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Eat a Peach: A Memoir Hardcover – September 8, 2020

by David Chang (Author), Gabe Ulla (Author)

4.6 3,557 ratings

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the chef behind Momofuku and star of Netflix’s Ugly Delicious—an intimate account of the making of a chef, the story of the modern restaurant world that he helped shape, and how he discovered that success can be much harder to understand than failure.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: NPR, Fortune, Parade, The New York Public Library, Garden & Gun

In 2004, Momofuku Noodle Bar opened in a tiny, stark space in Manhattan’s East Village. Its young chef-owner, David Chang, worked the line, serving ramen and pork buns to a mix of fellow restaurant cooks and confused diners whose idea of ramen was instant noodles in Styrofoam cups. It would have been impossible to know it at the time—and certainly Chang would have bet against himself—but he, who had failed at almost every endeavor in his life, was about to become one of the most influential chefs of his generation, driven by the question, “What if the underground could become the mainstream?”

Chang grew up the youngest son of a deeply religious Korean American family in Virginia. Graduating college aimless and depressed, he fled the States for Japan, hoping to find some sense of belonging. While teaching English in a backwater town, he experienced the highs of his first full-blown manic episode, and began to think that the cooking and sharing of food could give him both purpose and agency in his life.

Full of grace, candor, grit, and humor, Eat a Peach chronicles Chang’s switchback path. He lays bare his mistakes and wonders about his extraordinary luck as he recounts the improbable series of events that led him to the top of his profession. He wrestles with his lifelong feelings of otherness and inadequacy, explores the mental illness that almost killed him, and finds hope in the shared value of deliciousness. Along the way, Chang gives us a penetrating look at restaurant life, in which he balances his deep love for the kitchen with unflinching honesty about the industry’s history of brutishness and its uncertain future.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Clarkson Potter
Publication date

September 8, 2020
Dimensions

6.3 x 1.1 x 9.4 inches
ISBN-10

152475921X
ISBN-13

978-1524759216
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From the Publisher

momofuku, ugly delicious, eat a peach memoir, memoir, david chang memoir, david chang

Editorial Reviews

Review

“With humor, pathos and heaping spoonsful of self-deprecation . . . Eat a Peach is an honest, ugly, raw dish of a book.”—The Wall Street Journal

“An honest and vulnerable autobiography that will have you laughing and crying at the same time . . . an absolute must-read.”—CNN

“David Chang is one of the most beloved chefs on earth, but his inspiring memoir is not just for foodies. He’s one of the most audaciously openhearted and honest humans you’ll ever find. This book is for anyone who has ever felt like an underdog or an underachiever—or aspires to become an entrepreneur or a more decent person.”—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take, and host of the TED podcast WorkLife

“Eat a Peach is not merely an autobiography of a great creative; rather, it’s a compelling philosophy of a man who believes in a beautiful life beyond reach. It is profoundly gratifying to witness Chang marching uphill, step by step, toward his sublime vision. As Chang suffers, rages, and fights for his quest, we can’t help but admire his vulnerability, courage, and conviction.”—Min Jin Lee, author of Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, a finalist for the National Book Award

“Dave Chang’s writing is honest and vulnerable. As a child of immigrants, the DNA of his story spoke to me. Now I just have to keep up with his drive and tenacity!”—Hasan Minhaj, host of Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj

“If you’re looking for a cookbook, this is a terrible choice. Herein you will find the recipe for one of our brightest, most energetic, talented, and inspiring Americans (who also happens to be a chef). David Chang is a great storyteller with a great story to tell.”—Jimmy Kimmel, host of Jimmy Kimmel Live!

“This is one of the most compelling chef memoirs in recent memory. . . . Chang’s writing is engaging and his story is stirring, humorous, and compulsively readable.”—Shondaland

“Just like the food from his famed Momofuku restaurants is must-devour, Chang’s memoir is a must-read.”—E! News

“David Chang is one of the world’s most creative chefs, but it wasn’t obvious he would become that. I was absolutely enthralled by his underdog story, which he tells with passion, humor, and skill. Don’t miss this incredible memoir!”—Brian Grazer, New York Times bestselling author of A Curious Mind and cofounder of Imagine Entertainment

“An entertaining, admirably candid self-assessment of life in the foodie fast lane.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Foodies and chefs alike will dig into Chang’s searing memoir.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

David Chang is the chef and founder of Momofuku. Since opening Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York City in 2004, he has been honored with six James Beard Awards, including Outstanding Chef, and has been recognized as a Time 100 honoree. His cookbook, Momofuku, is a New York Times bestseller. In 2018, David founded Majordomo Media and launched The Dave Chang Show podcast. He is the host of two Netflix original documentary series, Ugly Delicious and Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

With the benefit of many years of consultation with a professional therapist, I can tell you that what I was experiencing toward the end of my time at Café Boulud was my first full-blown experience with the depressive phase of bipolar disorder. As simply as I can put it, bipolar disorder is characterized by dramatic swings between high (manic) and low (depressive) states. This particular low lasted for several months and was the longest and most intense I’ve ever endured. But again, I can only tell you that in hindsight. At the time, all I knew was that everything felt shitty and I couldn’t pinpoint a specific reason. I felt dislodged personally and professionally. Things I could always count on, like my palate, were failing me. It didn’t seem normal to feel this way.

High school was where I first noticed that something was off. I’d spoken to the in-house therapist a few times, but I stopped because I didn’t really feel comfortable spilling my guts to someone who had lunch with my teachers seven days a week. Instead I wrote about everything going on in my head. One day, my roommate dug through my computer and mocked me mercilessly for what he found. I saw another counselor in college. It took him two minutes to pull out the prescription pad and prescribe me Paxil. I never took it and I never saw him again.

I was embarrassed. I didn’t feel justified in seeing a therapist or taking pills. For one thing, I didn’t know any other Asian people who saw therapists. A lot of my friends had shrinks in college, but their situations were different. They were wealthy kids with actual bad shit going on at home in Westchester or whatever northeastern enclave had produced them. Rich kids are always the most f***ed up. I didn’t recognize my issues in anyone else.

At Trinity, I grew acutely aware of my otherness. The girls at school were mostly white and therefore off-limits. I’d seen how my parents reacted when my siblings had tried dating non-Koreans, and it wasn’t pretty. Not that it would have mattered. The white girls at school were explicit in their pronouncements that they would never be seen with an Asian man. And so, aside from random drunken hookups, I never dated anyone in college. For years, any kind of meaningful relationship I had was one I found during the summer or while traveling abroad. I simply felt more comfortable somewhere else.

For a minute, I thought I’d attend divinity school after Trinity, but my grades weren’t good enough to get me into a graduate program, much less one of the cushy jobs that my classmates were landing in New York. I didn’t know what else to do with myself, so I showed up to a postgrad career fair and signed up to teach English in Japan, because the booth was closest to the door. I’d come to think that my problems were in America, and I wanted to live the life of an expat. Being away from home would be a fresh start, a chance for reinvention. I fled the States with the intention of being gone for good.

Cut to the cross-country track behind the high school in Izumi-Tottori and the largest Asian man within thirty miles running around and around and loving it: my first encounter with the highs of a manic episode, and the other side of bipolar disorder. I had boundless energy. I felt invincible. At night, I read dense Russian classics, plowing through the entire canon. I finished War and Peace in a couple of days.

I had originally requested an assignment in cold, northern Sapporo. The company sent me to this steamy town in Wakayama Prefecture instead. Imagine Jacksonville, only hotter. At night, I would hear wannabe yakuza riding their dirt bikes and motorcycles around the rice paddy that was my backyard. Most of my students were either the wives of organized criminals or kids prepping for college entrance exams. Once they realized that their English grammar was better than mine, they started using my class as an opportunity to nap. I lived in an apartment with my boss, next to a dorm for Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I don’t think I had a full night of sleep the entire time I was there.

I’d hoped to find something in Japan—a sense of belonging, maybe. No such luck. The women in Japan were no more inclined to date me than the women at Trinity. All the Japanese girls seemed to be paired up with a white guy. If not, they certainly weren’t going to stoop to dating a Korean.

I did a little traveling while there, and saw that many of the Koreans living in Japan were downtrodden or wrapped up in gambling and shadier professions. Finding vandalism on the monuments to Koreans who died in Hiroshima was an early lesson in racism’s ubiquity.

I’d always assumed Japan was a country of extraordinary punctuality, but the train would sometimes be late in Izumi-Tottori. I learned that the delays were caused by people jumping on the tracks, even though the government did everything it could to prevent it. They announced that they would fine the families of the deceased. They painted the station a calming pastel yellow. None of it seemed to have an effect.

Between Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, I read Camus. I spent a lot of time mulling over his famous quote about finding an “invincible summer” within himself. I wondered about the car crash that ended his life, when he took a ride with a notoriously bad driver. When they examined his body, they found a train ticket in his pocket. Did he maybe want to get in that accident?

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Clarkson Potter (September 8, 2020)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 152475921X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1524759216
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.3 x 1.1 x 9.4 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #266,147 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #338 in Culinary Biographies & Memoirs
- #1,191 in Celebrity & TV Show Cookbooks
- #8,551 in Memoirs (Books)

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4.6 3,557 ratings

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David Chang

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David Chang is the chef and founder of Momofuku. Since opening his first restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, in 2004, he has received six James Beard Awards, and has been recognized as GQ’s Man of the Year and a Time 100 honoree. In 2018, David formed Majordomo Media. He is the host of The Dave Chang Show podcast and two Netflix original documentary series, Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner and Ugly Delicious. His cookbook, Momofuku, is a New York Times bestseller.

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Gregory Gallina

Honest, almost too honest

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2022

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Besides mashing his gnarled thumbs into my pork buns when I visited his restaurant in 2004, Dave Chang has done nothing but make life my daily life more entertaining. Senor Chang has slowly become my favorite media personality over the course of the past decade. He is an extremely talented story teller. Unlike Anthony Bourdain, whom I think is only interesting to people who’ve never worked in a kitchen, Dave Chang’s insider knowledge of the daily functions of the restaurant business will be entertaining to anyone.
His podcast is brilliant! I always wondered what types of people had time in their lives to listen to a podcast regularly and it turns out this person is me. It’s kind of like when you meet the right person you are going to marry and spend the rest of your life with…you know when you know. My only gripe with the Dave Chang Show Lodcast is the forced laughter by his lackeys at anything mildly funny the guys says. **note to podcast staff- Dave Chang is regularly extremely funny. You do not have to burst into hysterical laughter at the mildly funny stuff he says. It’s detrimental to the flow of the show.
My only gripe with Eat A Peach Memoir is that he focuses too much on how he wants to kill himself and his depression. I applaud his efforts to raise awareness about mental illness, but it is too much of a focal point in this book. I do not think that anyone who doesn’t suffer from depression can truly understand it. I have someone in my life that suffers from depression and I constantly try to learn more about it, but I still do not understand it. Reading about depression is depressing and I think it may be slightly overstated in this book. I’d like to hear more stories about how his depression has caused him to totally destroy an innocent line cook during service than him itching about how he wants to kill himself. This would’ve delivered his message of ongoing depression in a more entertaining way. That being said, I gave this book 5 Stars because it is extremely entertaining, much like the person who wrote it.

7 people found this helpful

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Linda

David Chang's Memoir Is Food for Thought (terrible pun but I can't help it!)

Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2020

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I first came to know about David Chang when my niece took me to eat at his Momofuku Noodle Bar in NYC's East Village in the early 2000's. I thought of him only in terms of the spare look of the (tiny) restaurant and the delicious Asian-inspired food. Then I accidentally came across The Mind of a Chef on PBS. Chang was the featured chef in season one (and according to his memoir, was the originator of the series). I found him to be an original, innovative, wide-ranging, deep thinker and an excellent, engaging communicator and so have followed his career ever since. His memoir, Eat a Peach, is a chronicle of his life in food as a chef, restauranteur, tv star, podcaster, author, colleague/mentor, but even more so it is a set of brutally honest yet eloquent reflections on his struggle to continuously develop as a human being. Chang doesn't mention Socrates, but I'm sure he believes that the "unexamined life is not worth living." In Eat a Peach, we read that his bipolarism, difficult relationship with his father, and close friendship with Anthony Bourdain (who appeared to live with similar demons and ended his life by committing suicide) seem to drive Chang to question his considerable success with not a small degree of self-flagellation but, thankfully, with a great sense of humor and exceptional generosity towards young chefs as well. Written in a fast-paced conversational style (with the help of Gabe Ulla and Chris Ying), the book addresses the existential question of "Who am I?" Because Chang's life is a remarkable one, the book is a fascinating read.

42 people found this helpful

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Hannah Ryan

As expected...

Reviewed in the United States on December 8, 2020

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If you like Dave Chang, which I do, you will like this book. If you don’t, you won’t. If you’re not familiar with him, I highly recommend Season 1 of Mind of a Chef, this book, and Ugly Delicious, specifically the fatherhood episode.

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2021

Verified Purchase

This book was just as incredible as I thought it would be! I’ve always fangirled a bit about Momofuku’s chef, but after reading his book, I see it was 100% justified.

David Chang talks about everything you want to read about in a chef’s book - behind the scenes kitchen snafus, the history of all his restaurant openings, paying his dues in other kitchens, mental health struggles, hilarious footnotes (my jam 🙌🏼), and FOOD. So much glorious food.

Our author really delves into the challenges of being an Asian chef. Are people mad he’s not making more upscale Korean food? Why doesn’t he fit the stereotype of “the smart Asian kid?” Do they think he’s being “too Asian?” From growing up feeling isolated from his peers to figuring out his take on his culture’s cuisine, he does not shy away from facing these race struggles head on.

This book definitely has an irreverent Kitchen Confidential sort of vibe too. In fact, Chang mentions Bourdain several times in the book. I’ve started watching a few episodes of Chang’s show Ugly Delicious and I’m enjoying all the attention he pays to underdog foods that often don’t get much praise.

What is it about chef books that simultaneously makes me want to drop everything and join a fancy fast-paced restaurant while also wanting to sprint away as fast as I can in the opposite direction? How does it make me want to splurge on a 5-course meal, but also exhaust me to the point of just wanting to eat a bowl of cereal? 🤷🏼‍♀️

If you love memoirs (yes), gorgeous covers (for sure), and food (duh) you must give this book a read.

6 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Chang’s book is peachy!!! Loved it!!

Reviewed in the United States on November 11, 2020

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I love reading memoirs and am a foodie, so I found this book riveting! Chang’s story is strong and clear and he’s not afraid of showing his rough edges. It is his grit that has largely led to his success, rather than perfection. As an artist, teacher, and creative I highly identified with this theme that he explores throughout the book. That is, how creativity, innovation, and authenticity were his main ingredients to his passion, which have led to his success. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to explore their art or passion with fresh eyes.

3 people found this helpful

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Dave G

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2023

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Very raw and well written origin story

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Top reviews from other countries

tomash

Great

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 26, 2023

Verified Purchase

This reads really well and great for all interested in food. Great personal stories, tips, things about opening a restaurant, about what is it to be a cook, life lessons along the lines, good humour.. Really enjoyable book.

LC

A must have

Reviewed in Canada on December 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

A must read book for any David Chang fan. It was a quick read that I couldn't put down. Pretty fast paced and very interesting. Also up to date with his most recent struggles (2020) which was interesting to read about.

One person found this helpful

jbrieley

Very good read

Reviewed in Spain on December 30, 2021

Verified Purchase

This is a very good read, well worth it

Brian

An insight

Reviewed in Germany on November 12, 2020

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Its an interesting insight into a talented man and his struggles

Sarah

Good to read

Reviewed in Australia on October 18, 2020

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Love the book, great read

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