everything I thought about the world from a February 2020 perspective. And, you know, moving forward, we'll see what happens. But I don't know. I think my ambition will go in different places. Whether it's still in restaurants, yes. it will still be because whether our restaurants will survive or not, not all of them will. I don't know.

But we talk about it in the book about, you know, there's always the metaphor of mountain climbing. I have to remind us that every day that, you know, climbing the mountain and being successful is actually intentionally not getting to the mountain top. Right. To have that willpower to say, no, I'm not going to do it because I have other things to do. or other people that should get to the mountaintop with me. There's a host of reasons that you can explain to yourself. And what I want is that willpower over myself.

Well, I and many people appreciate you bringing us at least halfway up the mountaintop to see. So you can sort of imagine the view. But also that there are, you know, there's a lot to be gained from this moment. And there's a lot to be gained even from the restaurants. And I emailed you when this happened and we can end here. But I've loved going to Major Domo when I've been able to do it here. you know, it's a really wonderful restaurant. It's not far from me, but it was really special to do, like, you did a take-home sushi

party. You did a tamaki sushi set, and I could bring it home, and my daughters loved it. It was the best dinner we've had since quarantine, you know, and that's a different type of service. It's a different type of restaurant. It's not necessarily what you set out to do, but it's a very, it's always been exciting that restaurants can reinvent themselves and be nimble and thrive and survive. And to be able to bring a party home during this time is no small thing. and I wanted to tell you the major domo chicken stock that you're also offering is a pantry item,

put half that in my matzabal soup for Rush Ashana. Whoa. Knockout. Good one. We should make matzabal soup because we have a good stock. Is there some smoky dashy in there? Is there something mixed in with that? I will not divulge our secret recipe.

There's something a little smoky in there and that really kicked it up. Oh, man, it means a lot. It means a lot that you continue to support. means a lot of you like the salmon tamaki. Shout out to Mark Johnson, the inventor of that dish. And the team at Major Domo, they're doing extraordinary work. So it means a lot to hear that. Well, it's great to have the chance to talk to you at Link.

Thank you for the time. Thank you for the book. Eat a Peach in stores. Number 13 with a bullet on the bestseller list. What a number. Could have been hired without Trump. God damn it. Yeah, exactly.

If they're only, he takes up all the oxygen. I think it's on its way up. I think 13 is a great place to be. Andy, that's that this whole, making a book right now during quarantine is something else. What a pain in the ass. We were supposed to do like a 21 city tour. I mean, I mean, Random House really thought there was like a possibility you could hit number one. It was why we chose like May 7th because there was like a clear window. There's a window. And now all the books for the past six months are coming out

at the right like same time as long with it with all the Trump books. I just glad that we got it before Obama's book came out. Thank God. I also think it's a sign of growth and maturity because you could have called your book the same thing that Bob Woodward called his. Like your book could have been called Rage by David Chang. And that would have gone to number one, but you're in a more contemplative state. You know what?

I like that idea. I think that we could change that. That's a good way. It's like changing a Google algorithm or something like that. Yeah, you can fix that for whatever. Yeah. Well, that idea is free. The rest you've got to hit me up with your billionaires.

Stay well. Best of luck with everything. Best of the family. And really, thanks for coming on the watch. It's such a pleasure to talk to you. Andy, I'm so excited to be on this. And you are such a good dude and wildly talented. And I'm so thankful for your support.

So it means a lot. Thanks, Dave.