David Chang on the long, hard, stupid way

https://herbertlui.net/david-chang-on-the-long-hard-stupid-way/

by herbertl • 2 years ago

263 170 2 years ago

lizhang• 2 years ago

and once they got big enough, they attempted to use their size to stop others from selling chili oil

dghlsakjg8• 2 years ago

David Chang is a salesman and a businessman first. I get the point being made, but keep in mind that he is a brand, and part of that is the stories he tells.

He has slapped his name on so many subpar food goods that were a total disappointment that I actually have started avoiding things marketed under his brand name.

He might do things the hard way in his restaurants, but they certainly aren't ensuring tasty or high quality goods under his brand. I would rather he do things in a way that makes sense and provides the best tasting food.

More broadly, the point is that you should take advice only from people whose successes you want to emulate. The actual advice I get out of this article is:

Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product.

nemo44x8• 2 years ago

He's really trying to build an empire based on his name and recognition from a few good restaurants he founded. I think he wants to scale it as much as he can right now and sell it. He has commented before that a restaurant based around the chef's personality isn't really a business you can sell one day. But products based around the celebrity chef are. But yeah, most things he's putting his name on are so super over priced they are clearly selling to people with no price sensitivity. I'm sure his margins are fantastic and he'll get a big payday if he sells at just the right time.

refulgentis2• 2 years ago

I don't really understand any of this this thread, there's a lot of conflicting ideas. David Chang owns a frozen food empire that's super over priced and super low quality that's successful enough that he'll make a lot of money if he sells at the right time?

hinkley7• 2 years ago

This is all reminding me of the mean dude in Ratatouille. Only the mean dude is now also Gasteau.

hinkley7• 2 years ago

Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product.

There’s one interpretation of the idea of business as not selling products but stories. Apple knows this and clearly exhibits it with every product demo. It’s all a story. One that I enjoy.

But low priced groceries also sell a story, about how a beleaguered mother can save a few dollars here in order to avoid bouncing a check or to buy herself one nice thing. Or a kid who wants something sweet and already blew their allowance on video games. A pattern they will repeat again every few months since it worked before.

Chang is definitely selling two stories and it sounds like they are a bit discordant when taken together.

cm11• 2 years ago

Michelin stars seem to have the dynamics of a loss leader. Particularly as it's become known that many of the restaurants are badly unprofitable—and moreso if you think the chefs should earn something commensurate to their presumable talent or passion (you don't have to think this). It seems to be more the case that every award or signal of quality is capable of (and actually being used) this way.

Some people, like Chang, may know it and treat it transactionally as such. $X for a star, which leads to Y amount of exposure. Others, may know it or not, but treat it like a goal in life either way. It's very possible of course that many of the former start as the latter people until they later [realize/sell out/give up].

I guess it makes sense. The world is more competitive. Information is freely available. You need to find some other moat. With information and access to everything, a moat that might have been quality or talent, is more easily captured by buying the signal (which to be clear can include buying and maintaining the quality). Then once you have the signal, well, it's up to you whether you still need or want the quality. When push comes to shove, it's probably the case that the signal is worth more than the quality.

hn_throwaway_99• 2 years ago

Apple knows this and clearly exhibits it with every product demo. It’s all a story. One that I enjoy.

That is true, but I've often seen that misconstrued (not by you in your comment) as somehow saying "Oh, Apple's success is just marketing! I can get feature XYZ for much lower elsewhere!"

Except that while Apple has generally great marketing, they also have generally great products. There is a ton of hard engineering and design work that goes into making a product that is easy to market in the first place. In fact, what the "it's just marketing" crowd tends to miss is that products are not just a collection of features, but are used to tell stories (or listen to stories) in users' own lives. They want to envision how a product will enrich their experiences, and Apple understands that's what they're selling.

In fact, if anything, I think the flop of the Vision Pro (may be quite premature to call it a flop, but I'll put my money on it being a flop) is directly due to the fact that Apple can't tell a story about it. By all accounts it has amazing, cutting edge technology. Except Apple can't tell a good story about what you're actually supposed to do with the thing that people believe and buy in to.

chubot4• 2 years ago

I've been wondering about this for YEARS now: WTF happened to Milk Bar in NYC? Based on the taste and quality, it seems like the most egregious case of "selling out" I've ever seen. It seems like an overnight change to me

David Chang and Christina Tosi worked together, and I remember seeing a bunch of their marketing on Netflix

https://rseventures.com/milk-bars-christina-tosi-went-momofu...

In 2015 the location in East Village was still GREAT. Interesting deserts, seemingly made by hand, with high quality ingredients

Then I go back a few years later, and it's this CHAIN and the food is inedible. I take one bite, can't eat it, and throw it away

It just tastes like sugary processed food now, like Twinkies or Chips Ahoy or something

I also saw Milk Bar products in Whole Foods, bought it, took one bite, and threw it away, and never bought it again

It's just weird to me that a chef would let the quality sink so low, so fast. Usually the "founders" care about quality, and are mission-focused

I always thought that process took decades, and changes in ownership. (Actually I am re-reading Pollan's account of the "big organic" Cascadian Farms brand now -- another very interesting case of counterculture going mainstream / industrial, but the change was more gradual I think)

geodel2• 2 years ago

As others have alluded too. At this point SC is high on its own supply. Create a food empire, hang out with rich or famous chefs. Create millions of aspiring chumps who'd take his words as gospel.

Edit SC -> DC (David Chang)

light_hue_1• 2 years ago

They opened a Milk Bar near Harvard and it was total garbage.

They were so lazy that they didn't even make anything in Boston. It was all shipped over from NY. Stale and tasteless cubes of nothing wrapped in plastic.

Neither Christina Tosi nor David Chang have any integrity. They just peddle whatever garbage they can to people while building their own brand.

A year or two ago that Milk Bar location finally died out and was replaced by Joe's Pizza. Another NY chain. But one that is the opposite of Tosi/Chang in every way. Authentic. Careful. Customer-focused. Great NY-style pizza made on the spot with the same ingredients. Joe's is just as good in NY as it is in Boston.

Good riddance to Tosi and Chang. I now actively avoid anything associated with them.

paxys3• 2 years ago

Milk Bar only ever worked when it was Christina Tosi's personal baking project. The second they tried to corporatize it, it was done.

wahnfrieden• 2 years ago

I just remember the Saltie owner posting photos of the pavement outside their next door neighbor Milk Bar, being salty about the scores of serving cups and other detritus their customers would leave without the store taking responsibility for cleaning them up

ericmcer• 2 years ago

Milk bar always seemed like an example of using raw marketing power to convince people something is good. I saw Tosi on Chefs table and it was crazy how generic what she was doing was versus the other chefs on the show. Juxtaposing her with others on the show it felt like a bunch of artists who wouldn't compromise their vision versus a capitalist who was optimizing everything around money.

weaksauce2• 2 years ago

he’s also reportedly a jerk to his staff and yells at them. and sues mom and pop shops for using his trademark of a really generic term... something like spicy chili oil or very similar.

jsbg• 2 years ago

In the US, trademarks have to be enforced to remain valid.

https://www.justia.com/intellectual-property/trademarks/enfo...

"a failure to enforce a trademark by monitoring the mark for misuses will result in a weakening of the mark and loss of distinctiveness, which can lead to a loss of the trademark"

tempodox• 2 years ago

Tell stories that paint the picture you want your customers to have about your product.

Isn't that just called advertising? This is so blatantly obvious, it doesn't sound like much of an advice.

rapind• 2 years ago

Advertising is always attempting to disguise itself as anything other than advertising.

dghlsakjg8• 2 years ago

Pretty much.

I wasn't saying that this is a particularly insightful message. I was saying that the message I took from this story wasn't about doing things the hard way. Its a meta lesson about messaging and showmanship.

paxys3• 2 years ago

Don't forget he filed a trademark for chili crunch sauce (which has been used in several Asian cuisines for literally centuries) and sued to stop smaller restaurants and businesses from selling it, and only backed down when there was public outcry.

fsckboy3• 2 years ago

trademark refers to the name a product is sold as, not what the product is, and also has a local jurisdiction. What they do in Asia has nothing to do with trademarks in the US, and since not very much of Asia has spoken English for literally hundreds of years, I doubt they were calling it chili crunch sauce.

I'm not defending Chang nor trademarks, just pointing out how they work legally and the flaws in the argument you're making.

Remember, people called windows "windows", but they didn't sell products called Windows till Microsoft started and trademarked it.

shaklee32• 2 years ago

He also tried to sue all the other small businesses using the chili crunch name. I stopped buying his after that.

shahahmed• 2 years ago

"The dish was meant to be a difficult pickup that required constant coordination between the front and back of house. That was what made it great."

This feels like the crux. It's not arbitrarily doing the hard, stupid thing, but the ones that are based in making the product or process better.

larkost• 2 years ago

I disagree. The final product (the food) is not better in any way for doing this. I do see the value of not making the server lie to the customer by pretending that they were going to get the "stunt chicken", but this whole problem seems to be caused by trying to make the preparation of the food into a show, and here is a case where the showmanship is getting in the way of efficiency.

If they just got rid of parading out the chicken in the middle of the process they could stage more things without implicitly lying to the customers, while improving timing. You would just lose some showmanship, which might be part of the brand.

gizmo• 2 years ago

After thinking about this blogpost for a minute I realized the blogpost actually literally argues for doing things the hard and stupid way. Not as a metaphor for integrity or quality.

Integrity isn't the point:

It had nothing to do with integrity. I didn’t care about fooling the diners. What concerned me was the precedent we were setting.

The quality of the food isn't the point either:

The dish was meant to be a difficult pickup that required constant coordination between the front and back of house.

The inefficiency is the point.

Doing it the long, hard and stupid way is the point.

This is a sermon against process improvements. Without seeming to realize that restaurants are a modern miracle of process improvements! How does this David think the kitchen gets fresh ingredients every morning? Where does David think fruit in the winter comes from? How did herbs and spices get so cheap? Because we decided for the past 200 years to relentlessly pursue efficiency. Because we decided not to do things the slow and stupid way any more. That's how!

bluGill2• 2 years ago

Some things are better, but some are bad shortcuts that cost quality. A burger from a place that cooks it after you order will always be better than a burger where they start cooking before you walk in the door. Back when I worked fast food I sometimes made my own burgers, when it was fresh off the grill it was one of the best burgers I ever had, but that is a lot more individual labor and so not sustainable in a fast food model. Back then burgers were assembled before you walked in the door, but these days they have all backed off to assemble the burger after you order of ingredients cooked before - it is higher quality and they have managed to optimize assembly enough that it is now sustainable.

Where the fast food industry wants to be is a robot that sees you push the button and starts cooking your burger then before you get to paying for it. Robots could do all that, but they are too expensive for the price they need to hit at least so far. (there are also some fraud issues they have to work out) They have to start cooking before you finish the order to meet their fast goals which is one of the reasons people go to fast food.

dooglius• 2 years ago

He explains the point in the lines you omitted:

I worried about the mindset of the server whose job it would be to parade a stunt chicken around the dining room. I was terrified of our culture stagnating.

It doesn't read to me like he would have any problem with a process improvement as long as the real chicken were still used.

jjmarr• 2 years ago

For example, one of my favorite Majordomo dishes is a whole boiled chicken. We present the bird to the table in a big pot, bring it back to the kitchen to carve it, and then return with a beautiful platter of rice topped with the sliced breasts and two different sauces spooned over the top. Once guests are finished with that, we bring out a soup made from the carcass. It’s so good.

The point is that the diner gets to see the chicken they will eat and understand the process.

The efficient way described in the blog is to instead use a stunt chicken which'll be paraded around the dining room instead of being cooked.

That's not a process improvement when the entire point of the dish is to show the diners what they will eat before they eat it and flex the restaurant's ability to coordinate.

Purposeful inefficiency is beautiful when it's about retro video game console programming or mechanical watches, because that's about spotlighting the process. Both of these are inefficient---modern computers are more powerful and quartz watch keep time better---but are fascinating because the difficulty of programming in assembly or an intricate series of tiny gears have inherent value to some people, far beyond the result of a video game or getting the current time.

It's a complicated finely tuned process to get a chicken from your table to the kitchen and back again. The chef wants employees that value the process itself, which is a fair ask when the process is the product.

turtledragonfly• 2 years ago

And yet, he says "... I didn’t care about fooling the diners."

I agree with you, that the diner seeing what they are about to eat is an important part of the experience. But Chang seems to be saying that even that is not the point! The results (including diner experience, and the honesty of that experience) don't matter. It is purely about instilling and maintaining a culture.

I don't really buy it, myself. Should they also forge all their knives from iron ore, the long slow way, before being allowed to use them in the kitchen? As other people commented, I think this is more about weaving a story and casting a glamour than anything else.

jfengel3• 2 years ago

"Once guests are finished with that, we bring out a soup made from the carcass."

Soup from the carcass is delicious, but there isn't time to do that during the meal. Even with a pressure cooker it's going to take at least an hour. (And if several tables order the same dish, you're gonna have a bunch of pressure cookers in your kitchen.)

So... the idea is sound, but I'm doubtful that they actually do it the way they claim. Which would make sense with the "hero chicken" story they admit to.

Terr_• 2 years ago

Hmmm, that like the "inefficiency" of advertisements with lots of empty space, and fancy stores with sparse interiors.

In other words, it's not actual inefficiency so much as a hard-to-recognize spending on buying another asset, namely the marketing/advertising effect of conveying "luxury" or "successfulness".

Sort of like peacock feathers: They're "inefficient" from the perspective of abstract aerodynamics, but from a holistic and practical perspective...

laserbeam• 2 years ago

"The point is that the diner gets to see the chicken they will eat and understand the process."

What do you mean by "understand the process"? You only get that if you are in the kitchen with the cooks. Only open restaurants where you can see the cooks cooking help with that. Seeing a dead chicken ahead of time doesn't teach a guest anything. It is merely a flex, a story the restaurant sells to increase the price of a meal.

brigadier132• 2 years ago

He says he doesn't care about the integrity but I think he's wrong and he's misidentified the lesson from this.

Because you are absolutely right, doing things that are inefficient and stupid for the sake of it is absolutely dumb.

I worried about the mindset of the server whose job it would be to parade a stunt chicken around the dining room. I was terrified of our culture stagnating.

This is where it makes sense. He does care about integrity. If you foster a culture of faking little things like this it can eventually grow into a culture of faking the big things that actually do matter.

yifanl• 2 years ago

"That was what made it great. If they wanted to sandbag it, they needed to figure out how they would make up for the lost energy elsewhere."

This seems to be the key quote. As a restaurant owner, as with any other type of team leader, his job is managing how the team's attention and energy is spent. Reading charitably, he doesn't want to formalize slack time into the system, because he thinks that slack will be eaten up by something else with the next process change, making the whole operation more brittle (also specifically in a restaurant setting, maximizing kitchen throughput is _not_ the same as maximizing efficient operation)

I could of course be reading too much into this, but from my own experience, it's the same difference between a sensible ad hoc meeting culture and being forced to use "efficiency" tools that inevitably make meetings less productive.

plg• 2 years ago

It’s very simple actually. “The dish” is defined as a chicken you see before it is then taken away and carved. You see your chicken. That’s the promise. If they parade around with a display chicken then it is simply dishonest. Does it matter? That is a different question entirely. The point is there is a promise involved in “the dish”. If they want to use a parade chicken then they need a different promise.

fsckboy3• 2 years ago

The quality of the food isn't the point either

quality is entirely the point, nowhere does he suggest quality is compromised; his staff's alternate idea was not reducing quality. he's making a different point.

Animats• 2 years ago

The inefficiency is the point. Doing it the long, hard and stupid way is the point.

Yes. This is what passes for "fine dining" today.

Starbucks used to make a thing of this. The process of making drinks was deliberately made manual and complicated to give customers the impression they were getting their money's worth for overpriced coffee. That was part of the Starbucks mystique, when they had one.

serallak• 2 years ago

"The hard way is pretty hard, but not as hard as the easy way"

-- Granny Weatherwax

youssefabdelm2• 2 years ago

Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way — Dogen Zenji

youssefabdelm2• 2 years ago

(It is hilarious to me that Dogen is being downvoted)

ccvannorman• 2 years ago

"The path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long"

-- Lao Tzu

trwhite• 2 years ago

This strikes me as really dumb. An efficiency that the diner would never notice and he wants to make his staff work harder to prove a point. Way to make people resent their work.

nemo44x8• 2 years ago

He believes it will bleed into other things where it does make a difference. So he takes a 0 tolerance policy into cheating so it doesn't become a habit and a culture and instead hopes to instill the value of not taking shortcuts as a measure to prevent a lapse.

yazzku• 2 years ago

As a programmer, this still seems overly dogmatic. Why not just develop the discipline to put effort where it's actually needed instead of burning gas all around like a moron? Every programmer knows this. The extreme dogma seems the real lack of discipline to me.

ABraidotti• 2 years ago

I like this. And there's a time and place for everything. If I were inclined to try this boiled chicken, hell yeah I'm going to appreciate that I'm getting served the real chicken I saw earlier AND I believe in developing that kind of kitchen culture about caring for what you make. But I also still eat pizza from the shop down the street when hungry and impatient.

Other long, hard, stupid things I like to do: read novels, take walks, invest my time to learn fundamentals of a practice

Short, easy, stupid things I like to do: skip the occasional long post on hackernews and just read the comments, automate and simplify my work, watch short videos on how to fix broken things, send one-line emails instead of sit through meetings

karaterobot3• 2 years ago

It had nothing to do with integrity. I didn’t care about fooling the diners. What concerned me was the precedent we were setting. I worried about the mindset of the server whose job it would be to parade a stunt chicken around the dining room. I was terrified of our culture stagnating.

I'm sort of surprised that he didn't worry about integrity, since it's literally an example of lying to your customers about the food they're paying for. Fooling is a pretty light word for what others would call false advertising: you tell people you're making soup out of the carcass you just ate from, and then you just don't do that. I imagine that could also have an effect on the restaurant's culture as well. I understand that fine dining is partly theatrical, but don't charge me a premium for doing something you're not actually doing and then say "fooled ya!"

refulgentis2• 2 years ago

Yeah that's what the article says, but you frame it argumentatively. He doesn't assert he doesn't care about integrity, reading it, its clear the communicated point is he cares about integrity because of how it affects culture, not just because the carcass you ate wasn't used to make soup: in that case, it'd be trivial to "solve" the problem by just not affirmatively claiming the soup was made from the exact same carcass.

karaterobot3• 2 years ago

When he said "it had nothing to do with integrity" I think he meant that it had nothing to do with personal integrity, i.e. he's not bothered by lying to customers. It's clear he cares about the morale and culture of his team, and I guess he's making some distinction I don't understand between integrity and feeling bad because you're the guy on staff parading around a decoy chicken all night. My point is that maybe they should also think about other kinds of integrity, if only not advertising a product you aren't really selling, but probably also not lying to your guests.

hammock• 2 years ago

He said if you were going to fool the guest, you had to make up for that lost energy by doing something else (or presumably lower the price)

The guest is paying for an overall experience. There are plenty of experiences where a guest is happy to pay to be lied to, like a magic show or a strip club or the Olive Garden. As long as the totality of the experience is providing enough value.

Now if you specifically chose the restaurant because of their honesty (for whatever that means), then it’s a different story

karaterobot3• 2 years ago

He said if you were going to fool the guest, you had to make up for that lost energy by doing something else (or presumably lower the price)

I think in the context of the quote, that "something else" was meant to be some extra long, hard, stupid work. He didn't mean doing something to make it up to the customers. He's worried about the mindset of his team: he wants them not to take shortcuts, but only because doing that will make them worse at their jobs in an indefinable way.

lvl1552• 2 years ago

I like him but his food is just a white-person’s version of Korean food. It’s not a bad thing but his food lacks soul and this is reflected in everything he does.

IncreasePosts• 2 years ago

Food is allowed to be different from its origins. Just parroting what Korean food already is isn't particularly special - consider that basically every Korean restaurant is doing exactly that. And that might be part of the reason they, for the most part, don't have 2 Michelin stars.

lvl1552• 2 years ago

That’s a fair point but a lot of his food may taste good to uninitiated western palate. I also see this in Indian cuisine because the spices are on the strong side, it takes awhile (years even) to be able to differentiate between good and subpar. Again, I like the guy and he worked his ass off and took necessary risks to succeed.

jancsika• 2 years ago

To complete the LARP[1], would you mind finding a boomer-age Korean father and complaining jealously about his "white-person's version of Korean food?"

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_Prodigal_Son

jppope• 2 years ago

Ignoring the explicit text which everyone seems to be overly concerned with... I'm not really worried about that. The article makes you think for a second...

The thing I like about this article is that you should be concerned with these things. You should make active decisions about quality, culture, integrity, the way you produce things, etc. You should not skip to "the long, hard, stupid way" or the shortcut in your proprietary process without consideration. Even the thought that there could be more value in an inefficient process is worth considering if you haven't before.

xivzgrev• 2 years ago

I needed to read the article a few times - the quotes from David are a bit vague.

His presented focus is on great experiences for the customer, which demands high operational excellence from his team. His team found a reasonable way to save time, but his reaction was that's the wrong focus. Focusing on saving time will eventually hurt the customer experience (like advertising models lead to enshittification), even if this particular one doesn't.

So they need to re-orient this - either go back to the hard way, or justify the easy way in terms of the customer. To quote, "they wanted to sandbag it, they needed to figure out how they would make up for the lost energy elsewhere."

skybrian• 2 years ago

I’m generally in favor of “cheap and cheerful” - that is, friendly efficiency. Doing elaborately inefficient things to justify higher prices is a turnoff.

Unfortunately, from a restaurant’s point of view, they may care about customer satisfaction, but their incentives are to get more money per visit. A lot of things restaurants do make more sense from that perspective.

For example, large portions can be seen as a way to justify moderately higher prices while keeping customers feeling like they got good value for their money. Elaborate, unnecessary service is a way to justify really high prices.

And nowadays they care less about perception, so they just add extra changes.

jrm4• 2 years ago

"I didn't care about fooling the diners."

See, that's the moment you've lost the plot. That's where, for me, I realized this article may have been dancing around a good idea, it ultimately fails.

This is the most important question of THE WHOLE THING.

Is it fair or good to FOOL THE DINERS? Would the diners even care?

These are the only two important questions, and he kind of ducked them.

joshcsimmons• 2 years ago

David Chang is the guy who sent cease and desist letters to other manufacturers selling chili crunch, a condiment that existed long before he was born. Maybe that is the "long, hard, stupid way"

tmoertel3• 2 years ago

My understanding is that another company owned the Chili Crunch trademark and took enforcement action against David Chang's company when it started selling products under that name. As part of the settlement, Chang's company ended up purchasing the trademark. As one of the obligations of owning a trademark is to enforce its use in the marketplace, Chang's lawyers did just that. But after blowback in the press, Chang arranged for the other brands to also use the trademark.

Here's a summary from NBC News:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/david-chang-momof...

bigstrat20033• 2 years ago

As one of the obligations of owning a trademark is to enforce its use in the marketplace, Chang's lawyers did just that.

There is no such obligation. Yes, if you don't enforce a trademark you can lose it, but it isn't like you will be subject to fines or something if you don't. This is a ridiculously generic trademark that never should've been granted, and if Chang (or his lawyers) were good, decent people they would've just let it be. The trademark would've lapsed, and everything would've been fine.

jarule• 2 years ago

Is the presentation bird alive or dead? What is "fired" in this context? Is the presentation bird unrested? What does "rested" mean in this context? Why does the kitchen need to "butcher" the chicken that's "rested"? Doesn't that mean the rested chicken is still alive? What does "slowing" the other, presumably presentation, chicken mean?

Spellman2• 2 years ago

The presentation bird is still dead and cooked.

A dish being "fired" means finish the cooking process, eg put into the fire.

When a meat comes out hot from the cooking process, it needs to "rest" a certain amount of time for the temperature to even out and the juices to be reabsorbed before being sliced/butchered. This is time that the diners now need to wait before they get their meal.

So, in David Chang's model, when the dish is ordered a prepared, dead chicken is "fired" and heated so that it finishes cooking. Then, while hot and still in the pot, presented to the diners. It's taken back, must rest outside of the hot boiling pot, and then is sliced into pieces and plated to be served and eaten by the guests. The remaining carcass is supposed to then be boiled down into a stock for a 3rd dish.

However, the resting and boiling steps could be skipped. Why does it all have to be the exact same chicken!? Have a presentation bird, another that is fired and rested (while the other is presented) you can carve and serve quicker, and make a large amount of bulk stock that can be served on order. The only difference is you don't have the exact same bird going through the whole 3 steps to the diners and instead have the 1. dead cooked presentation bird, 2. the carved bird, and 3. stock from a bird from yesterday.

munificent2• 2 years ago

Is the presentation bird alive or dead?

Dead and boiled.

What is "fired" in this context?

In cooking, that can mean applying direct heat in any number of ways. In this guess, I'm guessing that it means finishing (i.e. doing a last small amount of cooking for color and texture) the bird by roasting or searing.

Is the presentation bird unrested? What does "rested" mean in this context?

In cooking, resting means to remove the item from heat and let it sit for a while. Food cooks from the outside in so the surface temperature can be much higher than the internal temperature. Resting gives some time for those to equalize. It lets the inside finish cooking using the residual heat on the surface.

Why does the kitchen need to "butcher" the chicken that's "rested"?

It's a boiled whole chicken. After it's rested, it gets broken down into parts that the diner can eat. For chicken, that's usually breasts, thighs, wings, and legs/drumsticks.

What does "slowing" the other, presumably presentation, chicken mean?

Resting and breaking down a chicken takes time, especially resting. By having a separate presentation chicken, it means the staff can be simultaneously resting some other cooked chicken and butchering it while the presenetation is being paraded around.

searine• 2 years ago

Been very unimpressed with his restaurants and more-so by his personality. This hard/stupid blog post just reinforces that.

mcbrit• 2 years ago

Many chefs go on about this; I don't see anything unique or insightful in the article.

Personally, I think the Japanese ryokan tradition is amazing. It's obsessive food, and you /can/ taste the difference. I thought it was mindblowing even as a 20-sth dude in the early 2000s that grew up with Zagats in Atlanta.

The difference is spending 30 minutes (Chang) vs 30 years (ryokan).

djaouen• 2 years ago

The reality he is trying to describe is that COOKING is ART. You could take the shortcut of skipping technique and realism and go straight to splashing paint on a page, but that wouldn't be ART. You have to EARN YOUR STRIPES before you can do something like that.

0xbadcafebee• 2 years ago

There's also the long, hard, smart way. You can focus on making things excellent in a way that it actually gets easier over time. It depends on your goals.

canucker2016• 2 years ago

I have lived the story from "Eat A Peach" at the end of the article.

My family were regulars at a local Chinese restaurant for years.

One of the dishes we usually ordered was Peking Duck.

First, the waiter brought out the cooked duck on a trolley and carved up the duck, arranging the cut pieces of duck meat on a dish. The duck meat, pancakes/tortillas, sauce, and condiments were placed on the table.

At this point, the duck carcass was taken back to the kitchen to be prepared for the second dish - this restaurant just carved up the duck carcass and brought out the cut up duck carcass as a second dish.

My family were never that interested in the remaining pieces of duck since there was little meat on them.

Instead, my dad would ask the waiter to be given the duck carcass to take home so my dad could prepare the remaining duck meat his way (call him old school).

One time, after the Peking duck was presented and my dad had been given the duck carcass for later enjoyment, another waiter came out holding a dish filled with cut up pieces of duck.

But OUR duck that we ordered was in a bag near my dad.

The waiter claimed that the duck dish was for our table.

So where had the duck for the dish come from?

niceguy1827• 2 years ago

I've had similar dinning experience, where they would take the carcass and prepare a soup from it after carving meat. However, they didn't promise that your soup would only come from your duck. I got interested because if I had to prepare that soup by myself it would have taken at least one hour, but they brought it out in 10 minutes.

qwertytyyuu• 2 years ago

I'm looking at games and all the hacks the do in the name of efficiency.

challenger-derp• 2 years ago

And ultimately I think being a chef is one of the hardest jobs to motivate people because there’s no lure of a giant paycheck or bonus or stock options. You’re really trying to teach someone to better themselves through their own personal integrity.

1. jobs that are monetarily incentivized in this way are quite common though.

2. for certain kinds of jobs, if an employer desires employees to go the "long, hard, stupid way" while short-cuts lie in plain sight, the employer might wish to incorporate forms of incentives and disincentives into their payout system rather than rely on their employee to "just do it".

eps• 2 years ago

You’re really trying to teach someone to better themselves through their own personal integrity.

I am subbed to /r/KitchenConfidential sub (a place where chefs and kitchen staff hang around) and there is a constant trickle of anecdotes of Chang being one of the greatest a*holes they have ever worked for.

He doesn't teach. He screams, denigrates and have anger episodes that keep everyone in the kitchen in a constant state of fear.

For example - https://www.reddit.com/r/KitchenConfidential/comments/1c3l66...*

teractiveodular• 2 years ago

Commercial kitchens are incredibly high pressure workplaces and many famous chefs are also assholes. It doesn't excuse Chang, but there's definitely a certain personality type that's drawn to and can function in these environments.

taeric8• 2 years ago

This "high pressure workplace" has always struck me as crazy. I grant that it looks true from the anecdotes, but it also seems that the vast majority of the pressure is self created. Often times specifically created by that second point, that many famous chefs are assholes.

Worse, as most of their asshole behavior seems to stem from the fact that they are buckling under pressure. Pressure that they themselves are causing.

__loam• 2 years ago

Ironically I've heard Gordon Ramsey is actually a pretty swell guy despite the impression some of his shows give. You can see it when he's trying to genuinely empathize with the people on kitchen nightmares and actually help them, or when he goes to a place like remote India to try any chutney and he's being extremely respectful to the local culture. He gets passionate and angry but there's little condescension unless you're a professional chef who should know better and he's playing it up for the camera.

esperent• 2 years ago

Is this actually substantiated by people who've worked with him? Or is it put out by his PR team? Because I've also heard this several times, but only through comments like this on the internet.

hanwenn• 2 years ago

Both David Chang and his staff are ridiculous.

Different parts of the bird take different times to cook, so for food quality, cooking a bird as a whole makes no sense: either the breasts are overcooked, or the thighs are undercooked. There is just one reason, which is that cooking the animal whole makes for an arresting presentation. Then, you'd carve the animal tableside (like is done for Peking duck, see one of the other comments).

This requires having waitstaff that can carve a bird or having cooks that are presentable to the guests, and extra space in the dining room.

Clearly, David Chang is taking a shortcut already by carving the chicken in the kitchen.

langsoul-com• 2 years ago

This is actually quite a good point. A single person taking shortcuts is not bad, but certain things are done in a particular way for good reason.

One shortcut today is another tomorrow and the day after. It's not about the single person either, but rather the culture itself.

Now this is different from improving processes or efficiencies. The incentives and motivations also matter. Take a large group 1 hour before the restaurant closes. For the staff, it's shit, why didn't they come earlier. But for the restaurant it's great news, more money and potential repeat customers.

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

I was terrified of our culture stagnating.

That’s something I can relate to.

A lot of my personal “secret sauce” is habit, and a lot of habit is synonymous with motivation.

I find that establishing great habits has a kernel of great motivation.

Sometimes, I just do something a certain way, because of the way it makes me feel. No other reason.

Personal satisfaction and Integrity are vital parts of all that I do, and these come from a lifetime of experience.

I heard a great quote from a friend of mine, recently, who is a retired union exec:

What’s the substitute for 30 years of experience?

There is none.

supportengineer• 2 years ago

I’m a big fan of high-end restaurants, but you don’t need to show me the food and take it away and then bring it back.

I think he needs a better way to authenticate the chicken. Maybe he can use the blockchain to show proof of work.

David Chang on the long, hard, stupid way

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