Korea in the '50s and '60s was decimated. Firstly, how are you dealing with the loss of your father? What was that complicated relationship like?ĬHANG: I've had to sort of look at the totality of my father and realize that he was a war refugee. As you said in a Facebook post, you had a complicated relationship with him. SIMON: I have to ask, because you touch on this, your father died in June. And that sort of fatalistic outlook in some ways propelled me to be a person that I wasn't. What are my next options? Door 1, which is to end it all, or I can do things that I've never done before because at the end of the day, nothing really matters. I was like, what's the point? It's like, OK. And so much of my life up until that point had been not very fruitful. It's life or death, right? That's - it can be the great decider of things. And, you know, the worst thing you could do was obviously not just harm yourself but harm other people. But oftentimes, I look back at how I started my restaurant career as an owner, and really the reason why I ventured in doing something so foolish was because I was looking at life in a very binary option.ĬHANG: I was in a very dark place. And my battle with my own self has resulted in a lot of good things and bad things. Why?ĬHANG: So much of who I am has been my battle with depression. SIMON: You know, sir, in the first few pages, you've got a line that just stops a reader cold, when you say, I'm not supposed to be here. Thanks so much for being with us.ĭAVID CHANG: Thank you so much for having me - real honor. He recounts his rise from a failed high school golfer to a James Beard Award-winning chef, restaurateur and tastemaker in his new book, which has no recipes, 'Eat A Peach.'Ĭhef David Chang joins us now from Los Angeles. David Chang is a world-famous chef and food celebrity, but something eats at him for much of his life and in his new memoir.

Eat a peach a memoir