The Dave Chang Show

Dave calls up Will Guidara, the front-of-house half of the partnership that took Eleven Madison Park to the top of the hospitality stratosphere, to talk about Will’s new book (‘Unreasonable Hospitality’), how he reshaped EMP, and what the next generation of cutting-edge restaurants might look like. Also: coffee that tastes like soup, instant-ramen ratios, oomori servings, the fruit-medley gambit,...

With the do-or-die plans for MDM’s next phase finally in motion, Dave, Chris, and Noelle sit down for a soul-baring state of the union. They discuss how Dave thinks about big swings in the face of existential risks, in restaurants, and everywhere else. Also: the coming XLB strain, Dave building his ark, restaurant problem-solving vs. real-life problem-solving, Rob Dyrdek, the one-basket strategy,...

Venturing behind the scenes of the best kitchens of the world and Dave’s own decidedly uneven TikTok feed, Dave and Chris map out the best ways to navigate over-the-top marathon dinners, social media pseudo-experts, and several other perils of modern life—and then debate how and when the Wheel of Constraint might rear its spinning head again. Plus: Nobu water, temperance menus, surviving the Frenc...

Midway through their eating careers, how do Dave and his fellow food obsessives appraise the dishes they first loved, and how do they find new ones to rank as great? Dave lays out what he looks for now, then he and Chris compare notes on the do’s and don’ts of shopping at Asian grocery stores. Also: recording in the pillow room, Dave’s football career, foie gras dreams, the lost art of sauces, a p...

Looking at a hopefully post-pandemic New York from all different angles—the vibe-drenched streets of Dimes Square, a festival stage in Chelsea, Jean-Georges’s lastest masterwork in the South Street Seaport, and the moments after a could-have-been-worse car crash on the West Side Highway—Dave’s offering up some predictions of what’s next for his hometown. Then, to round things out, Chris and Noelle...

Dave and Chris are breaking in the new MDM office with an on-the-fly #AskDave, covering all the topics other shows are afraid to talk about: fear in Home Depot, MacGyver-ing your own podcast studio, treating scimitar wounds, NASA-approved hot sauces, the problem with tater tots, bachelor pad grocery budgets, Transitions lenses, burping your kimchi jars, psilocybin butter sauce, and Dave’s favorite...

Chasing the thrill of a DIY meal from Nairobi to Japan to Alhambra, Dave and Chris ponder hot-pot economics and then call up 'Chefs vs. Wild' host Kiran Jethwa for a closer look at what its contestants were up against—and at where it might go next. Also encountered along the way: unapologetically Asian farmers markets, jalapeño cream cheese rolls, cooking a whole ostrich, watching George Clinton a...

With another new MDM show out on Hulu, Pizzana chef and 'Best in Dough' judge Daniele Uditi weighs in on great pizza, bizarro pizza, and pizza that should probably be called something else entirely. Then Dave, Chris, and Noelle dive into their own 'Best in Dough'-inspired pizza reveries. Plus, working in kitchens vs. working in TV, Manhattan cyclist Dave Chang, breakfast pizza, matzoh pizza, the w...

In celebration of Majordomo Media’s newest Hulu show, 'Chefs vs. Wild,' Dave, Chris, and Noelle appraise their own chances of making it through a multi-day, survivalist-foraging gauntlet in the remote Canadian wilderness—and Chris calls up contestant Viet Pham to hear how intense the adventure really was. Also: 'Survivorman,' 'Naked and Afraid,' imagining what would happen if the people on 'Alone'...

Inspired by the last episode, Dave went fishing—and returned with stories of crushing defeat on the high seas and exhilarating victory at the hotel restaurant. Plus: a toast to Chris Bianco, angering the Mayan gods, a little lobster shack near Punta Allen, searching for John Borda, thermo-irreversible gels, confidence cooking, Mr. Beast Burger, skiing the quadruple black diamond, watching elves on...

Determined to eat more seafood but dismayed by what he sees on the shelf, Dave surveys the state of the seascape for the American home cook, and offers a few of his rules for steering clear of the second-rate stuff. Also: restaurant fish vs. supermarket fish, breaking out the yanagi, the deliciousness of fish skin, shellfish protocol, spicy tuna rolls, dining-room aquariums, swordfish au poivre, '...

In a rare before-sunset Q&A, Dave fields a new volley of listener questions—and returns fire with takes on mori soba, typhoon summers, masochistic salarymen, the permafat tonkotsu layer, kimchi fridges, Idaho shrimp, Pharrell Williams, a Chris Ying dancing meme, baked ziti, Korean-mom rumor networks, blanching beef, lemur puffs, egg rafts, gelatin wizardry, deploying the giant ice ball at the hot...

With summer over and school in session, it’s officially a new year for restaurants—and Dave has a few soon-to-open places on his must-visit list, and a few predictions to make about where things might go next. Plus: Hugo escape tactics, pre-K John Bonham, fake Momofuku menus, the no-PR approach, making bad situations happen, befriending your nemesis, the return of Superiority Burger and Torrisi It...

With a passel of hungry, up-and-coming eaters to please, Dave and Chris face a big question every day: Can their cooking help their kids embrace new tastes and new combinations? (And: Is it too late to expand their own deeply seasoned palates, too?) They call up “disgust studies” expert Dr. Paul Rozin to learn more, and offer up an array of their own takes on flying with kids, the A-Team, condense...

A week by the seaside has Dave finding inspiration at both Wetzel’s Pretzels and Nobu Malibu, and thinking about all the shapes the second half of a creative career can take. He catches Chris up on his misadventures, and contemplates Robuchon potatoes, the Santa Monica promenade, hot dogs on tasting menus, spirulina boosts, stroller dogs, vampire rules, knockoff mercenaries, fried rock shrimp, wha...

With a couple more 'Bear' episodes under his belt, Dave dives into a breakneck elucidation of one of the show’s dramatic engines—the classical Escoffier kitchen brigade system, and the huge role it still plays in top-tier restaurants today. Analyzed along the way: Frank Ceruti, the two types of CDC, piano ranges, coal runners, sabotaging Chris at the poissonnier station, fish fumet, meat-roast squ...

Culture moves in cycles, and so too do the ways we eat—which has Dave looking for early warning signs of what’s around the corner. He fills us in on what he’s hearing from peers, what the arc of modern plating presages about the turns to come, and a whole lot more, including: pizza-shop paninis, top-tier bodegas, trompe-l’oeil grill marks, New York in the mid-'90s, analog cooking, the Nirvana–Nick...

Fresh off finally watching the first episode of 'The Bear,' Dave breaks down what the show reveals about the surreal ways time can move inside an ambitious kitchen. Plus: a nail-biting moment at Fresh Brothers Pizza, the Golden Idol, Julian Jaynes, Delta-lounge buffet medleys, steak-for-two-for-one, seven-minute family meal, night porters, Hainanese chicken rice, the beauty of Greek pizza, the eur...

A Cometeer-fueled trip to the Codfish State has Dave buzzing with new discoveries about how to make familiar things just a little bit better—and how to make the modern-day airport experience a good bit worse. Also covered: what to eat near Gloucester, Joe Versus the Volcano, Spider-Tracers, a shout-out to Claud, Tristar strawberries, Jimmy Nardellos, gourmet Cold Stone, Dave becoming a coffee tast...

Altered-state Dave and Chris embark on another late-night Q&A, covering the sublime, the agonizing, and everything in between—including Aaron Rodgers’s offseason activities. Also, Dave’s thoughts on the Road House remake, Conor McGregor taking up acting, the boba flavor Blade Runner test (and Dave’s current order), extra dense oat milk, near-future gorgonzola, irrational food aversions, imperial d...

Every parent dreams of giving their kids a perfect mix of the delicious and the nutritious—but once those kids begin to get other ideas about what they’d like to eat, the most important ingredient might be a little misdirection. With the help of our friends at buybuy BABY, Dave and Chris present our second Clean Plate Club summit on the highs and lows of surreptitious nutrition. Plus: parent theor...

There’s no better way to celebrate Dave Chang’s forty-fifth trip around the sun than an end-of-summer MOIF, featuring such hot-button topics as: Mike Birbiglia, a flawless visit to Providence, mid-meal malingering, touching the stew, Dion Waiters, dish traffic control, the In-N-Out-order phantom zone, shrimp heads, seasonal restaurants, Midwest supper clubs, fear of teenagers, and the farmers’ mar...

Before Neo learned to read the green rain of code that made up the Matrix, before even Sherlock Holmes devised a way to describe a man based on a glance at a forgotten walking stick, restaurant kitchen staff were doing pretty much the same thing every time a new order ticket came into their kitchens. Dave, Chris, and Noelle dig into what can be gleaned from those black-and-white lines listing entr...

Food may be a universal language, but how much gets lost in translation when you're eating in a place where you're not a native speaker? Dave shares a few of his recent linguistic travails, and compares notes with Noelle and Chris, before revisiting the rural Osaka ramen-shop moment that very likely changed his life. Also: Dave as the Park's BBQ shepherd, locals-only restaurants, a return to Duck...

On a bounteous, bento box-style multi-segment episode, Dave delves into a few recent home-cooking successes before turning to a whirlwind assessment of the fast-food french fry landscape (23:00) and finishing off with a few ways forward for restaurants in our image-saturated age (41:45). Also discussed: cultural chewiness preferences, Dave's favorite protein, family-friendly jangjorim, mapo tofu,...