Michelle: 'The customer is always right.' We've all heard it, right? It's the first rule of business. Mark: It’s practically tattooed on every manager’s soul. Michelle: But what if the secret to building a global culinary empire, a brand that changed modern dining, was telling a customer, to their face, to go fuck themselves? Mark: Whoa. Okay, that is definitely not in the training manual. That sounds less like a business plan and more like a career-ending Tuesday. Michelle: And yet, that’s the kind of brutal, unapologetic, and surprisingly profound honesty we are diving into today. It all comes from David Chang’s incredible memoir, Eat a Peach. Mark: Right, and this isn't your typical celebrity chef book. Chang is famously candid, but what's wild is that he co-wrote this with Gabe Ulla, and they deliberately chose to reveal the 'dark, unappetizing parts.' He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and he puts that struggle front and center, which was pretty revolutionary for the high-pressure, macho world of professional kitchens. Michelle: Exactly. It’s less a story about perfect food and more about the chaotic, often painful, reality of ambition. Which brings us right to the beginning of Momofuku, his first restaurant. Forget a grand vision. Think... plumbing disasters.

Mark: I love that. Most origin stories are these polished tales of genius. You're telling me Momofuku's was more about... clogs? Michelle: Oh, it was about so much more than clogs. In an email he includes in the book, his partner Quino describes a day at the original Noodle Bar. The expo sink burst. The dish sink overflowed. And then the slop sink downstairs started spewing what he so delicately calls "doodoo water" everywhere. Mark: Doodoo water? So his secret ingredient was... sewage? That is not what I was expecting. Michelle: It was a constant state of crisis. The place flooded from the tenant upstairs. The oven thermostat broke and nearly started a massive fire. A nearby tree shed this cotton-like fluff that clogged the air conditioning daily, so they had to climb on the roof with a vacuum to suck it out just to keep the place from boiling over. This wasn't a restaurant; it was a series of barely-averted catastrophes. Mark: That sounds absolutely miserable. How does anything good come out of that? It sounds less like a strategy and more like pure desperation. Michelle: It was! And the customers weren't exactly helping. He tells this one story about a woman who comes in a few months after they opened. She pulls him aside and just unloads on him. Mark: Oh, I can feel the cringe coming. What did she say? Michelle: She said, “The noodles are awful. Nothing like real ramen... Have you ever even been to Japan? How can you charge people for this?” And she criticized the loud music, the uncomfortable stools, everything. And the worst part? She was right. The place was failing. Mark: Wow. That's a gut punch. Most people would either crumble or get defensive. What did Chang do? Michelle: He and his team got angry. They embraced the confrontation. There's another story where a customer complains that their crawfish special is served with the shells on. The waiter, Eugene, tells the kitchen, and Quino, one of the cooks, tells him exactly what to say. Mark: And what was that? Michelle: Eugene chases the customer down the street and says, "Sir, the kitchen doesn’t appreciate your comments. Furthermore, they kindly ask you to go fuck yourself." Mark: Come on! You can't be serious. They actually did that? Michelle: They did. And that confrontational, "us against the world" energy became their fuel. They decided if people didn't get it, that was fine. They were going to stop trying to be an "authentic" Japanese ramen shop and just cook what they wanted to cook—food for their friends, food that was a mash-up of their Korean-American background, their fine-dining training, and their punk-rock attitude. Mark: Okay, but is that 'fuel' or just toxic anger? I mean, there's a fine line between a healthy chip on your shoulder and just being an abusive boss, right? Especially in that industry. Michelle: That is the central question of the entire book. And it’s the question that haunts him as soon as the success actually starts to hit. Because that fury might build an empire, but it can also burn the emperor to the ground.

Mark: So the chaos works. The anger works. Momofuku blows up, gets rave reviews, and suddenly David Chang is a star. Everything should be great, right? Michelle: You'd think so. But that question you asked—about fuel versus fury—is exactly what defines the next stage of his career. Because once the success hits, the problems don't go away; they just get more complex and more internal. Mark: What do you mean? Michelle: He has this brilliant chapter where he talks about workaholism. He calls it a "socially acceptable addiction." No one congratulates you for getting eight hours of sleep, but everyone praises you for grinding, for working 20-hour days. He says overcoming the impossible, like those early disasters, gives you a "primal high." It's a drug. Mark: I can totally see that. It's like a video game. You beat the boss, and you get that rush, but the next level is just harder. You need a bigger 'hit' of achievement to feel anything. Michelle: Precisely. And the ultimate hit in the culinary world is a Michelin star. In 2008, his high-end tasting counter, Ko, gets two of them. It's the pinnacle of success. And his reaction? Mark: Pure joy? Champagne showers? Michelle: Pure dread. He writes about the immense pressure and the fear of losing them. He realized that the thing he'd been fighting for was now a cage. This leads to one of the most powerful ideas in the book. He says, "The paradox for the workaholic is that rock bottom is the top of whatever profession they’re in." Mark: Wow. Say that again. Rock bottom is the top. That's heavy. So you get everything you ever wanted, and that's when you're at your most miserable? Michelle: Exactly. Because the validation is external. The machine you've built to get there requires you to keep feeding it, but it doesn't actually feed you. He shares a story from a podcast listener, a young woman named Joanna, who was a computer engineering student. She was working 20 hours a day, celebrated by everyone for her drive. But she realized she was doing it to avoid her depression. Pushing her limits was her way of not having to take care of herself. Mark: That is so relatable. It’s easier to solve a complex work problem than to solve the complex problem of your own happiness. So if you're trapped at the top, in this gilded cage of your own making, how do you get out? You can't just quit. Michelle: You can't. And that's where the hardest work begins. The work of looking inward. As his executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith, later tells him, in what might be the best line in the whole book: "It’s harder to unfuck yourself than it is to fuck yourself."

Mark: I love that. It’s so blunt and so true. It’s easy to make a mess, but cleaning it up is a whole different challenge. So what did that "unfucking" process actually look like for Chang? Michelle: It was a long, painful, and very public process. A key turning point was the opening of his restaurant Nishi in 2016. He had this grand idea to deconstruct Italian food through an Asian lens, to erase the line between pasta and noodles. It was ambitious, intellectual, and... a total failure. Mark: What happened? Michelle: The critics destroyed it. Pete Wells, Ryan Sutton, Adam Platt—the biggest names in food criticism—panned the restaurant. They called it uncomfortable, overpriced, and confusing. For Chang, who had built his identity on being the guy who always won, who always proved the doubters wrong, this was devastating. He writes about feeling suicidal, like he had let everyone down. Mark: That's incredibly vulnerable to admit. So the failure of a restaurant became a catalyst for personal change? Michelle: A massive one. He realized his rage and his "us against the world" mentality didn't work anymore. You can't build a lasting, healthy organization on that. He had to learn a new way to lead. He contrasts the old, angry Chang with the person who opened his L.A. restaurant, Majordomo. Mark: How was that different? Michelle: Before Majordomo opened, he spent months with the staff, not just on menu development, but on building a culture of collaboration and respect. He tells a story about a young sous chef who was sloppily labeling his prep. The old Chang would have screamed at him, humiliated him. The new Chang pulled him aside, calmly explained why it mattered, and used it as a teaching moment. Mark: That sounds like a simple management choice, but for him, it was a fundamental rewiring of his personality. Michelle: It was everything. He was learning to lead with empathy instead of anger. He was learning that a leader's job isn't to be the smartest person in the room, but to help everyone else be their best. Mark: This feels very relevant to the broader conversations we've had in recent years about toxic workplaces, especially in kitchens. Is he trying to get ahead of criticism, or is this a genuine evolution? Michelle: I think the book argues it's both, and that's what makes it so powerful. It's not a clean, simple redemption story where he becomes a perfect, enlightened boss. He's still flawed, still struggling. The book ends with him still in the middle of that process. He’s not offering easy answers because he knows there aren't any.

Michelle: Ultimately, Eat a Peach isn't a roadmap to success. You don't read this and learn five easy steps to open a great restaurant. It's a testament to the idea that greatness isn't about having the right answers from the start. Mark: Right. It’s about the brutal, messy, and ongoing work of confronting your own failures—in the kitchen, in your head, and as a leader. It’s about being willing to do that hard work of 'unfucking' yourself. Michelle: And it makes you question your own relationship with ambition. What are you chasing, and what's the real cost? It’s a powerful question to sit with after you put the book down. Mark: It really is. It’s a memoir that sticks with you long after you finish it, not because of the food, but because of the raw humanity. Michelle: There's a quote in the book from Allan Benton, the legendary bacon producer, who told Chang, "You’ll always lose when you play someone else’s game." And that really feels like the core message. Chang’s journey was about him finally learning to stop playing the game of being the angry prodigy, the Michelin-starred genius, or the perfect leader, and just learning to play his own. Mark: A perfect thought to end on. This is Aibrary, signing off.