Chang is brutally honest and forthcoming about his up-and-down fight against depression and his ongoing struggles with anger management. It’s a success story that features plenty of misfires. The one constant throughout is a deep-seated and genuine love of cooking, both in terms of culinary exploration and cultural storytelling.

With humor, pathos and heaping spoonsful of self-deprecation, Mr. Chang covers the ins and outs, the fires and floods, that come with running a restaurant—while constantly questioning his place in the constellation of celebrity chefs.

In 2004, the chef David Chang put himself on the culinary map when he opened his first restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, in Manhattan’s East Village.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I started reading Dave Chang’s Eat a Peach. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t prepared for it to be just another volume of bro-y chef glory days fueled by booze, drugs, and testosterone. But as much as this is a book about cooking, restaurants, and hospitality, it’s equally focused on the reality of grappling with mental illness, anxiety, fear, and depression. Chang’s vulnerability truly resonated with me, making this a chef memoir that I think non-food folks will find just as compelling as those familiar with the industry..

Throughout his first memoir, chef, restaurateur, and Ugly Delicious host Chang never loses sight of the 'monumental weirdness' of writing a book about himself. While he discusses his upbringing in a Korean American family with poignance, particularly his relationship with his father, this is primarily a book about Chang’s career and mental health, and how the two are intertwined.

Chang’s memoir Eat a Peach explores the dimensional growth, missteps, and triumphs of his experience as a Korean-American chef while interrogating the emotional burdens and moral ambiguities underpinning his dizzying rise to acclaim.

David Chang is familiar to modern gastronomes.

This is a brutally honest look at a person’s life, an introspection that will leave you exhausted, humbled, and inspired. With self-deprecating humor and an easy-to-read style, the book gives us an intimate view into the fast-paced world of a professional kitchen. The book reads like a long conversation between mates and friends. Be warned: He is not afraid to swear..

... self-effacing, heart-on-sleeve.

It would be unfair to label Chang’s book as the Korean American Kitchen Confidential, but the similarities in tone and attitude certainly invoke the late Anthony Bourdain. The author, probably best known for his now-global Momofuku culinary brand, is no slouch as a writer, with a style that features a refreshingly defiant attitude and some of the best inessential footnotes since A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.