David Chang never set out to be the king of pork buns, and the fact that this is now the case is something he finds a little weird. As he puts it: "Can you imagine being Neil Diamond and having to sing 'Cracklin' Rosie' every time you get on stage for the rest of your life?" The whole thing was an accident. In 2004, Chang signed a lease on his first Manhattan restaurant, a noodle bar he called Momofuku, which means "lucky peach" in Japanese, but is also a nod to the inventor of instant noodles, Momofuku Ando. The menu was simple: ramen noodles with shredded pork, $7; Momofuku ramen with pork and a poached egg, $12; spicy noodles, $9; rice with chicken and egg, $10. The business was cash only. But he had no business to speak of. No one came. Chang would gaze on the "terrible" Japanese place across the street, which was always packed, and wonder what in hell he was doing wrong.
His luck only changed when he decided that if he was going to go bust, he should do it in style, and cook whatever he felt like. He added bowls of tripe and sweetbreads to the menu, and a Korean-inspired burrito. In time, it was normal for Chang to rock up for work and see a little crowd outside, waiting for him to open. But it was his pork buns that people were really mad for. "Every ticket started to have a pork bun on it," he says. "Four people would get four orders of pork buns. They're only pork belly sandwiches, and usually people are so afraid of fat. I didn't understand it. It's not like we reinvented the wheel." He shrugs. Six years on, 33-year-old Chang is the owner of six New York restaurants, one of which – Momofuku Ko – has two Michelin stars. Is it fair to say that he owes all this to pork buns? "Oh, yes. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for pork belly."
What makes his pork buns so special? Chang wriggles on his banquette (we are in a London hotel; he is here to publicise his Momofuku cookbook). "I've no idea! We needed stuff to fill out the menu, we had pork belly because ramen is pork-based, and there are only so many ways you can turn it into a dish. That's all. People say I'm playing dumb when I tell them this, but I'm not." Chang's pork is, however, served with hoisin sauce, pickles, cucumber and spring onions, exactly like the Peking duck served in most Chinese restaurants; the difference is that he has swapped pancakes for the pillowy steamed bread that is more commonly eaten in northern China. Where did he get this idea? Apparently, he nicked it. "I've had more meals at Oriental Garden in Chinatown [in New York] than anywhere else, and they served their Peking duck with buns rather than pancakes." He asked the restaurant's owner, Mr Choi, how to make steamed buns – and was promptly directed to a Chinese restaurant supply company. He started using this company himself and, in his cookbook, he suggests that the home cook guiltlessly visits the freezer section of the nearest Chinese supermarket. Sure, they're perfectly easy to bake. But why kill yourself? After all, he built a small empire on bought-in buns.
Chang is the son of Korean immigrants and the food that he cooks is an inspired and occasionally counterintuitive fusion of Korean and the American. But then there are other twists. Chang grew up in Washington, and has relatives in Richmond, Virginia, which technically counts as the South. He also, as a young man, spent time working in kitchens in Japan. So, he knows his grits, his barbecue, and his ham; and he also knows that, among other things, it takes 17 hours to make proper ramen. Combine all this with his technical expertise and you will understand that, on Chang's table, quite a lot is going on. He is perhaps the only chef in the world who can put kimchi – the spicy, fizzy, sweet-sour fermented cabbage he adores – on the same menu as his own riff on red-eye gravy. He makes these juxtapositions seem not just daring, but elegant, too. He turns out dishes of astonishing creativity and tastiness, but they are also, very often, humble, at least in origin. Chang's chicken wings, for instance, look like anyone else's chicken wings. Only when you stick one in your mouth, at which point you think: Jeez! How in God's name did he make these bits of gristle taste so good? Answer: they have been brined in a salt-and-sugar solution for a whole day, cold smoked over mesquite for 45 minutes, poached in a vat of pork fat for an hour and a half, browned on the grill, and then, finally, glazed in a chicken-infused soy sauce combined with mirin, garlic and pickled chilli peppers. There is a reverence for process in Chang's kitchens that you taste in every bite; it makes perfect sense to discover that, at college in Connecticut, where he was a religious studies student, he wrote a thesis on Thoreau, a writer who believed that quotidian repetition and simple living can, in the end, lead a man to happiness and self-fulfillment.
But is Chang happy? Not exactly. Although he used to be known for his temper, and his excessive swearing, these days, he is much calmer. "Before I had my own restaurant, I was never top dog in the kitchen. I've always had a low opinion of myself as a cook. I was always yelled at by the chefs I worked for. It was like high school. You're the freshman, and the seniors are so cool, like gods; I never thought I'd be one of them." He thinks this attitude may have something to do with his once having been a junior golf champion. "I was quite cocky, but having been hailed as this great young golfer, I couldn't even make the high school golf team once I got there. I had a big dose of humble pie then, and ever since, I've always known that there is always someone out there better than you, more talented. Always."
Chang's father, Joe, had just $50 to his name when he arrived in America. He started out as a dish washer, then opened a couple of restaurants before starting a golf supply business (it was successful enough that he was able to lend his son $200,000 when he decided to open his first noodle bar).
After college, and stints at the Mercer Kitchen and Craft, Chang knew he wanted to work as an apprentice in a Japanese noodle shop. His father knew a Korean businessman who had turned part of a Tokyo building into a ramen shop; upstairs was a church and shelter for the homeless. The friend said he could work in the shop, and sleep in the shelter. Unfortunately, the ramenya turned out to be a dive. The chef wore only his underpants, no trousers or shirt, and tucked into his apron strings were greasy newspapers which, for some reason, he favoured over tea towels. He was also a chain smoker with a strong aversion to refrigerators. Chang was only able to stick it out for a few days. His next berth – a soba shop – was better, and the one after that – a kaiseki restaurant – a life-changing experience.
But he missed America and so, in the end, he went home. In New York, he chose to work for Daniel Boulud, on the grounds that Boulud was a superstar who had worked for "titans" such as Michel Guerard. He had jet lag the day he started there, and he felt like he still had jet lag the day he left. "I couldn't get to work early enough. No matter how early I got there, I was already behind when I walked through the door." He lasted five months, though he only left because his mother was ill, and he wanted to look after her.
His mother on the mend, he touched his father for a loan, and set up Momofuku on the site of an old chicken wing place in the East Village. He worked like a dog – and still does. He has no time for anything else. A few years ago, wanting to furnish his apartment, he went into Crate & Barrel, pointed at the nearest mocked-up room, and said: "Just give me all of that." Nothing has changed indoors since. As for a private life, am I kidding? His parents are desperate for him to find a nice Korean girl. "I wish! But it's so hard." Nor is he willing to respond to the siren call of television. "I do bits, but it's not something I'm comfortable with. I doubt I'd ever do television to the extent that, say, Gordon Ramsay has. It's always, to some degree, a reality show – or they want me to be yelling at people. 'Just get mad!' they say. I think you can be successful without it."
He is obsessed with standards, and worries aloud to me about the future of cooking. "People are getting famous now for serving food out of a truck, or for, well, pork buns. I don't know if I'm really pleased to be a part of that. I'm somewhat terrified of what the future holds, especially in America. I don't think we're producing the cooks we used to produce. I think a cook has to have a classical French foundation, and if not that then a classical Japanese foundation. Someone has to discipline the young chefs. Now if you ask a young chef who the Roux brothers were, they're not going to know, and they don't care that they don't know!" His face is as plump and as round as a baby's, but he sounds suddenly very old. I want to cheer him up. What's the dish he's most proud of? "My mum says everything I make is too salty," he says, with a forlorn laugh. Poor thing. If he wasn't due at Claude Bosi's kitchen at Hibiscus – the two of them are cooking a special tasting menu together – I would take him home and feed him a toasted cheese sandwich.
A postscript. All the talk of pork buns has left me plainly desperate to eat one. So Chang and I strike a deal: I will toddle over to Hibiscus while he is prepping for the big dinner, and he will feed me. This I duly do. There follows the strangest encounter. At 4pm Chang emerges from the kitchen, and makes his way, zen-like, through the dining room to the front desk, where I am waiting. He is very sweaty. In his hand is an oval-shaped stainless platter which he carries before him, butler-style, and on it is a single and somewhat exiguous pork bun. I pick it up, and put it in my mouth. It's great: warm and pillowy without, salty and sweet within. But I can't believe I'm only allowed one! "Don't I get another?" I say. He shakes his head. "No." He smiles, offers his hand, and then turns on his heel, back to the kitchen. Was he being priestly – it felt to me as if I'd just taken communion – or was he merely embarrassed at my having travelled for the best part of an hour merely to taste his oh-so-humble dish? I really don't know – though his delectable offering has stayed with me. I wonder when, exactly, I will get my seconds.
