Since opening his revolutionary Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York City in 2004, Chang has not only built a restaurant empire, but has also become a spokesperson for the industry as a whole with the Netflix show Ugly Delicious, a podcast, and now its new release. . memories. Eat a peach. In his new book, written with Gabe Ulla, Chang talks about his own success, bipolar disorder, and depression with the same honesty and sincerity that have made him such a critical figure in food culture.
These days, their message is dire: Restaurants are an essential part of the “oil” that keeps society and the economy running smoothly, and they are struggling to survive amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Even Momofuku has had to close two of their locations. The chef is focused on defending the industry with elected officials, lobbying for government help and trying to build solidarity within the sector.
The following are edited excerpts from Fortune’s conversation with Chang.
Chang: I don’t know if things have improved. We just adapted. We understand the obstacles that lie ahead a little better. The only thing that can really change the situation is a vaccine or some kind of appropriate therapeutic government assistance that, it seems, all other English-speaking nations have been doing for their small businesses and the restaurant industry. But our American government cannot seem to act together.
The first thing was to try to take a pragmatic approach: what is going to be most useful in a distressing situation and prepare for a scenario if we reopen. We spent, I don’t know how many thousands of hours, our entire team, on that. You have to review everything you’ve done. For the most part, we were just waiting, waiting for answers, and doing what we could.
We could never fix it because it was always on the go. Now it’s stopped and let’s take the time to get it right.
We never knew a pandemic like this was going to happen, but we always try to prepare for what could be terrible. We look at trends and it’s one of the reasons we started a delivery service before it was great. We’ve done it all knowing that we had to branch out for the bad times. We created an equipment company. We were in the media. We have a laboratory where we have focused on making mainly fermented products ranging from hot sauces to salts, soy sauce and versions of miso.
Two years ago, we set a big goal of changing our income in five years so that 50% doesn’t come from the four walls of a restaurant, but from consumer goods. With the pandemic, we have now tried to accelerate it to six months. We are just shifting all of our resources to that and we are still trying to create a growth future for restaurants.
Well, whatever worked for me before, now I can look and ask, did it work? Was he open to new things? Did any of that ultimately lead to greater happiness, a positive net result for myself and the people around me in the world at large?
Perhaps reaching the top of the mountain is not the goal. Maybe it goes halfway and backs up. This whole idea of success for me is something that changes and changes constantly, and I think about what that means to me in the future. This is the truth, I really don’t know.
