Home > Work > Eat a Peach
41 " The downside to the term tiger parenting entering the mainstream vocabulary is that it gives a cute name to what is actually a painful and demoralizing existence. It also feeds into the perception that all Asian kids are book smart because their parents make it so. Well, guess what. It’s not true. Not all our parents are tiger parents, tiger parenting doesn’t always work, and not all Asian kids are good at school. In fact, not all Asian kids are any one thing. To be young and Asian in America often means fighting a multifront war against sameness. "
― David Chang , Eat a Peach
42 " In case you can’t tell, I’m doing all this throat-clearing as a stall tactic. I’m delaying you from getting into the book, because honestly, I’m extremely nervous about you reading it. "
43 " What makes something authentic? Is it always better to be authentic? Is authenticity the enemy of innovation? Honestly, having heard these questions asked ad nauseam, I’m bored by the whole topic. Not because it isn’t important. It is. But whenever someone starts talking about authenticity and cultural appropriation, my mind begins to wander. "
44 " My advice to chefs is to be transparent about your ignorance and always honor the source material. "
45 " ... test one's beliefs through one's actions rather than through study or discussion. "
46 " When we do events for the sake of ego, we usually pay the price in cash money. "
47 " We can refind it later, but the only way to shut out all the unnecessary doubts in your head is to impose a deadline "
48 " How could I be sure if the medication was still having a positive effect if I didn’t know what my baseline was anymore? "
49 " Whether it's a cooking demo or a collaborative dinner, trying to impress people is a fool's errand. "
50 " Most people found Tosi’s dishes to be charming and clever. I thought they were among the most subversive creations in the history of American dining. Tosi grew up in a suburban household in Virginia, feeding her limitless energy with horrendous amounts of Dairy Queen and junk food. While so many pastry chefs devote themselves to mastering the European standards, Tosi did not shun what had shaped her. It helped her stand out. She developed her fluency in Americana into a cheery rebellion at Milk Bar, which started out as a bakery in the back room of Ssäm Bar selling confections like birthday cake truffles and “Compost Cookies.” There were no canelés, macarons, or mille-feuilles on the premises. The point of Milk Bar was to challenge the notion that a great pastry chef had to be a French-trained dude. People caught onto Tosi’s brilliance quickly. "
51 " His Mexican forebears ate tamales in the morning, and mine liked jook. "
52 " I was now close to defining my life’s work. My brain was on a quest to uncover the underlying systems in the cosmos and then bring that knowledge back to the dining room. "
53 " In opening Ko, we would ask to be measured against the finest restaurants in the country. When I say it like that, it sounds like a pretty solid plan.What I usually neglect to mention is the major creative influence of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. "
54 " I began to understand that what holds us back from culinary progress is often some cultural roadblock that we honor in the name of preservation - the kind of arbitrary roadblock that says, You're not supposed to do that with kimchi. "
55 " If I could stop being so angry, maybe I could understand my dad.My siblings tell me that he and I are exactly the same. "
56 " Too many of us assume that antidepressants and suicide hotlines and generalized compassion are antidotes—that painting the train station a calm color is going to stop people from jumping. "
57 " I’d had a series of overlapping epiphanies, not all of which were original ideas, but as far as I knew, they had never been expressed in a culinary context before. The first was that the best forms of creativity are born from paradox. Think of M. C. Escher’s paintings of staircases leading nowhere and hands drawing one another. Or René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, in which a painting of a pipe is accompanied with a subtitle: Ceci n’est pas une pipe. This is not a pipe. "
58 " Here’s my patented approach to event cooking: shoot for 70 percent. My philosophy is based on an apocryphal story I’ve heard about how a large financial services firm used to choose their new analysts. They didn’t hire people who scored 100 on their Series 7 exam. They wanted people who purposely aimed for 70, because it meant you knew the material so well that you could confidently shoot for a C-minus and get it. That’s where you want to be when you’re cooking for events. Not the worst and not the best. Whether it’s a cooking demo or a collaborative dinner, trying to impress people is a fool’s errand. "
59 " I’m expecting to open this book in ten years and cringe like I’m staring at a picture of myself with a bad haircut. I’m looking forward to it. "
60 " CONSIDER THE LOBSTER Change is guaranteed, but growth isn’t. "
