SXSWorld
Issue link: https://sxsw.uberflip.com/i/427724
2 8 S X S W o r l d | N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 4 | S X S W. C O M I just set out to open a restaurant and not go out of business," said David Chang earnestly during Wired by Design (WxD), Wired Magazine's first design conference billed as "a two-day live magazine celebrating the intersection of culture and design." The renowned chef and Momofuku founder was at the $4,500- a-pop, invite-only event held at George Lucas' Sky walker Ranch in Marin County, California, presenting on "designing flavor" — a con- cept the chef-turned-culinary-renaissance-man knows all too well. Chang opened the wildly popular Momofuku Noodle Bar in New York City's East Village in 2004. He was pretty much solely responsible for making ramen cool stateside — so cool, in fact, that the Momofuku group has expanded beyond New York to Toronto and Sydney, and includes eight restaurants, a bakery (Momofuku Milk Bar), two bars and a culinary lab where Chang says the team is con- cocting food items from "not necessarily what you think you can make deli- cious food out of," with a special focus on fermented items. According to Chang, "It's been a hell of a ride." Indeed, it has been, as Chang not only long reached his goal of merely staying in business, but surpassed it, probably by farther than he ever could have imagined. Maybe it is the amazing food at approachable prices, which brings his food to more than just fine diners. Or it could be his restaurants' focus on sustainable farming practices. Or maybe it is the fact that Chang is, according to The New York Times' David Carr, "a chef who took a tiny noodle shop in New York and parlayed it into a kind of punk rock culinary movement." In addition to his restaurants, their respective cookbooks and the culinary lab, Chang was the subject of PBS's first season of The Mind of a Chef, a show exploring the worlds of culinary geniuses. And in the summer of 2011, the Momofuku brand grew to include Lucky Peach, a quarterly journal partnership with Dave Eggers' McSweeney's pub- lishing house, that is best described as Vice meets Bon Appetit meets N+1. "Things got more complicated — in a good way — when we started having more and more employees," Chang said. "My goals became less my goals than trying to represent and fulfill everyone else's." Complicated or not, his formula is definitely working. The Momofuku empire has won 16 James Beard Awards since 2006, when Chang was named the "Rising Star Chef of the Year," and Momofuku Ko — which has only 12 seats and creates daily menus based on market availability — has received two Michelin stars for seven consecutive years. The restaurant group has received two and three-star reviews from The New York Times, and the Momofuku cook- book, along with two issues of Lucky Peach, have appeared on that newspaper's famed Best Seller List. Chang himself has been named one of Rolling Stone's "100 People Changing America," Food & Wine's "Best New Chef " and the New York Observer's "Top 100 Influencers in New York City." He has also been called one of "the most influential people of the 21st cen- tury" by Esquire, one of Fortune's "40 Under 40" and one of Fast Company's "1000 most creative people in business." In addition to Bon Appetit naming Chang the chef of the year, in 2013 the magazine named Momofuku, collectively, as the most important restaurant in America. When The New York Times' Frank Bruni gave Momofuku Ssäm Bar three stars in 2008, he wrote, "Mr. Chang as chef went further than any of his peers in wed- ding serious, sometimes challenging food and an ultra-casual, spontaneous dining ethos in tune with unbound times." You can find Chang in March at SouthBites — special SXSW Interactive programming, now in its second year — that aims to connect food artisans and explore the ways in which technology can be lever- aged to transform the food industry. "We haven't really scratched the surface of technology. In the next few years, we're gonna see the convergence of technology and food in ways we haven't seen — whether it's a food app, whether it's growing food, farming, new products that are innovative in ways that no one's ever done before — whatever they may be," Chang says. " Science is so pervasive in food right now. There's a lot of great ideas, new ideas in terms of cre- ating new ingredients or growing food to create something new. How food gets to people — in terms of logistics — that's gonna change quite a bit." Chang will be in good company at SouthBites with the likes of Eater's Amanda Kludt, the Travel Channel's Andrew Zimmern, food writers, tech entrepreneurs and many others. Expect to hear more about the future of food and where innovators like Chang are looking to shape it. SouthBites events will run Saturday, March 14 through Monday, March 16, and are open to SXSW registrants with an Interactive, Gold, or Platinum badge. The SouthBites Trailer Park, a pop-up food truck trailer park, will be open through- out SXSW 2015 (March 13 - 21) from 11am to midnight, and will welcome all SXSW registrants and the general public. Learn more about SouthBites at: sxsw.com/interactive/southbites. David Chang: Acclaimed Chef Eyes New Food Frontiers by eMily farriS " D a v i d Ch a n g G A B R I E L E S TA B I L E