Top 50 David Chang Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We’re hoping to succeed; we’re okay with failure. We just don’t want to land in between.”

— David Chang

2. “Cooking and gardening involve so many disciplines: math, chemistry, reading, history.”

— David Chang

3. “I constantly think I’m a fraud, that this success is not warranted or justified.”

— David Chang

4. “I felt on the verge of something. I was about to grow, but I couldn’t access the best version of myself while I was medicated.”

— David Chang

5. “Food, to me, is always about cooking and eating with those you love and care for.”

— David Chang

6. “True balance is not an average. It is two forces in equal measure.”

— David Chang

7. “If you hold on too tightly to what you have, it’ll only hurt more once it’s gone.”

— David Chang

8. “I was going to either fail or thrive, and I was going to do it in full view of everyone I respected and resented.”

— David Chang

9. “Lifes too short to just breeze on by.”

— David Chang

10. “I love chicken. I love chicken products: fried chicken, roasted chicken, chicken nuggets – whatever. And going to Japan, I would see that these chicken were smoked and then grilled and then have this amazing crispy skin.”

— David Chang

11. “To eat well, I always disagree with critics who say that all restaurants should be fine dining. You can get a Michelin star if you serve the best hamburger in the world.”

— David Chang

12. “You can’t go into the chef’s office of any serious kitchen and not see a copy of Larousse. A must-have for professional and home cooks alike.”

— David Chang

13. “I find that there are a lot of similarities between French and Japanese food. I think they’re two countries that have really systemized their cuisine and codified it.”

— David Chang

14. “I look forward to the spring vegetables because the season is so short. Mushrooms, edible foraged herbs, wild leeks, early season asparagus.”

— David Chang

15. “People don’t think that bread is part of Asian culture or Asian food culture, but it’s quite prevalent in Northern China, and you see it throughout Japan and as you go to Taiwan.”

— David Chang

16. “Fine dining teaches you how to cook many different things, and it gives you the basic fundamentals, but these specialty restaurants, theyre not teaching you the broad foundation you need to become a well-rounded cook.”

— David Chang

17. “The livelihood of the restaurant is dependent upon getting the word out. There’s so much more competition. You can do an event every week and not cook at all.”

— David Chang

18. “Contemporary ramen is totally different than what most Americans think ramen should be. Ramen is not one thing; there are many, many different types.”

— David Chang

19. “Organic growth, I always say, means having absolutely no strategy.”

— David Chang

20. “The paradox for the workaholic is that rock bottom is the top of whatever profession they’re in.”

— David Chang

21. “Just know that this is as honest and true a story as I can offer.”

— David Chang

22. “You’ll always lose when you play someone else’s game.”

— David Chang

23. “If anything, the drugs were a gasp of air between waves crashing down on my head.”

— David Chang

24. “I don’t believe in soul mates or the idea that there’s one person on earth for each of us, but when I try to envision someone who might stick with me for the rest of her life, I can only imagine Grace.”

— David Chang

25. “Make it happen” is the standing order, and “Yes, chef” is the only response.”

— David Chang

26. “Deliciousness is a meme. Its appeal is universal, and it will spread without consideration of borders or prejudice.”

— David Chang

27. “Recovering alcoholics talk about needing to hit rock bottom before they are able to climb out. The paradox for the workaholic is that rock bottom is the top of whatever profession they’re in.”

— David Chang

28. “We realized that everything can be Korean or Mexican or Japanese or Italian, and that American food can be anything. Nothing we cooked was authentic. It was neither here nor there, which made it ours.”

— David Chang

29. “We can refind it later, but the only way to shut out all the unnecessary doubts in your head is to impose a deadline.”

— David Chang

30. “When I started Momofuku, I killed the version of me that didn’t want to stick his neck out or take chances. Even in its larval stages, when it was more theory than restaurant, Momofuku was about carving out some form of identity for myself. It would be my way of rejecting what the tea leaves said about me. Work made me a different person. Work saved my life.”

— David Chang

31. “You never know who’s going to hold the keys to the castle. It’s tempting to think you’re too important to speak to the young intern who’s been sent to interview you or the blogger who only has fifty followers. But if they approach you respectfully and earnestly, you should never be so stupid and arrogant as to dismiss them. If you brush off one too many smart kids, you’re bound to make a lifelong enemy out of a future media mogul.”

— David Chang

32. “Whether it’s a cooking demo or a collaborative dinner, trying to impress people is a fool’s errand.”

— David Chang

33. “You need to believe more deeply than anyone else. You build a cult by showing everyone that you are willing to go further than all of them to see out your vision. You can’t ask everyone else to swallow the Kool-Aid if you’re not going to take the first gulp.”

— David Chang

34. “This all raises the question of whether depression is something you can control by simply sucking it up. My answer is no, I don’t think you can overcome it with willpower, but I do believe that dealing with depression is a choice that needs to be made. You have to choose to stand up every day and keep going. To reject your default settings.”

— David Chang

35. “For everything you make easier, make something else more difficult. Buy yourself some time so you can spend that time pushing yourself in new directions.”

— David Chang

36. “Change is guaranteed, but growth isn’t.”

— David Chang

37. “In case you can’t tell, I’m doing all this throat-clearing as a stall tactic. I’m delaying you from getting into the book, because honestly, I’m extremely nervous about you reading it.”

— David Chang

38. “We ordered within our budget, but the kitchen crushed us with extra food. I mean crushed. More dishes than any VIP table ever got. When I opened the check at the end of the meal, I found a handwritten note from Marco: Thank you for all of your hard work. This meal is on us. I wept like a baby.”

— David Chang

39. “What happens to a cook’s motivation when the job becomes about maintenance and not improvement?”

— David Chang

40. “When we do events for the sake of ego, we usually pay the price in cash money.”

— David Chang

41. “All I ever wanted was to be normal, to think normal. I’m not a naturally loquacious person. I’m not outgoing or inclined to be a leader. I’m a wallflower. It’s been like that since I was a kid. For the majority of my life I was somewhere between ashamed and afraid of my Koreanness. I wanted not to be me, which is why drugs – both illicit and prescribed – appeal to me.”

— David Chang

42. “With a third star, you do everything you can to avoid disturbing the delicate balance you’ve created. No grind. No friction. You’re trapped by your own self-confidence, scared to abandon what you know already works.”

— David Chang

43. “I was now close to defining my life’s work. My brain was on a quest to uncover the underlying systems in the cosmos and then bring that knowledge back to the dining room.”

— David Chang

44. “I began to question the validity of various cultural truths. Who gets to assign value to certain foods? What makes something acceptable or not? Why was MSG villainized in Chinese restaurants but fine when it occurred naturally in Parmesan?”

— David Chang

45. “We humans are more alike in our tastes than we think. Even with completely different tools and ingredients, we’re bound to arrive at the same conclusions.”

— David Chang

46. “But if you’ve fought depression or know somebody who has, you know that no amount of money can fix it. No amount of fame. No logic. The continuing stigma around suicide and mental illness tells me that not enough people truly understand it. I don’t really blame them – its impossible unless you’ve lived it.”

— David Chang

47. “Man, it was the polar opposite. From the grocery stands and yakitori joints in Japan to the stalls along the hutongs of Beijing, enjoying food was foundational. Dining out was attainable and affordable, a crucial part of daily life. Even in Virginia lower-middle-class Asian families would go out to dinner once a week at a Chinese restaurant. The idea that people with less money could not appreciate better food was a fallacy.”

— David Chang

48. “I wanted so badly to please him and my mom. I was simply incapable. What happens when you live with a tiger that you can’t please is that you’re always afraid.”

— David Chang

49. “I’ve talked a great deal about the importance of failure as a learning tool, but it’s really a privilege to expect people to let us fail over and over again. There are too many dudes in my story in general, and you can still sense my bro-ish excitement when I tell old war stories... It’s my truth, which is why I’m leaving them in here, but I wish that some of it were different.”

— David Chang

50. “You simply can’t rely on common wisdom in the kitchen. Most of it is built on half-truths and outdated assumptions. Be open to every idea.”

— David Chang