Introduction 

Chef ’s Night Out started, as so many things do, with David Chang. Then just another profane chef on the rise, he agreed to let our cameras follow him and a few friends on one of his typical post-shift escapades. There was double-fried Korean chicken. There was beer dispensed from a tabletop keg that looked like a lava lamp. There were shots of soju. And there was real talk. The next day, a hungover Chang opened up about why he left his job at the stately Café Boulud to open a subversive ramen joint—he realized, he admitted, that he wasn’t nearly as skilled as the other cooks in Andrew Carmellini’s kitchen. In other words, the Momofuku empire started because David Chang was a sub-par cook. 

On a whim, our quick-witted producers decided that it would be a good idea to force Chang to stumble back to his restaurant, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, to cook something. It wasn’t. At that point, he really shouldn’t have been that close to fire. As he struggled to compose his famous pork buns, the legendary chef José Andrés showed up and made fun of him. 

It made for killer TV, even though it was on the web and even though the rambling 12-minute video broke just about every single cooking-show convention. Dave looked sloppy. The food he made looked sloppy. The night was poorly planned. Our producers had to cobble together a narrative on the fly. It was so much fun we thought we should do it again. 

That was way back in 2009. The episode became the first in our video series, then called MUNCHIES. As it turns out, people like seeing chefs when they’re not necessarily at their best. Each one racked up hundreds of thousands of views, revealing a massive audience disaffected by the cornball state of most food television— the over-produced shows hosted by grinning actors hired to pretend to cook. 

So we kept the episodes coming. Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo of Animal in L.A. grilled meat with some friends, actors, and a then-little-known comedian named Aziz Ansari. Top Chef–champ Stephanie Izard convinced us that “Chick Chefs” rule and Chicago food is way more than just Alinea, salad dogs, and deep-dish pizza. Anthony Bourdain engorged himself with Presidente at The Distinguished Wakamba Cocktail Lounge before cooking up a bloody côte de boeuf. Since then, we’ve filmed more than 130 episodes, traveling the world to hang with incredible chefs, from Moscow, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Mexico City, and beyond— drinking and eating like there’s no tomorrow. The series so perfectly embodied VICE’s food coverage—uncontrived, provocative and personality-packed, meaningful and fun—that relatively early on, it shed its name, becoming Chef ’s Night Out as we launched a full-blown food website called MUNCHIES. 

The series continued to pull back the curtain on some of the chefs who had been elevated to celebrities, revealing them to be brash, dumb, smart, normal, fun. The response has been insane—more than 32 million views and counting. It has become as popular with insiders as it has with outsiders looking in. Among the young cooks and chefs who define the food culture of the moment, being on the show became a sign that you’d made it. Today, whenever we interview a chef, big-time or small-potatoes, for any reason, the conversation begins with the same question from them: “Can I be on Chef ’s Night Out?” 

In some ways, this book is about the crazy shit that happens when we ply our favorite chefs with booze, food, and questions, and then scour their hazy minds for late-night eats. But like the show, this cookbook offers more than just drunken tales. We quickly recognized that the show was a way to explore a vibrant culture. The drunken disquisitions and stripped-down food the chefs share with us almost always follow a few minutes of sober, if hungover, explanation of the food they cook for a living. We do this on purpose, highlighting one of the many contradictions that makes the contemporary restaurant world so fascinating—the sweating tattooed 27-year-old raging behind the swinging kitchen doors, the suits and gray temples seated in the well-appointed dining room, twirling pappardelle and nibbling rabbit saddle. Cooking has become glamorous, even though it’s really toil. Food has become trendy, even though nearly every aspect of making it is actually old. The people who cook for a living aren’t “The New Rock Stars.” And we love them despite that— no, because of that. 

What still strikes us as remarkable is the food that the chefs cook at the end of the night. It’s tempting to think of it as “drunk food,” since it’s typically conjured while under the influence. But it’s something much more exciting. It’s what they make not when they’re feeding customers but when they’re feeding friends. Sure, it’s stuff they decide to make for late-night indulgence, but like the food that cooks make for family meal, it reflects the love and care and skill you’d expect from food meant to feed their restaurant family. Stripped of pomp and inspired by a particularly hungry moment, what they cook often says more about the chef than the food at their restaurants does. 

We thought the recipes for those dishes deserved to be recorded, and cooked. And so the pages herein are our compilation of some of our favorite moments from this show. Some of the recipes in this book are dead-simple. Some take work that’s worth the effort. They all occupy that magical range between exciting and useful, aspirational and doable. They’ll serve you well whether you dispatch them alone and sozzled at the stove or feed them to friends gathered at a table during a reasonable dinner hour. As all recipes should be, they’re here to guide you, not to limit you. In other words, go nuts. You might choose to slip Chang’s pork belly into warm Wonder bread rather than Chinese buns or smear chicken liver pate rather than foie gras torchon on Maya Erickson’s Fernet-spiked gingerbread. You even start making mash-ups, family meal style, and swapping Jen Egg’s tongue chili in place of the taco beef on Christina Tosi’s seven-layer dip, or vice versa. 

The chapters of the book are divided into sections meant to reflect certain categories favored by the chefs and to trace a path through the most delicious night of your life, beginning with temptation and ending in resurrection. There are “Drinks” to get your night started; there are “Things with Tortillas,” because your descent begins with nachos, tacos, burritos, and seven-layer dip. There is a section called “Hardcore” devoted to the point in the evening when you can’t remember how many cocktails you’ve had and you just want everyone to know how much you love them (pizzas, nachos, poutines, and more). And of course, there’s the “Morning After” for all the hangover dishes to aid the anguish that awaits.

Chinese Drunken Noodles 

Jeremiah Stone and Fabian Von Hauske 

Contra – New York, New York

SERVES 6 

2 pounds ground fatty pork 

1 cup fermented black beans 

1 teaspoon ground cumin 

1 teaspoon freshly ground white pepper 

1 large yellow onion, diced 

10 whole cloves 

4 whole star anise 

1 pound Biangbiang noodles, or fresh flat wheat noodles about 1½-inches wide 

2 tablespoons vegetable oil 

¼ cup minced ginger 

5 garlic cloves, minced 

2 bunches scallions, thinly sliced 

1 bunch fresh cilantro, finely chopped 

1 bunch fresh garlic chives or regular chives, finely chopped 

Kosher salt 

2 cups mung bean sprouts 

½ cup dried chiles de árbol 

Combine the pork, black beans, cumin, white pepper, half of the onion, and 1 cup water in a medium heavy-bottomed pot. Wrap the cloves and star anise in cheesecloth, tie to make a little sack, and add the sack to the pot. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce the heat to low, cover with the lid, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the pork is very tender and saucy, about 2. hours. Remove from the heat and discard the spice sack. 

Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Add the noodles and cook, stirring, until tender, about 3 minutes. Drain the noodles and set aside. 

Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the remaining onion along with the ginger and garlic, and cook, stirring, until the onion is slightly softened, about 3 minutes. Stir in the braised pork and cook, stirring, until warmed through, about 5 minutes. Stir in the noodles, tossing to coat with the porky sauce, then stir in the scallions, cilantro, and chives. Season with salt and transfer to a large platter. Scatter the bean sprouts and chiles over the noodles and serve immediately. 

Seven-Layer Dip

Christina Tosi

Momofuku

Milk Bar – New York, New York

Serves 20

When Christina Tosi isn’t in sweets mode, making birthday-cake shakes and cornflake-and-

Marshmallow cookies, she cooks glories like this seven-layer dip. Don’t let the simplicity of this recipe fool you—the details are important. You must, for instance, use iceberg lettuce. You really should buy canned refried beans instead of attempting to make your own. (Because it’s seven-layer dip.) And you should eat it nice and cold, as if you’ve pulled it straight from the fridge during a bout of desperate hunger, which you probably have. The only part that requires cooking is when you whip up classic “taco beef,” cooking the meat with some spices, though we doubt Tosi would mind if you used a seasoning packet. She might even give you a high five.

TACO BEEF

3 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 pounds ground beef

2 tablespoons chili powder

1½ tablespoons ground cumin

1½ teaspoons paprika

1½ teaspoons crushed red pepper flakes

1½ teaspoons kosher salt

¾ teaspoon garlic powder

¾ teaspoon onion powder

¾ teaspoon dried oregano, preferably Mexican

DIP

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 (15-ounce) cans refried pinto beans

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

2 (16-ounce) containers sour cream

4 ripe avocados, halved, pitted, and peeled

Freshly squeezed juice of 2 limes

8 vine-ripe tomatoes, cored and diced

½ head iceberg lettuce, cored and shredded (about 4 cups)

1½ cups shredded Mexican cheese blend (or equal parts cheddar and Monterey Jack cheese)

Tortilla chips, for serving

To make the taco beef, heat the oil in a large saucepan or skillet over medium-high, then add the beef and cook, stirring to break it up, until it is no longer pink, about 10 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients and keep cooking, stirring, until all the liquid evaporates and the beef is lightly browned, about 5 minutes more. Take the pan off the heat and let the beef cool completely.

To make the dip, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Add the beans and cook, stirring, until smooth and spreadable, about 3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, remove from the heat, and let cool completely.

Add the beans to a 9 by 13-inch baking dish and spread to form an even layer. Top with the sour cream in an even layer, then the beef in an even layer. Mash the avocados and lime

juice together in a bowl, season with salt and pepper, then spread this evenly over the

beef. Top with the tomatoes in an even layer, then the lettuce and the cheese. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until the dip is thoroughly chilled, at least 2 hours or up to 24 hours. Serve with tortilla chips.

Scrambled Eggs and Potato Chips

Jamie Bissonnette

Toro – New York, New York

SERVES 1 

3 large eggs 

1 tablespoon unsalted butter 

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 

1 (1½-ounce) bag plain potato chips, preferably Lay’s Classic 

2 slices whole-wheat bread 

Hot sauce 

Mayonnaise (optional) 

Olive oil (only if you can remember the last drink you had) 

FOR A SUPER BAD HANGOVER: Crack the eggs into a bowl. Beat with a fork until they are all homogeneous. 

In a small nonstick skillet, heat the butter over medium. When it starts to coat the bottom, add the eggs and season with salt and pepper. Stir until the eggs start to set, then pull the pan from the heat, open the bag of chips, and crush them in the bag. Dump them into the eggs, and stir until the eggs are set but still runny. Transfer the eggs to the chip bag and let everything sit. 

Toast the bread over a flame (or use a toaster). When the bread is toasted, tear it up, put it into the bag, douse the bag’s contents with hot sauce to taste, hit the couch, and eat straight outta the bag.

FOR A NOT SUPER BAD HANGOVER: Crack the eggs into a bowl. Beat with a fork until they are all homogeneous. 

In a small nonstick skillet, heat the butter over medium. When it starts to coat the bottom, add the eggs and season with salt and pepper. Stir until the eggs start to set, then pull the pan from the heat, open the bag of chips, and crush them in the bag. Add them to the eggs and turn up the heat to medium-high. Run a spatula under the eggs to make sure they aren’t sticking, then flip the eggs onto a plate. Add some olive oil to the pan, return the eggs to the pan, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes. Flip again and cook for 2 to 3 more minutes, until the eggs are completely set. Transfer back to the plate. Toast the bread in a toaster. Make a sandwich with the hot sauce and mayo and the egg and chip mixture.