The Dave Chang Show

What was life like for a young New York chef chasing a dream in the early 2000s? Milk Bar founder and Dave Chang chosen-family member Christina Tosi was there to see it, and her latest book, 'Dessert Can Save the World,' relays a lot of what she learned then and since. Christina calls up Dave and Chris to consider what she and Dave were like in their 20s, the smile vs. the grimace, the power of no...

With a crab-or-prime-rib-driven 80th birthday party to plan, Dave, Chris, and Noelle set out to survey the Southern California seafood-banquet landscape, and attempt to chart the ideal parameters of a celebratory family meal. Also explored: Dave’s body falling apart, a real-life candy draft, whether Veggie Straws are vegetables, Brodard Chateau, Dave’s thoughts on Renaissance architecture, Noelle’...

The eminent author of 'The Food Lab' and the just-released 'The Wok' joins Dave and Chris to talk about life as a lodestar to a generation of cooks, being a dad, and how he feels about making food at home. Plus: debunking the restaurant-burner requirement, our collective no-recipe moment, encountering your mom’s YouTube history, Googling jambalaya, perfection vs. discovery, Harold McGee, canon vs....

After comparing notes on their latest LA exploits, Dave, Chris, and Noelle step into the My Opinion is Fact arena once again—before deciding that the time is right for an impromptu assessment of the national chain-restaurant landscape. Discussed along the way: frozen langoustines, Dave eating clean, double-fried kakiage, another visit to Disneyland, the mainstreaming of birria, mustard martinis, g...

'Big Mouth' and 'Human Resources' creator (and Dave’s old friend!) Nick Kroll is back on the show to talk about new projects, new parenthood, and all the internal juggling and existential turmoil these achievements entail. Also: Staten Island pub crawls, working with Mel Brooks on 'History of the World, Part II,' making babies use Waze, appeasing your inner demons, terrible kitchen analogies, the...

Powered by half a glass of Hibiki, it’s time for Dave to go toe to toe with the latest listener questions plucked from the Majordomo Media Discord—and tonight, he’s determined to take down the Picnic Industrial Complex once and for all. Also swept up in the battle: sleeping in the goal at soccer practice, admitting to being a lurker on your own Discord server, eating in bed vs. eating outside, cat...

Dave and Chris call up Sean Evans, the hot-sauce-hardened host of 17 seasons of 'Hot Ones,' to find out exactly how he puts together one of the best interview shows out there. Discussed: disarming your guests with pain, believing in the show before it caught on, rappelling down a waterfall with Bear Grylls, the preternatural serenity of Lorde, the Dave Grohl approach, Japanese game show levels of...

It’s the end of a revelatory month on the Wheel of Constraint, and our hosts have convened to assess their achievements, consider some potentially transcendental spins on the challenge, and celebrate very nearly making it through—but not before wrestling with a potentially life-threatening Discord debate. Also: Milk Bar ice cream, Dave’s duplicate-shirt strategy, going all in on dinner, recipes th...

After a debrief on the ups and downs of Dave’s first tour of dad duty at the Happiest Place on Earth, Dave and Chris call up Domee Shi, the director of Pixar’s latest release, to hear about how her new film came together. Discussed: Dole Whip, Toronto Chinatowns, the emotions inspired by boy bands, early 2000s nostalgia, getting kicked out of boarding school, eel fried rice, art-directing pork sli...

On a rare four-mic episode, longtime friend of the show Anoop Pillarisetti lays out his Crescent City essentials before recounting his own recent ride on the Wheel of Inspirational Constraint: a chewable-food-free week of Soylent. Also covered: Andre Agassi’s stylistic legacy, hazardous pistachios, Soylent Stockholm syndrome, the Vegas blip, Dave’s new favorite ice cream, considering being a keto...

Dave and Chris call up Stanley Cheng, CEO since 1972 of the cookware-revolutionizing Meyer Corporation, for an insider’s guide to the industry and a few sure-fire picks for home cooks. Discussed: a positive version of Hydra, cooking with Targaryen dragon fire, abandoning the cast-iron skillet, the right pans to buy, flat-bottom woks, the slipperiest material in the world, the silicone-coating rack...

It’s Day 7 of Noelle’s Trader Joe’s–only diet, so at the tail end of that experiment within an experiment, Dave and Chris check in on Noelle’s highs and lows. Also: quantifying grocery store quality, tantrums on a plane, shrimp scampi pizza, a dearth of snow crab, and another poor soul entering the Wheel of Constraint’s dreadful grasp. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Noelle Cornelio Produc...

What happens when the Wheel of Constraint rolls into the City of Second Chances? Dave reports on a weekend to remember in Las Vegas, and Chris and Noelle weigh in with their own wheel-inspired winnings. Also: an erotic ramen photo shoot, honey-butter hot chips, meeting your match at Moon Palace, an extremely delicious rum, what to order from room service at 4 a.m., mortadella penance, some wise ad...

With Week 1 of their Wheel of Constraint ordeal wrapping up, Dave, Chris, and Noelle might just be close to the renewed food gratitude they’ve been hoping for. But with that gain comes the requisite pain. Discussed on today’s MOIF: drinking from a puddle on 1st Avenue, self-soothing with shellfish, Dave endangering the no-sugar seal, pining for tortellini, new frontiers in freeze-dried food, the m...

It’s the only day of the year that stands neck and neck with SantaCon in the cockles of Dave’s heart—which means it’s time for an especially amorous #AskDave After Dark. Among the topics tenderly contemplated: why everything that tastes good is bad for you, eating Mexican food in Northern Virginia, considering a career as a master pickpocket, setting Dave Chang traps in Bristol Farms, the enigma o...

Dave, Chris, and Noelle check in midway through Day 1 of a monthlong sugar-banishment ordeal, and things are already looking tense. With two meals down and 88 to go, are they prepared to make it to the mountaintop? Surveyed through the hunger pangs: what Dave had for lunch, a NASA recipe taste test, eating cassoulet on the space station, the underground MRE economy, negotiating the terms of the no...

Dave, Chris, and Noelle assemble for a fortifying round of MOIF before grappling with their greatest challenge yet: the Wheel of Inspirational Constraint. Assessed along the way: lemon-pepper bagels, land scurvy, America’s Most Valuable Texture, Dave’s pyrotechnic oven mitt test, the importance of the single-purpose kitchen towel, making Teddy Roosevelt proud, cutting the top of your finger off on...

Galaxy Digital CEO, prison reform advocate, and blockchain evangelist Mike Novogratz returns to the show to guide Dave and Chris through the wilds of web3, NFTs, and the crypto economy, and to break down what it all might mean for art, entertainment, and the way we eat. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Mike Novogratz Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit p...

Dave, Chris, and Noelle combine their MOIF powers once again, in an action-packed episode encompassing Chris burning his eyebrows off, keeping your friends close but not too close, Peking duck pizza, taking on Big Oven Mitt, flats vs. drumettes, dinner-table privacy screens, movie-theater nacho cheese, the beauty of 'Ratatouille,' the Dave Chang cut of 'Julie & Julia,' and the thrilling debut of t...

A few weeks ago, Henry Louis Gates brought Dave onto PBS’s 'Finding Your Roots' for a deep dive into the Chang family lineage—and turned up some incredible stories of intercontinental achievement and Jazz Age entrepreneurialism along the way. Today, Professor Gates joins us to discuss his own journey, his hot-sauce collection, and what they discovered in the far reaches of the Chang family tree. H...

Does wanting to make pizza at home mean the universe is telling you to never, ever make pizza at home? Dave straps on his Socratic sandals to guide us through a head-spinning dilemma, alongside metaphysical considerations of food-photo truthers, perfect-email hell, making your own wedding cake, the calzone-shaped cup of the carpenter, and the worst pizza Dave has ever had. Hosts: Dave Chang and Ch...

The creator of the captivating podcast turned TV show 'Song Exploder' joins Dave and Chris to explore the kitchen equivalent of demo tapes, the as-yet-unrealized dream that is Cookie Exploder, that time U2 put an album on everyone’s phone, eating like a Buddhist monk, disrobing at a dinner party, what makes great restaurant music, and Dave’s unbroken record of never having watched 'The West Wing.'...

Dave and Chris assemble for a late-night review of recent meals, the best sick-day foods, and a few different international mysteries. Also considered: the healing powers of mapo tofu, Dave's post–'Hot Ones' death throes, eating beef jerky in Copenhagen, asking for seconds at the sushiya, chicken soup component rankings, Dave's praise for matzo balls, the ham–chicken broth nexus, eating as exercis...

When L.A.’s Guelaguetza restaurant opened in the mid-’90s, mole and mezcal and all the other treasures of Oaxacan cuisine were a long way from the cachet they carry today. Co-owner Bricia Lopez joins Dave and Chris to talk about how her family helped put their culture on the map. Discussed: where Dave will retire, hunting wild boar in the 1930s, opening a Oaxacan restaurant in Koreatown, eating tl...

We were supposed to record a MOIF, but Dave and Chris got in an argument about the topic. One wanted to talk about curry. The other wanted meatloaf. Which one would you rather they discussed? Well, it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t end up talking about either. This is what a podcast sounds like after our cohosts fight, storm off, make up, and finally record a podcast about their kids being th...