Why David Chang Is ‘Steve Jobs with a Knife’

0:00:03 – Food at its very best is like nothing else.
0:00:06 It’s something you can express.
0:00:08 It’s a story.
0:00:09 It can be delicious.
0:00:11 And the absurd part of it is,
0:00:13 it’s gonna be in the toilet eight to 10 hours later.
0:00:16 Nope.
0:00:17 Listen, for those that don’t know anything
0:00:18 about a Tibetan sand mandala,
0:00:20 nobody would build a business
0:00:22 where everything would disintegrate
0:00:24 if it wasn’t refrigerated.
0:00:25 It’s a terrible business idea,
0:00:26 yet we do it all the time.
0:00:34 – Hey there, it’s Guy Kawasaki.
0:00:37 This is the Remarkable People Podcast.
0:00:40 We have a special edition today.
0:00:45 In October, 2025, I interviewed this guest
0:00:48 at the Masters of Scale Conference
0:00:50 in San Francisco, California.
0:00:55 And the folks at Wait What, who put on the conference,
0:00:59 paired me up with David Chang, of all people, to interview.
0:01:02 Now, if you’re a foodie, you already know who David Chang is.
0:01:05 But just in case you might not,
0:01:10 David Chang is the creator of the Momofuku restaurant.
0:01:14 He’s this great, great character on this video.
0:01:16 Well, that’s not a character, it’s just being him,
0:01:18 called Ugly Delicious.
0:01:22 He has written a really fun book called Eat a Peach,
0:01:23 which is his memoir.
0:01:27 And at the end of that memoir, there’s 33 tips for chefs
0:01:32 that I recommend you read because it’s really 33 tips for life.
0:01:34 So anyway, this is David Chang and I.
0:01:38 Oh my God, we let it all hang out on stage.
0:01:41 And I came up with a new name for David Chang.
0:01:48 He is Steve Jobs with a knife because he has that kind of fanatical,
0:01:53 fanatical, perfectionist attitude that none other than Steve Jobs had.
0:02:00 So now, before the interview with David Chang, I made a tribute to Jane Goodall.
0:02:03 Jane Goodall was a friend of mine, and she had just passed away.
0:02:07 And I just wanted to recognize her contribution.
0:02:11 She is the most remarkable person that I have ever met.
0:02:13 And so that’s what this is.
0:02:22 This is a recording of an episode of a conference with me and David Chang,
0:02:26 a.k.a. Steve Jobs with a knife.
0:02:33 I’m so pleased to bring out onto the stage, my friend and the host of Markable People, Guy Kawasaki.
0:02:45 Hello, everybody.
0:02:49 Thank you for staying to the last few sessions of the conference.
0:02:54 I didn’t know they put me in the second to the last slot.
0:03:02 So about eight days ago, the world lost one of its most remarkable people.
0:03:05 And I want to put a picture up there.
0:03:17 So the last time I saw Jane, it was a couple of miles from here at the Salesforce building.
0:03:21 And it was her 90th birthday tour.
0:03:28 And just so you know, Jane Goodall, she was 90 at that time, at that birthday.
0:03:32 And she looked a little peaked or tired.
0:03:34 So I went up to her at the birthday party.
0:03:36 I said, Jane, you should chillax a little bit.
0:03:38 Take it easy.
0:03:40 Come to our house.
0:03:43 We have an extra guest house.
0:03:44 You can stay in our guest house.
0:03:46 We won’t ask you for autographs.
0:03:49 We won’t ask you for pictures.
0:03:50 Just relax, Jane.
0:03:54 You travel 300 days a year.
0:03:56 She traveled 300 days a year.
0:04:00 Now, when speakers travel, we get off the airplane.
0:04:02 The limo picks you up.
0:04:03 You go to the hotel.
0:04:04 You relax.
0:04:05 You wake up.
0:04:06 You give a one hour speech.
0:04:08 You get back in the limo.
0:04:09 You get back to the hotel.
0:04:10 You go home.
0:04:16 But when Jane Goodall travels from morning to midnight, she’s meeting with schools and kids
0:04:18 and nonprofits and all these things.
0:04:22 So her travel is 100 times more difficult than most speakers.
0:04:26 And so I went up to her and I told her this.
0:04:27 And this is what she told me.
0:04:35 She said, “Guy, I cannot rest because there is too much to do.”
0:04:39 And that was Jane Goodall.
0:04:47 So listen, the day after she died, I was on my property and I have this UTV on this property
0:04:54 and I’m driving around in our yard and I look down and there’s a frog on my leg.
0:04:59 And my interpretation was that was Jane saying hello to me.
0:05:06 So listen, you know, I know when someone passes like that, it’s customary to give them a moment of silence.
0:05:08 But I don’t think that’s appropriate for Jane.
0:05:12 I think we should give her a moment of applause for all she did.
0:05:19 Yes, standing ovation applause.
0:05:41 I think I’m going to begin every speech like standing ovation at the start.
0:05:50 So now I want to bring out another truly remarkable person and his name is David Chang.
0:05:56 So please join me and welcome David Chang.
0:06:02 Hi guys.
0:06:09 All right, we’re doing this.
0:06:10 Yeah, finally.
0:06:21 So David, first question for you is, have you been able to get some good figs while you’re in San Francisco?
0:06:27 I’m not sure if everyone knows, it’s been some years, but I haven’t had any figs in San Francisco.
0:06:32 And guys alluding to about 15 or years ago, I got in a lot of trouble.
0:06:37 I didn’t blame the late, great Tony Bourdain because he got me drunk out of talking much like this.
0:06:40 And he said that the topic was, I call bullshit.
0:06:47 And I call bullshit about, at the time, the Bay Area only cooking things like figs on a plate.
0:06:51 He got pull quoted as first of my life, right?
0:06:56 But I was basically saying that San Francisco, the Bay Area has been at the forefront of sexuality,
0:07:02 politics, technology, art, music, and I love Alice Waters.
0:07:06 I love Chez Panisse, but it can’t be the only thing that the Bay Area celebrates at the time.
0:07:10 I could have used better words at the time, but I was trying to express that.
0:07:13 But till this day, sometimes I might just get a fig on the plate at a restaurant here.
0:07:24 David, I read your memoir, and I have come to the conclusion, and I say this with the highest degree
0:07:33 of respect, because I believe you are in the sort of tradition of Steve Jobs, you are a mission-driven
0:07:34 asshole.
0:07:34 Yeah.
0:07:37 You truly are a mission-driven asshole.
0:07:46 And I was reading your memoir, I said, man, that sounds like Steve Jobs with a knife.
0:07:52 And I think one of the things that separated Steve from everybody is a term that I learned
0:07:57 from Brené Brown yesterday, which is Steve was a plumber and a poet.
0:08:02 And not many people can be a plumber and a poet.
0:08:05 And I would say you are a plumber and a poet.
0:08:11 Well, most people would say I’m a poor plumber at best, but I’ve never heard that comparison.
0:08:14 I don’t want to put myself in anything like that, but an asshole for sure, I believe.
0:08:19 I think you should go to your LinkedIn profile and say, Steve Jobs with a knife.
0:08:27 So, you know, I’m alluding to when I read your book, well, for one thing, I will never own a
0:08:34 restaurant after reading your book. So talk about the plumbing of a restaurant and then the poetry of
0:08:35 what you’re trying to do.
0:08:39 So literally owning a restaurant, you better know the plumbing because more often than not, you are going
0:08:45 to be cleaning up shit. That is not a joke. That happens quite often. And it sort of punctures any
0:08:51 sort of beautiful idea, this romantic idea of opening a restaurant that might be romanticized on TV or the
0:08:56 movies. And yes, the bear is very accurate, but not exactly perfect. But it’s great. It’s a great show.
0:09:01 But when you’re running a restaurant as a chef, sometimes you forget that you have to be a chef
0:09:06 as well because you have the bureaucracy, the politics, and Lord knows managing people. That
0:09:10 is not the easiest thing for anybody, let alone someone that started to cook so they didn’t have
0:09:17 to talk to people. And what is the hardest part there? Or everything’s hard? Everything’s hard.
0:09:23 So everything that will go wrong can go wrong. It’s just every day is like the worst day possible.
0:09:29 And I joke, opening a restaurant and running a restaurant is like the great Catherine Bigelow
0:09:34 movie, The Hurt Locker, except that you are not only diffusing the bomb, you are also creating
0:09:39 the bombs as well. And that’s sort of what it’s like. Every day you’re diffusing problem after problem
0:09:43 that’s a problem. And you know, at the end of the day, when you look at the business,
0:09:48 it’s such an absurd thing that it truly is a passion project for most people.
0:09:51 Okay. That’s the plumbing part. What about the poetry part?
0:10:01 At the very best, cooking is not like any other discipline. It has to integrate food science. So you
0:10:06 need to know microbiology, biochemistry. You need to understand proportions. You need to know history.
0:10:11 You need to have a way to express yourself. And if you asked me when I was 22 cooking,
0:10:16 I would have said, no, this is a craft. We’re just plumbers. But more and more, and actually talking
0:10:22 about Chez Panisse and figs on a plate, like I’ve learned that actually was like so punk rock. That
0:10:30 was an ultimate form of expression. And food at its very best is like nothing else. It’s something you can
0:10:37 express. It’s a story. It can be delicious. And the absurd part of it is it’s going to be in the toilet
0:10:44 eight to 10 hours later. Nope. Listen, for those that don’t know anything about a Tibetan sand mandala,
0:10:49 nobody would build a business where everything would disintegrate if it wasn’t refrigerated.
0:10:51 It’s a terrible business idea, yet we do it all the time.
0:11:02 This is the Masters of Scale Summit. So I feel a moral obligation to ask one question about scaling so that
0:11:10 they invite me back next year. So as I’m reading your memoir, I’m looking at all the whales you try to
0:11:18 scale. So you try to scale by getting more butts in seats. Then you want to get butts in different
0:11:24 cities in seats. Then you want to get butts eating different kinds of foods in seats. And then you want
0:11:32 to get butts watching your TV shows. And then you want to start delivering food to butts. And then you
0:11:40 want to sell butts consumer packaged goods. So let’s talk about what you learned about scaling, trying all
0:11:41 those things.
0:11:48 Well, this is an interesting topic because I think it is the hot button subject in food, at least,
0:11:55 is the idea of scalability. And food, unlike any other form of culture that you consume, it is
0:12:02 like not scalable. It really is not scalable. And I was just thinking about in 2013-2014, I was friends
0:12:09 with the former manager of U2, Paul McGuinness, and he was having a conversation about us like this. And he
0:12:14 was like, “Your business is dumb, David.” And I was like, “No question about that. That is a dumb business.” But
0:12:20 one reason is you can’t scale it. You can’t scale it like music or downloads or what is now like
0:12:26 streaming in general. And I didn’t know it at the time, but he was showing me what later was that U2
0:12:31 download that every iPhone got. I think it was like iPhone 6 or something like that. And I was like,
0:12:37 yeah, that’s definitely scaling. We can never do anything like that. And that is the bottleneck with
0:12:43 people that are looking to invest because you take this great idea and there’s terroir, there’s story,
0:12:47 there’s purpose in a specific restaurant in a specific city. And there are cultural banks,
0:12:51 like a great restaurant has a cultural bank to its neighborhood. Yes, you can scale that. Yes,
0:12:56 you have fast food. I have tried to do that. After that conversation, I tried to do our first,
0:13:00 what is now like the first ghost kitchen. We did it with Thrive and we did another one called Ondo,
0:13:05 so Maple and Ondo. And I knew that we had to scale, like we had to integrate technology at some point.
0:13:12 But you know, like food and tech just don’t go hand in half. It doesn’t because at the end of the day,
0:13:18 everybody wants to eat at seven o’clock, right? You cannot manufacture food fast enough. And it’s still,
0:13:25 no matter what you say, you need people cooking. It is a workman’s like job and it’s slow and it’s
0:13:31 plotting. And until somebody creates ways to make the throughput of food faster, but I don’t know if
0:13:36 that’s going to be delicious, it’s not going to ever really scale. So knowing that and knowing that
0:13:43 food is not scalable, the irony here is the fact that food is not scalable is why it is becoming
0:13:50 infinitely scalable. Because what is being broadcast on social media now are really high-end restaurants
0:13:56 or experiential dining that you cannot consume, but you can now broadcast. And that becomes cultural
0:14:01 currency. So high-end dining restaurants, let’s just say the French Laundry here, it’s harder to get
0:14:08 in than ever before, because there’s a limited amount of these reservations and the demand is
0:14:12 growing and growing and growing. So you have this barbell thing, you have super high-end and experiential
0:14:19 dining, and weirdly that’s becoming scalable. And I don’t know how to explain that, but they’re able to
0:14:23 expand, but they’re also more importantly being able to charge higher prices, which they should be
0:14:27 doing. And then you have things that are going to be cheaper and faster, not necessarily cheaper these
0:14:31 days, but faster. Because we’re going to have food that you’re going to be able to order on your app,
0:14:36 and it’ll be at your door pretty instantly. I do believe that. My concern is everything in between.
0:14:41 But that is not scalable. And I’m mostly concerned about the things that are not scalable.
0:14:46 But Dave, I want to point out to you that these people are altering how to scale,
0:14:48 not that something cannot scale.
0:14:53 Well, listen, I’ve talked to so many people that are advanced in technology, and they all say, “Hey,
0:14:57 well, you can do this. You can do that.” But, well, you have to design an oven that’s faster and all of
0:15:02 these things. It will take time. It will happen. All of this is going to happen. It just can’t happen at once.
0:15:12 So I think this idea of broadcasting this fear of missing out on food is good and bad. But I think
0:15:16 what we need to figure out, honestly, everyone in this room is like the restaurants that can’t scale.
0:15:22 My focus is like, how do you save those restaurants that are your neighborhood mom and pop, the diners?
0:15:29 I feel like we’re losing the ability to actually judge the quality of what’s good now because
0:15:34 everything’s going to what is the best. There’s hyperbole in the media. This is the best 38 restaurants.
0:15:40 This is the steakhouse you have to eat at. And I’m just telling you, I think everyone should go to these
0:15:43 lists and go to these restaurants and eat at the restaurant next door to these restaurants.
0:15:50 And honestly, choose five restaurants that you want to support. And it may not be the best
0:15:56 restaurant you’ve ever had. I think we need to be comfortable with just eating good. You know,
0:16:00 like good’s pretty goddamn amazing. So I don’t know if that answers your question. And I know
0:16:03 I’m going to talk to someone later. Like, no, I can definitely scale it.
0:16:11 And I’ve talked to a lot of very smart people, much smarter than myself. And I have no doubt that
0:16:17 will happen. But, you know, we should be worried about everyone else that are just sort of making a
0:16:24 restaurant their livelihood right now. All right. So one of the stories that I found most endearing in
0:16:33 your book was the story of Marge. So tell us the story of Marge, who started as an intern and eight
0:16:40 years later was CEO of Momofuku. Marguerite Mariscal, she is our CEO. She started as an intern and then she
0:16:46 had almost every position. And I remember telling our board when she was 25, I was like, she’s going
0:16:51 to be the CEO. And they all laughed at my face. Oh, she’s too young. You’re crazy. I was like, yes,
0:16:55 I’m definitely crazy. But I think that she’s going to be the right person. And I’m not betting on her
0:17:01 now to be this fully formed sort of executive. I’m betting on who she’s going to be. And there’s
0:17:06 a saying in hospitality that we can teach anybody how to cook. We can tell them techniques and
0:17:13 so on and so forth. But we can’t teach people like to give a shit. And she cared more than anybody
0:17:18 else. And over the first few years, no matter where I was, she didn’t have to be there, but she was
0:17:25 there adding value at all times. And that was an easy ask for me to be like, OK, I know that she’s
0:17:30 going to be the best custodian of this brand. And where we’re going. And did she go to the Culinary
0:17:36 Institute of America and all that? I mean, you say someplace it’s better to get a college education
0:17:42 than a culinary education, right? Yeah, I mean, cooking schools don’t love me so much. It’s not
0:17:48 perfect for everybody. Some people certainly benefit from it. But you’re talking about a 12-month
0:17:54 program. So 24-month program, that might be like $250,000 in tuition. They’re not going to make
0:18:00 that back anytime soon in the workforce. Like when I started to cook, everyone called me college boy,
0:18:05 because it was not like a cool thing to be as a cook at the time. And they’re like, do our numbers,
0:18:12 do our account. I was like, I was a religion major, guys. Like, you do not want me to do anything
0:18:16 number oriented. But what I learned was I learned how to critically think. I learned how to
0:18:24 put disparate things together that may not be someone else’s cup of tea. And I thought that
0:18:30 learning how to think, learning how to communicate gave me a leg up in cooking. And like everyone else
0:18:35 in college, for the most part, you work a job. And I think you should go to a really great state school
0:18:40 and work at a restaurant before you want to become a cook. And before you work in a restaurant,
0:18:46 you should wash dishes for six months. And if you love it, then just maybe the profession’s for you.
0:18:53 In my podcast, I once interviewed Mark Maron, and he wrote the book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a,
0:19:01 you know. And he told me that you will truly know that you discovered what you love when it involves a
0:19:07 shit sandwich, and you love the shit sandwich. And it seems to me the restaurant business and what you
0:19:11 described, there’s a lot of shit sandwiches that you love, right?
0:19:15 It’s non-stop. It’s honestly what people cook the best.
0:19:24 This question, David, trust me, I’m trying to be deeper than it might seem, but
0:19:34 I want to know what is the ideal number of Michelin stars to get as a restaurant. Obviously,
0:19:36 everybody wants three, right?
0:19:37 No, no, no, no, no.
0:19:43 We had the longest reign for two stars in New York City history. And for a while, I wanted really three
0:19:48 stars. But just, and I’m a highly competitive person, and I wanted it. And then at some point,
0:19:55 like halfway along the way in 15 years, I was like, I’m good with two. Because when you get three,
0:20:01 you can only go down. They can only take it away. Right? And two, I know what we can. And you know
0:20:06 what? That’s when I knew I was getting older, and the things I cared about when I was younger, I don’t
0:20:11 care about at all anymore. And listen, I love when my peer group gets awarded with the highest praise and
0:20:18 the highest honors. But I truly don’t care at all about Michelin stars for myself anymore. But I want
0:20:23 it for my team. It just doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. So if you get one star, you’re so thrilled
0:20:30 you got your star. You get two stars, it keeps you hungry. You get three stars, you always got to be
0:20:38 worried about. It can only go downhill. Yeah. Truly. And two stars, just for those in the business,
0:20:42 when someone’s awarded two stars, that’s the restaurant you want to eat at.
0:20:49 Because you need to make the decision, is this person going to try to go get three? And historically
0:20:55 speaking, the restaurants that went from two to three, those are the moments that are just like
0:20:59 amazing albums and like rock and roll. You want to go there. So you got a lot of great restaurants,
0:21:05 a lot of two star, three star restaurants here. But if there’s a new two star restaurant in San Francisco
0:21:09 or one, that goes to two or Oakland area, you should definitely check those out. But also,
0:21:12 who gives a shit about the mission guide? You can go to any restaurant and it’ll be really good.
0:21:24 So the cover of your book shows odd job pushing the peach up the hill, right? And you’re 48 years old,
0:21:30 right? I want to know, has the Sisyphus boulder changed for you? What’s the boulder now?
0:21:36 Yeah, I don’t know. I think about that all the time. For those that don’t know the Greek myth of
0:21:41 Sisyphus, right? He’s eternally punished to roll this boulder up the hill only to have it roll back
0:21:47 down on him when he reaches the top of the hill. And I actually view it as a inspirational story.
0:21:48 You’re Asian.
0:21:56 I do because you have a choice. You can have a choice to be like, oh, I’ve been presented this
0:22:01 really crappy situation, which we’re all presented all the time. And you can bitch and moan about it.
0:22:05 Or you can actually say, this is not going to affect how I’m going to think about this. I’m going to roll
0:22:10 this boulder up the hill better than anyone’s ever rolled it. And that’s the mindset that I have.
0:22:15 And I got to be honest, now that I’m a father of two, I’m 48. It’s like, maybe I don’t want to roll
0:22:21 this boulder that much more anymore. That’s just where I’m at. Yeah. I’m not as angry as I used to be.
0:22:26 And I would rather be a dad than be me.
0:22:29 So having Hugo, your first child was the turning point.
0:22:30 For sure.
0:22:31 Yeah.
0:22:37 I mean, she was born in 2019, his first birthday, which is a big deal in Korean culture. We celebrate
0:22:42 March 1st in 2020, and then the world ended. And that was tough for so many people, particularly
0:22:48 restaurant business. And I think it was spending time with my son, because I was on the road probably
0:22:53 175 days a year. We had restaurants in Canada, Australia, a bunch of places. We’d open up like
0:22:59 nine restaurants in 24 months. Talk about not scalable. That was not a scalable pace.
0:23:03 And then I just was like, you know what? I don’t want to do this anymore like this.
0:23:08 So thankfully we started to grow our CPG business and I spend less time on the restaurant.
0:23:10 And you’re scaling.
0:23:14 And all of a sudden we’re scaling. And the funny thing is no offense to
0:23:17 certain parts of America, but I don’t want to fucking go there.
0:23:24 I don’t want to open up a restaurant there. And one of my investors told me,
0:23:30 you are the worst businessman I’ve ever met in my life, David, because I cannot tinker.
0:23:33 If a restaurant is supposed to be the same, I will definitely screw it and it will be different.
0:23:37 Right. And I just have to, I can’t do the same thing. It drives me crazy.
0:23:42 But now we can have control. I’m a control freak. So we can work on a product.
0:23:46 The only problem with consumer product goods and retail and grocery stores, it moves at a snail’s
0:23:52 pace. And I’m an addict to a lot of things, but I’m an addict to action. And that’s been hard for me
0:23:57 is while we’re scaling this consumer product goods business, it moves so goddamn slow.
0:24:08 So if there’s anybody in the world who can answer this, it is you. So what is the impact of the,
0:24:15 shall I say war on immigrants that’s going on right now? What’s the impact is that going to have on the
0:24:16 restaurant business?
0:24:23 I always think about like Singapore. I don’t know what they’re doing right now, but they put a ban on
0:24:27 immigrants. And I remember my friends at restaurants in Singapore, we don’t have any employees. No one’s
0:24:35 working. And I remember 2016, couldn’t find a lot of laborers or cooks or dishwashers. And
0:24:41 here’s a problem. I think a lot of restauranteur chefs want to speak out, but they don’t want to
0:24:50 become a target for the people that work there. That sucks, right? And it’s difficult. It’s difficult
0:24:54 right now. It’s not fair that a lot of people, and they don’t have to be restaurant workers, that there’s
0:24:58 just too many people that live in a state of fear. And that’s just completely unacceptable.
0:25:08 Have you done anything for Momofuku to help the situation or can you do anything?
0:25:11 We can help as much as we can. And I don’t want to speak more than that.
0:25:13 Okay.
0:25:15 But we’re helping. Yeah.
0:25:20 All right. I don’t want to get morbid, but I want to ask you. So at the end of your life,
0:25:32 I’m closer than you. At the end of your life, what do you want your eulogy to be? Is it chef or father
0:25:36 or entrepreneur or Steve Jobs?
0:25:45 No, no, no, no, no. Asshole. That’s what it is. Asshole. No, I think people might think about it a lot. And
0:25:50 honestly, I was telling you before we came up here, I genuinely am shocked with myself that I don’t care
0:25:56 about the things I used to care about. I’m sure you guys know plenty of very wealthy, successful
0:26:01 people. Let me tell you, no one’s going to care about them. Your legacy ultimately to me doesn’t
0:26:08 matter. It’s all ephemeral. And I don’t care about it. I used to, but now it’s, I would much rather just
0:26:16 be like a good dad and a good sort of executive and partner to the people I work with. But I’m not
0:26:21 trying to think about those things. All I wanted to do before is win every goddamn award possible.
0:26:25 And I just don’t care. I also understand when I talk to somebody that’s younger and they’re like,
0:26:28 oh, I’m going to send me a finalist for the James Beard Awards. And I was like, dude, it doesn’t
0:26:33 fucking matter. And they’re like, shut up, Dave. You won a bunch. You can say that. And I was like,
0:26:39 I totally understand you. But I guarantee if you stop caring about it, you’ll probably win a ton of them.
0:26:46 Okay, so we know what you don’t want to do. What’s your eulogy say?
0:26:50 Well, let’s put it this way. Dave Chang was an asshole, and he learned not to be an asshole.
0:26:58 That’s a higher bar.
0:27:05 This is going down a real deep hole, but I’m very curious. So
0:27:12 the cover of his book, I should have brought the book out with me. It shows this tiny little guy,
0:27:18 by pushing this peach up a hill. And the guy, you say, is odd job. It’s odd job.
0:27:22 An odd job, if you’re old enough. He was the guy. With the bowler hat.
0:27:26 Yeah, with the metal hat that threw the hat. Nobody. They’re all too young.
0:27:33 You’re all looking at us like we’re nuts, right? So believe it or not, that guy’s name is Harold
0:27:42 Sakata. I know. He’s from Hawaii. My father and he served together in the army. He and my father were
0:27:50 going to have a tag team wrestling professional wrestling team. Yeah. And he was a family friend.
0:27:58 So I got a ride with him driving around a Mercedes 280 SL. And he was driving me around in that car.
0:28:02 And I said, guy, this is why you’ve got to work hard.
0:28:06 Yeah. So what is your connection with Harold Sakata?
0:28:13 Yeah. Well, it’s not just him. I hate talking about like representation and stuff for the sake of it.
0:28:20 But for me, my only heroes were people like odd job and Bruce Lee and anybody that was a villain in
0:28:25 movies. They happen to be like a computer expert or a demolition expert or something like that. And I was
0:28:30 like, okay, growing up, these were the people I would saw. So I was like a huge fan of odd job.
0:28:33 I’d watch James Bond. Everyone was like, I want to be like James Bond. I was like, I want to be like
0:28:40 odd job. You know what I mean? Again, it’s a very different thing in 2025, but you know, in the 80s,
0:28:45 growing up as a kid, you just didn’t see anything like that. So when you see someone on TV that happened
0:28:49 to be Asian, I was like, yeah, okay, let’s go. There was nobody on sports. I can tell you, it was
0:28:58 Jumbo Ozaki, Japanese golfer, Jun Ring and Taekwondo, and that’s about it. So yeah, in Hollywood,
0:29:04 that was my guy. We’re out of time. But my logic here is what are they going to do? Not invite us back.
0:29:13 So since we talked about odd job, I got to tell you a funny story about me. So one day,
0:29:22 so this is about 15 years ago, I had a 911. Okay. I’m driving in Menlo Park. I’m in my 911.
0:29:29 So 911 is a Porsche. So, you know, all Porsche drivers are assholes. So with that caveat,
0:29:35 I’m driving my Porsche. I pull up to a stop sign. I look to my left. There’s a car full of four teenage
0:29:42 girls. They’re giggling. They’re laughing. They’re making eye contact. And no one in the front seat says,
0:29:47 wrote on your window. So I wrote on my window, she sticks her head out. And she says,
0:29:53 are you Jackie Chan? So that’s, we got to have our heroes, right? Right.
0:30:02 So ever since that day, my goal in life is that some girl in Hong Kong asked Jackie Chan,
0:30:15 if he’s me, I’m going to let you close with a message to this audience about changing the world
0:30:21 and being a father and not being an asshole. What’s your final message here, David Chang?
0:30:26 I wasn’t anticipating this. My God. It’s like a commencement speech. My goodness.
0:30:33 Wow. This is now a lot of pressure. David Chang is speechless.
0:30:38 Listen, this whole idea of scalability,
0:30:44 I’ll tell you like when we started Maple in 2015, it was one of the reasons why, again,
0:30:50 from that Paul McGinnis conversation, I wanted to do something. I had never worked with people that were
0:30:55 venture capitalists. Like we work with Thrive and it was Josh and Will Gaybrick who’s at Stripe now.
0:31:00 And I was blown away at the kind of big picture thinking that was possible.
0:31:08 I didn’t even understand the numbers that was being thrown around and the logistics. And I learned so
0:31:16 much that there is innovation that can be had in industries that you didn’t think were possible and
0:31:22 that are completely uncool. And food, I think needs a lot of help. We need a lot of help. And I just would
0:31:30 say, if you’re going to scale food, don’t make shitty food. Don’t make shitty food.
0:31:37 Don’t make a bowl of slop. Try to make something beautiful with great ingredients and everyone’s
0:31:50 happy to work there. All right, so let’s give it up for Steve Jobs with a knife. Thank you guys.
0:31:58 This is Remarkable People.