Eat a Peach by David Chang & Gabe Ulla

Author:David Chang & Gabe Ulla
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

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I was set to promote the book in San Francisco the following month. The publisher stacked my schedule with readings, Q&As, panel discussions, signings, and demos. I still wonder what the scene must have looked like in the publicity department as they saw my figs-on-a-plate comment spread across the Internet like a horrifying fungus.

My peers in the Bay Area didn’t take my ribbing lightly. They were enraged. I couldn’t grasp why they cared what a New York chef thought about their city. The ordeal only grew more disastrous when a local SF blog asked me to make my case. I took the bait and suggested that everybody in San Francisco needed to smoke more weed.

The Asia Society, which had signed on to host a big book event, pulled the plug when an anonymous local chef complained. A spokesperson issued a statement: “This wasn’t just a barstool conversation. It was for the public record, in front of hundreds of people. I understand bad boy talk, but you can’t do that in public.”

The public record. Good Lord.

We trudged on with the remaining events. For our final night in town, we planned a party at a bar in North Beach. I invited everyone I knew and anyone I came across. I’m not exaggerating. During a book signing at the Google campus, I told each and every person that they should come out for drinks later. On me.

That night, I set up shop at a corner table. The bar was selling a beer I’d never seen before: little seven-ounce pony bottles of Miller High Life. I thought they were adorable and ingenious. With their minuscule size, the watery brew within would be long gone before it had a chance to warm up in your hand. I ordered every single bottle in the house—120 beers—and waited for the people I’d met to start showing up.

Only one of them did: Chris Ying, a former cook turned book editor and evidently the last member of San Francisco’s food circle whom I hadn’t alienated. Had he and three or four of his friends not come, I would have undoubtedly found myself in the ER getting my stomach pumped. As it was, our little group finished every last beer. At the end of the night, I leaned out a second-story window to get some air and went crashing to the sidewalk below. Ying was standing outside and started to rush over to help but stopped when he saw me tumble into a crouched position like an oversized Korean Simone Biles. According to his account, I started tying my shoe like nothing had happened.

That’s the person I remember being. Following the book tour, I detected a shift in how other people saw me. There was more scrutiny, more attention. Part of it was due to the continued success of my restaurants, but food media was also expanding. Eater was now a full-fledged national operation. Their strategy for meeting the requirements of a twenty-four-hour news cycle included publishing every offhand remark I made in the vicinity of one of their reporters.

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