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.
