Please welcome David Chang!
-♪ ♪ -(cheering and applause)
Wow!
-Welcome, sir. -Excited to be here.
Welcome to the show. Glad that you're here.
Disappointed you didn't bring any fried chicken with you.
Uh, I'm addicted to a lot of your food
and so many other people are.
Uh, this Netflix series has started off with a bang.
People are loving it. Why the title, Ugly Delicious?
Well, as you saw in that clip, I grew up eating really well.
My mom cooked a lot of Korean things.
And growing up in Northern Virginia, it wasn't that cool.
In fact, I was, like, the butt of many jokes.
So when I started cooking professionally,
those were the foods that I never wanted to touch,
-'cause I was ashamed of it or I just didn't want to, -Wow.
like, embrace it. And that sort of en-encapsulates
a lot of the foods that I think are truly delicious
but may not... may not be cool or is, uh...
looks good on a photograph sometimes, you know?
Like, a curry is a perfect example.
A bowl of curry is so good but isn't something
that's gonna be on the cover of a magazine.
And for you, growing up, your food was a part of your culture
but it was also something that people used to tease you about.
Do you think that that's-that's a big part of food,
is the cultural identity that comes with it?
Absolutely. Because we're at a-a... not a crossroads
but food is pop... more popular than ever before,
and it sort of intersects so many different parts of culture
-throughout the world. -Right.
So, in so many ways, you know,
creating the show with Morgan Neville and Eddie Schmidt,
we decided that food could be sort of a Trojan horse
to talk about many of the great things in culture
and many of the bad things in culture.
Right. Like, for instance, with, um, Chinese food,
uh, th-there's an episode where you delve into Chinese food.
And it feels like it's less about the Chinese food itself
and about how, uh, Chinese people in America
have had to assimilate and what-what that means
and how the food has had to assimilate in many ways
to fit in with American culture. What...
Like, what did you learn in that experience,
when looking at Chinese food on its own in America?
I mean, it goes all the way back
to when they came to work on the railroads
and how they were marginalized way back then
in the 1890s or so.
And without getting too much into the history, I feel like,
as delicious as Chinese food is-- and it's,
like, the most prevalent kind of food
-throughout the world, it seems-- -Right.
uh, it's never been seen as, like, as cool
-as other European cuisines. -Right.
And quite frankly, I think that there has been a lot
of sort of hidden racism in how people perceive,
not just Chinese food, like... basically anything
that's, like, different than the mainstream America, right?
And you see that with MSG or how people see, like, cheap meats
-in Asian restaurants, Chinese restaurants. -Right, yeah.
And a lot of that's not true, right?
They're just, um, you know, not even misperceptions.
They're just wrong, right?
It's interesting that you bring up racism with regards to food,
because those are stereotypes that you see, you know,
rearing their ugly heads all over the world.
You know, people go, "Oh, watermelon-- black people,
and chicken-- black people."
And they'll be like, "Oh, you eat this type of food
if you're Asian, and you-you eat this..."
There are certain ideas that come from food.
There are certain stories that are told by the food.
There's an episode where you talk about fried chicken.
And what I loved in the story--
you know, you're out in the South.
You're meeting with people who cook fried chicken,
white people who make fried chicken.
Did you find that it was interesting to speak to people
about where the chicken came from,
how it came to be popularized,
and how they saw the story as it related to the food?
Absolutely, and I think, first and foremost,
about fried chicken-- it's a story that,
you know, a lot of people don't know about.
Everyone, I think, that eats chicken will find it to be...
-a fried chicken to be delicious. -Right.
Again, the world over, almost.
But the story of how it was born out of oppression and slavery...
-Right. -...for the most part, the fried chicken
that we all most are commonly associated with--
that's a really tough story to tell, right?
And if we can't talk about fried chicken, how are we supposed
to talk about other things that are problematic in this world?
-Right, right, right. -So, um, and going back
to the... sort of the popularity of fried chicken shops--
there's a scene where I'm talking to my friends, really,
and, um, questioning them,
the same questions I'd answer myself.
And the reality is it's, like... it's a... it's a responsibility
that I think today in 2018 that we should know more about,
and we should talk about, and it's, uh...
-it's not easy to talk about. -Right.
I mean, think you have to watch the episode,
because, I think, we're not trying to answer anything.
-We're just trying to start the conversation about that. -Right.
'Cause it's just too dense of a topic.
Do you feel like that's something people could do,
like, at restaurants?
Like, the waiter should have to tell you
about the history of the food when they give it to you?
So you should be like, "What are you gonna have?"
"I'll have the fried chicken."
"Let me tell you about slavery and oppression.
"Like, this chicken over here comes from a long history
of people being oppressed."
And you're, like, "Mm, I'm gonna go with the rice.
-Can I go with the rice?" -(laughter)
No, it's not about that. I mean,
certainly it could be, but we live in a world
where there's so much information at your fingertips.
Like, why not go down that rabbit hole just a little bit?
And, you know, there's a scene in that fried chicken episode
where-- it's not about fried chicken--
where I say to David Simon, great director of The Wire,
where I'm like, "Hey, I would have a problem if someone
-that's not Korean starts making kimchi." -Right.
And he sort of smacks me down, being like, "You're an idiot."
Right? And like, "America is about cultural appropriation
when it's done, like, very well, if that makes any sense."
-Right. -And I thought about that, and I was like,
"Man, he's absolutely right, in the sense that
"the only way I'm gonna get this person that's making kimchi
to appreciate kimchi is to let them go down the rabbit hole."
-Right, right, right. -And maybe they're gonna be
the biggest advocate of it, but if I'm there judging them,
-saying like, "You can't do this. Why...?" -Right.
...then I'm not making any progress there.
So I feel the same way about fried chicken.
And I think that I could have been that...
that fried chicken shop down in Nashville
-because I love hot fried chicken so much. -Right.
Of course, the first thing you want to do is pay homage.
But we... It's a problem sometimes, right?
It's a... What happens
if you start killing the very thing that inspired you?
Right. That's really interesting.
And that's, I think, what the show does.
It's asks questions, it starts conversations,
and most importantly, it makes me hungry as shit.
Thank you so much for being on the show.
-Thanks, Trevor. -Amazing to have you here.
Ugly Delicious is available on Netflix now.
David Chang, everybody.