[HN Gopher] David Chang on the long, hard, stupid way
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David Chang on the long, hard, stupid way
Author : herbertl
Score : 137 points
Date : 2024-09-11 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (herbertlui.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (herbertlui.net)
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| 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.
| nemo44x wrote:
| 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.
| refulgentis wrote:
| 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?
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| He has a personal brand built around his name and his in-
| person restaurant group, which are reportedly VERY good.
| Good enough that he has two Michelin stars.
|
| He has used that reputation to start selling groceries
| under the same name. They are not very good in many cases,
| but he is able to charge high prices because of good
| marketing and his famous brand (Momofuku).
|
| As an example he sells, what I judge to be not very good
| ramen noodles, for $4/pack. That is a lot of money for
| mediocre ramen noodles, even if it does have a famous name
| on the package.
|
| A successful business is one that makes profits, not one
| that makes high quality goods. A profitable business can be
| retained for the profits, or it can be sold to some other
| entity. A chef, meanwhile, only makes money while they
| work.
| radicality wrote:
| Had two Michelin stars.
|
| Momofuku Ko closed recently. I went once around 2016,
| partly exactly because of his name and brand. It was ok
| but nothing memorable, I think he wasn't even there. I
| guess the closing probably aligns with his goals of
| maximizing a brand / money, and not actually cooking good
| food.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Wow, I didn't realize Ko closed either. I went there
| around the same time and really liked it. But even then
| you could start to feel the fade a bit in what Chang did.
| He certainly had his moment and he was very influential.
| I still remember the first time I ate at Noodle Bar - was
| amazing.
|
| It looks like they've closed nearly every restaurant they
| had except a couple Noodle Bars in NYC and Vegas and some
| other restaurant. Rough times for that industry. Ssam Bar
| was a pretty good place, sort of shocked they couldn't
| keep the lights on there.
| tptacek wrote:
| Ssam Bar was really good when I went there (also closed,
| though). It was a not-fucking-around good fine-
| dining/gastropub hybrid. The Momofuku cookbook is also
| excellent, and well written.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Yeah, pretty much. He's leveraging his celebrity to sell
| over priced food relative to its quality (it's not bad per-
| se, but not worth the money) and if he can sell it before
| credibility is ruined and growth stops, he'll make a lot of
| money. Did that make it easier for you to understand?
| bluGill wrote:
| Pretty much. A great chef can only make so many meals in a
| day. That limits how much money you can make. So if you
| want to be more than a middle class income (even that is
| hard to reach) you have to do something else - become a
| brand that people will pay for, or start a business.
| tptacek wrote:
| The great chefs are virtually never making any meals in a
| day; the actual test of a high-end chef is recruiting and
| retaining a CDC, sous, and line cooks that can deliver on
| the promises the exec makes. Grant Achatz has held on to
| 3 Michelin stars for I don't know how long, but I also
| don't know when the last time was he spent a night on the
| line. I assume it was a long, long time ago.
|
| All this to say, going big doesn't necessarily mean
| blowing out all your quality.
| any_throwaway wrote:
| I'm not even sure where the over-priced and low quality
| comments are coming from. The noodles are about 2.25 if you
| buy direct and the chili crunches are all great and highly
| addictive. I guess if you instacart individual noodle packs
| you would have a different take
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| $18 + shipping for a 5 pack on his own website. $97 with
| free shipping for 30 packs. Maybe I'm seeing different
| prices since I'm in Canada?
|
| Even at $3.23 for the bulk price, it is an expensive bowl
| of ramen.
|
| I buy my chili crunch from an asian market, and both
| their fresh stuff and their packaged imported stuff is
| cheaper and tastes better. David Chang's advantage is
| that he is selling in normal grocery stores so there
| isn't really competition. Put his stuff on a shelf at an
| asian market where there is 5 or 6 different brands and a
| consumer base that has been buying this for years, and
| they won't sell.
| nemo44x wrote:
| His chili crunch is fine but costs significantly more
| than many other chili crunch brands which are fine too.
| You're paying for the Momofuku branding on it that makes
| certain types of consumers feel good about themselves.
|
| God, don't get me started on how insane his asking price
| for the "restaurant grade" soy sauce is. This is all
| subjective opinion on the quality and cost of good, of
| course. But the costs per ounce are very easy to shop.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| His chili crunch has a lot of sugar, so it tastes great.
| Most other chili crunches are more subdued on that front.
| chambored wrote:
| The Momofuku soy sauce is $1.31/oz while the Kikkoman's
| soy sauce is $0.37/oz. Truly ridiculous pricing.
| nemo44x wrote:
| His rice vinegar, which apparently is "restaurant tested"
| and has taken "years of research" to create the "vinegar
| of their dreams" is even worse in terms of pricing. But
| "you've never tasted anything like this before" as it
| comes from their "proprietary blend of rice".
|
| Professional marketing copy like this costs money. When
| Chef Chang says "Buy it!" the only response is "YES
| CHEF!".
| Spellman wrote:
| I actually put his in a lineup with others when I got in
| a chili oil craze.
|
| And while it definitely is good quality, it isn't mind
| blowing. And I personally prefer other brands instead!
| It's also, to my taste, much more Americanized. Much more
| refined sugar and using a different less complex method
| for the umami.
|
| It's still delicious, but I personally won't be getting
| it again.
| debacle wrote:
| It tastes burnt to me.
| downut wrote:
| I've been eating packaged ramen since when I had to and
| when I saw momofuku "tingly chili" noodle packages I
| bought 4. Don't remember the price, it was immaterial.
|
| Turns out they're so boring and flavorless that 2
| packages have been sitting on the shelf for 6 months. I
| thought I would have an idea what to do with them but so
| far no. I keep home toasted/ground Szichuan peppercorns
| in my pantry so I can get any level of "tingly" that I
| want but come on, there needs to be something else.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I've had these Momofuku instant noodles... I thought the
| noodles themselves were pretty good but the sauces were
| nothing special. The noodles are definitely just the same
| stuff A-Sha already sold on their own, and apparently
| many of the flavors are too, with Momofuku mostly
| contributing the branding.
| hinkley wrote:
| This is all reminding me of the mean dude in Ratatouille.
| Only the mean dude is now also Gasteau.
| hinkley wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| knowitnone wrote:
| I don't believe you. If a restaurant is unprofitable, it
| would be closed. Nobody in their right mind would choose to
| continue losing money.
| itishappy wrote:
| > Nobody in their right mind would choose to continue
| losing money.
|
| In isolation, sure, but losing money in one area to make
| money (or some other form of currency such as fame) in
| another sounds a lot more reasonable. That's what a loss
| leader is.
| moate wrote:
| Exactly! Every restauranteur knows the steak draws the
| attention but you pay your bills with baked potatoes and
| creamed spinach. There are only a handful of restaurant
| that are able to operate on that level, but the food
| loses money so you can make money on the cook books or
| merch or other opportunities (or even other restaurants.
| I promise you craftwich and craft have very different
| operation budgets/profitability).
| Ekaros wrote:
| When Michelin stars get involved it becomes really
| intrinsic(not monetary) vs extrinsic values. At certain
| levels of passion just achieving and keeping a star has
| value in itself. This then often comes with monetary
| cost.
|
| Many of the chefs pushing for Michelin stars likely are
| not in their right mind.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| we already know that many top restaurants are toxic work
| environments with rampant drug abuse and scandals.
| hinkley wrote:
| Forbes interviewed a bunch of chefs about what they think
| of The Bear.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristinwolfe/2024/07/31/real
| -ta...
|
| Seems to be considered fairly biographical.
| hinkley wrote:
| You don't think there are rich backers out there willing
| to eat money on a restaurant in order to achieve status
| amongst their peers?
| InitialLastName wrote:
| If this were true, nobody would ever try to build a
| career as an artist.
| moate wrote:
| Hi there! Please google "el buli profitable". "The
| exception that proves the rule" or proof that some
| restaurants aren't about making money through food sales
| alone.
|
| Also, I spent a decade working in restaurants, I never
| met a single back of house employee that was in their
| right mind (myself included). It's an entirely different
| breed from the HN set.
| detourdog wrote:
| I can't figure out where ambition and rationality
| diverge.
| silverlake wrote:
| They do not break even on food alone. All their profits
| come from alcohol sales.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Money laundering? Drinks? Both?
| willcipriano wrote:
| A lot of people buy a business so that they can say they
| are a business owner instead of a inheritor.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > 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.
| chubot wrote:
| 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)
| geodel wrote:
| 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)
| apsurd wrote:
| Who or what is SC?
| infecto wrote:
| Typo, DC not SC. David Chang
| detourdog wrote:
| You want to be chef you have to be in the kitchen.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| 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.
| chubot wrote:
| The stores in Manhattan are also packaged food! They don't
| make them there either
|
| It's basically like they bought some Chips Ahoy from Target
| and devoted an entire store to reselling it, with prime
| real estate
|
| I mean maybe part of that was a pandemic thing, but I
| remember thinking how bad it was before the pandemic
| paxys wrote:
| Milk Bar only ever worked when it was Christina Tosi's
| personal baking project. The second they tried to corporatize
| it, it was done.
| chubot wrote:
| But why? How is it different than any other bakery?
|
| You can open a second location of a bakery and maintain the
| same quality ...
|
| Anecdotally more than 5 locations seems to be a problem (my
| guess is some kind of management scaling issue like
| Dunbar's law)
|
| But it seems they never went through the phase of 2 or 3
| locations, or just quickly zoomed past it into packaged and
| preserved foods. With the actual stores also selling
| packaged foods
|
| Maybe she had enough friends in the restaurant business to
| know that managing 2 or 3 locations is probably a hell-ish
| part of your career (???)
|
| i.e. maybe you are doing a lot more work, not getting to
| actually make any food, and you might not make as much
| money (e.g. each new store is a big risk I imagine)
| paxys wrote:
| Milk bar was never a regular bakery. Its items mostly got
| popular because of their creativity and uniqueness. But
| when you scale it out and stop innovating, it's not
| unique any more.
| weaksauce wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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"
| addicted wrote:
| It's annoying. Every time a company does basic enforcement
| they are required to by law to maintain their trademark,
| they get bonded and we go through the same cycle of outrage
| with the sensible people explaining that trademarks aren't
| like patents and if someone is going around using your
| trademark, you will lose it.
|
| Then the outrage dies down only to have the cycle repeated
| a few weeks later.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| He trademarked "chili crunch" which is just what that
| food is called.
|
| It's like trying to trademark "breakfast cereal" or "hot
| sauce".
|
| If it had gone to court he would have lost eventually
| since other people had been using that name earlier for
| the same product, and it was too broad
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| The problem is that the trademark was too generic (chili
| crunch, to be exact) and he was going after brands that
| sold a product that had always been known as that or
| crunchy chili oil, or chili crunch oil.
|
| He didn't invent the food, and started going after small
| brands and people that had been selling it since before he
| had tried registering the trademark.
|
| He did eventually back down.
| weaksauce wrote:
| yeah i fully understand that but his trademark was way too
| generic in the first place. used for a long time before
| that. i have the same issue with backcountry dot com over
| the widely used term backcountry before they named
| themselves backcountry... it's scummy.
| tempodox wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Advertising is always attempting to disguise itself as
| anything other than advertising.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| 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.
| paxys wrote:
| 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.
| shahahmed wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| bluGill wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| munificent wrote:
| I think a charitable interpretation of his point is "I
| didn't care about fooling the diners _about this specific
| thing_. "
|
| But if he allows that to happen and the staff internalizes
| a culture of corner-cutting and misdirection, then
| eventually they'll start lying to customers and taking
| shortcuts on things that _do_ matter.
| detourdog wrote:
| I would describe it as "founder mode". If he lets the
| restaurant morph its process while he is outside the
| kitchen the vision is lost.
|
| Obviously young and hungry with nothing to lose but your
| standards one can make certain decisions that build the
| story and the quality.
|
| Once the weekly payroll is $140k a week plus all the
| other expenses selling one's name seems justified to keep
| the balls in the air.
|
| The problem is the idea of the billionaire chef.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| So, the idea is the long, hard, stupid and disrespectful
| way.
|
| Basically, the idea is you don't want smart people who
| can decide what corners make sense to cut, what process
| to use to etc.
|
| And this is because you don't want to have to rely on
| their intelligence. You want to rely on only your
| process, so you hire those without sense or intelligence
| as you expand.
| jfengel wrote:
| "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_ wrote:
| Hmmm, that sounds less like the "inefficiency" advertisements
| with lots of empty space and stores with large but sparse
| interiors.
|
| It's not so much *actual" inefficiency as a decision to make
| an expenditure on marketing and advertising, attempting to
| convey "luxury" or "successfulness".
| brigadier132 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > "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 wrote:
| 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.
| serallak wrote:
| "The hard way is pretty hard, but not as hard as the easy way"
|
| -- Granny Weatherwax
| youssefabdelm wrote:
| Those who seek the easy way do not seek the true way -- Dogen
| Zenji
| ccvannorman wrote:
| "The path forward seems to go back, the direct path seems long"
|
| -- Lao Tzu
| trwhite wrote:
| 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.
| nemo44x wrote:
| 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.
| ABraidotti wrote:
| 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
| karaterobot wrote:
| > 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!"
| refulgentis wrote:
| 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.
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| karaterobot wrote:
| > 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.
| lvl155 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| lvl155 wrote:
| 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.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I'm fine with fusion foods, and borrowing from different
| cultures to make something new.
|
| The problem with Momofuku Goods (No idea about ther
| resaturant group) is that they aren't even good to the
| unrefined palate. I'm not particularly tuned into the asian
| cuisines that he specializes in, but I can tell you that
| his packaged noodles are pretty middling even by grocery
| store ramen standards.
| jancsika wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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"
| tmoertel wrote:
| 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...
| jarule wrote:
| 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?
| Spellman wrote:
| 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.
| munificent wrote:
| _> 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 wrote:
| Been very unimpressed with his restaurants and more-so by his
| personality. This hard/stupid blog post just reinforces that.
| mcbrit wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
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