David Chang’s Unified Theory of Deliciousness
wired.com
wired.com
If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend the PBS series The Mind of a Chef. The first season is all about David Chang, narated by Anthony Bourdain. It's on Netflix and at least the Ramen episode is on Daily Motion.
The HBO series 'Treme', set in a neighbourhood of New Orleans post-Katrina, prominently features David Chang playing a fictionalised version of himself. One of the main characters spends the second season working under him in New York. Quite odd.
If you say you're a sushi connoisseur, but you only like top-shelf sushi prepared by world renowned chefs, then you don't really like sushi. You just like nice things. If you say you're a wine aficionado, but you will only drink wine that you've read is good, you don't really like wine.
1. a person who imitates, cultivates, or slavishly admires social superiors and is condescending or overbearing to others.
2. a person who believes himself or herself an expert or connoisseur in a given field and is condescending toward or disdainful of those who hold other opinions or have different tastes regarding this field.
In the first case, a snob substitutes the views of the social elite for his own judgement. In the second case, a snob declares himself a member of the social elite because he holds different views. In both cases, what makes the person a snob is that they are not judging the material qua the material; indeed they are not concerned with the material at all. Instead, they are concerned with social advantage.
I'm not sure there is a word for someone who judges a subject based on the merits. An enthusiast?
I'm fine with that.
If you want to make "elites" a foundation for a definition, you might as well just roll both of those up into "bourgeois," thought #2 is arguably more "asshole."
For me, an enthusiast might be someone who finds reasons to be into something (the opposite of my def of snob), but I don't think there's a word for simply liking stuff that is good. "Not completely depressed," perhaps.
Does a coffee aficionado need to enjoy a cup from the local 24-hour diner which was made by over-extracting cheap stale beans and then leaving the pot to sit on a hot pad for hours? Or a cup of instant coffee mixed with non-dairy creamer and two tablespoons of sugar?
Would a code connoisseur need to have an aesthetic appreciation for a corporate 500 kloc Java project that does nothing useful?
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Someone who is deeply satisfied to eat anything called “sushi” is just a very hungry person, and someone who has an insatiable thirst for every type of wine is an alcoholic.
Or in other words, there’s a big gray area here. There is a very wide range of quality in most things, from «entirely unpalatable and probably poisonous» to «divine once-in-a-lifetime experience», as well as a wide range in particular tastes and preferences. Different people have different standards, and that’s okay.
One group of people can like student art films with no action and long philosophical monologue voiceovers by entirely unlikeable characters. Another group of people can like superhero movies with a predictable plot, flat characterization, and lots of explosions. Both groups can plausibly say they like “movies”.
For example: I love beer and consider myself a beer enthusiast. I've brewed it and know all about just every aspect of it. I have traveled to remote monasteries in Belgium to try excellent beers, and enjoyed drinking Dos Equis on a hot summer day by the pool. Most self-described "beer snobs" look down on beers like Corona and the like in favor of some "craft" IPA. Dos Equis isn't my favorite beer, but I recognize its good qualities and when a situation calls for it.
I think the poster was just saying that enthusiasts enjoy many aspects of something across a wide range and don't have to gravitate toward only the "divine once-in-a-lifetime" things.
Of course, maybe I'm totally off base.
It’s also fine for a different “connoisseur” to enjoy store-bought California rolls made from imitation crab and left sitting on a shelf until the rice is stale.
It’s overly reductionist and pretty patronizing to insist that the former doesn’t really like sushi while the latter does (No True Scotsman, and all that).
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P.S. The mainstream brands of Mexican beer are pretty good. Most of the big Mexican breweries were started by German immigrants in the mid-19th century, and there is now a long beer tradition there. Corona’s extensive marketing to the US about tropical getaways and lime slices, etc. has nothing to do with their product or their brand in Mexico, and I find it fairly silly, but it was extremely successful.
I disagree for two reasons. First, it is important for any connoisseur to experience a wide range in order to truly appreciate the items on the finer end of the spectrum. Someone who only eats high end sushi is a pretender, not a connoisseur.
Second, low-end restaurants sometimes contain amazing dishes that any connoisseur may enjoy. Similarly, cheap wines have won blind-taste competitions before, even when they were pitched against high-end, expensive wines.
The No True Scotsman fallacy doesn't apply to conversations where the topic at hand is discussing what makes someone a Scotsman.
There are quite a few chefs who believe the best sushi is from fish that has been 'curing' in the cooler a few days.[1] not necessarily the freshest fish. That's because the fish takes on more flavors as it ages. The notion of fish needing to be fresh is more prevalent in north American than it is in Japan.
Remember, some of the first sushi quality fish were flown over in planes back in the early '70s as a way for JAL to make money on the cargo hold of their planes.
Many people might get sucked into watching a Marvel movie because it's a cultural phenomenon and the best executed form of super hero entertainment.
But only an enthusiast will find pour through the back issue bins looking for hidden gems.
>[If] you only like top-shelf sushi prepared by world renowned chefs....
>[If] you will only drink wine that you've read is good...
Both of those are examples of a second-handed appreciation for the subject matter. In the first case, the person is substituting pricing signals and reviewer opinions for their own independent judgement. In the second case, the person is not only substituting reviewer opinions for their own judgement, but also denying themselves even the opportunity to learn how to judge the subject.
An enthusiast or connoisseur is a person with a first-handed view of a subject. In order to develop a first-handed view, a broad understanding of the material, associated topics, and direct experience with the full breadth of a subject is necessary.
In the case of sushi, the enthusiast needs to understand the varying quality of sushi available, methods and techniques of preparation, the flavor profiles of fish, the effect of garnishes and sauces, and so forth. You can't appreciate great sushi until you understand bad/mediocre/good sushi.
In the case of wine, the enthusiast should have extensive experience with wines at many price points, understand the production methods, understand types of fermentation, know the various types of grapes, and so forth.
In my experience, enthusiasts for a specific topic are almost never snobs. I've met beer enthusiasts who don't necessarily enjoy common beers, but they are nevertheless in awe of the production process and uniform quality. I've met wine connoisseurs who dislike many $30 bottles but generally enjoy $2 wine from Trader Joes (aka two-buck-chuck).
I'll add the point that if all you've ever eaten is the best of the best, you don't really appreciate something as much as if you've experienced the middle or lower ends.
Anecdote: I dry age my own steaks, and I've realized that people don't really appreciate them as much as if they're eaten side by side with a "control" steak that's unaged.
It's pretty obvious most people are not either
If the post said "...if you CAN enjoy something across...spectrum..." it would be more accurate. You don't HAVE to enjoy something across a wide spectrum, you just have to be open to the possibility and have given it a try. If you aren't open then exclusion from 'connoisseur' etc is probably granted.
Or at least I like reading about the whole spectrum, not only part of it.
Nice things -- like fancy coffee makers -- are nice, but so are other things.
It's relevant because it's from Mind of Chef season 1 with David Chang.
[0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/PandaExpressWebsite/files/pdf/Nutri...
Combining orange and chicken is simple but powerful because they are favorite foods for many people and they have completely different flavor profiles (of course orange chicken could be executed better than Panda Express!).
Take ketchup. From what I understand, a century ago, making homemade ketchup was a lot more common, and there was quite a bit more variety in the spices used. (This old cookbook -- http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/cookbooks/books/settleme... -- has three recipes for "catsup" on page 439-440 alone.) One of my great grand-aunts regularly made ketchup in Indiana, and it was very different from commercial ketchup. A fair bit runnier (no xantham gum), a fair bit "sweeter" (it used regular sugar instead of corn syrup / HFCS which may have contributed to this), and nice notes of garlic.
Commercial store bought ketchup, meanwhile, unfortunately seems stuck either being Heinz ketchup, or imitating Heinz ketchup.
I'm not even a vegetarian, but there's no reason to go out of your way to be a dick towards people who are actually making a considerable personal sacrifice for the benefit of others.
It´s his restaurant. You knew it coming in. He´s not an asshole, he cares about how his food tastes. If you´re not willing to accomodate his wishes, maybe make another considerable personal sacrifice and not go into his restaurant to be served in the way you want. Last I checked, his restaurants are always full. Why would he want your business?
An entire falafel sandwich begins to approach the complexity of a simple fried egg, but doesn't even quite get there. And a chicken can create an egg in a day.
I say all of this lovingly, as a long time vegan. I have a lot of respect for animals.
An example:
The cow chews grain. The vegan chef grinds it.
The cow ferments plants and seeds in its stomach. The vegan chef ferments in her crock.
The cow extracts sugars, fats and proteins, via her metabolism. The vegan chef uses presses and filters.
The cow measures salt with her thirst, and integrates proteins and sugars in her mammaries. The vegan chef measures with a teaspoon and integrates ingredients in a blender.
The cow tills seeds under the earth with her hoof. The vegan chef presses them into the garden with a finger.
Meat and animal products are the output of the lives of animals. The inputs are plants. Vegan cooking is recreating this work in a consensual way.
Maybe I can put it this way: Meat starts at an 8, and you can add complexity to get it up to a 10. But a dry soybean starts at a 0. You can get it up to an 8 by doing a lot of vegan chef work. Or you can get it up to an 8 by letting an animal turn it into meat. My point is that someone has to do the work to get it to an 8. If it's not an animal, it's got to be the chef.
Once you start allowing people to customize dishes, it throws service off and makes things exponentially harder to coordinate. "This dish is vegetarian, going to table 6, along with the gluten free entree." Removes the fungibility from the dishes - with the volumes he's doing, it's a lot easier to say "3 pastas ready" and not give special instructions to the line chefs.
I don't really think he used the concept of "strange loop" correctly, because there is no self-reference involved in his examples. It's more of a "paradox" (something that's undersalted and oversalted at the same time)
The top definition for "predicate", that most people are familiar with, and that was omitted from the dictionary quote, is:
> 1. (grammar) The part of the sentence (or clause) which states something about the subject or the object of the sentence.
And in that context, it was a perfectly valid use of predicate, effectively synonymous with "unary function".
Sure, someone could & should have pointed out that the term was confusing because it has a more specific meaning in a computer science context, but all of the responses were simply "you're wrong" and creating in-group/out-group boundaries[1] rather than trying to understand the communication mismatch.
[1] It's usually a bad sign when someone comes in and says "serious programmers should know [...]". :P
My concern was not the particular question, but the tremendous mischaracterisation of the entire linked discussion.
In classical/antiquated grammar, most sentences can be divided into a subject and a predicate. The predicate indicates what the subject does/is. While there are issues with agreement and semantics, on a broad syntactic level, the subject is arbitrary and can be replaced with another valid subject:
The angry dog // jumped over the fence.
My grandmother // jumped over the fence.
Twelve apples // jumped over the fence.
Then, in the OP's js context of Object.map we have a situation like this:
import map from 'just-map-object';
function jumpedOverTheFence(subj) { \\ impl };
var things = ['The angry dog', 'My grandmother', 'Twelve apples'];
map(things, jumpedOverTheFence);
IMO the analogy actually extends fairly well too. Agreement is a good match for typing (A singular typed predicate "walks" can't take a plural typed subject "Some dogs" => "Some dogs walks" fails at the syntax level), and semantics match internal expectations of functions (The "12 apples jumped..." breaks internal, but untyped expectation that the subject would have agency or control over its actions, like a "chooseTo" method or a "consciousness" property.)
Did you link to the correct comment? Because I see absolutely none of what you described.
There is no self-reference in the paradox of something having 2 properties at once (e.g. undersalted and oversalted).
It is a paradox, but it's not a Liar's paradox or a strange loop. In other words, not all paradoxes are the Liar's paradox.
In order to grok strange loops, one must learn to accept rather than reject paradox. "Logic" doesn't like paradox, and tries to get rid of them when they are encountered. But once you've read GEB, you're sensitized to accept paradox.
I agree that all strange loops are paradoxical, but not all paradoxes are strange loops. Where I don't agree is that just because an idea isn't a strange loop doesn't mean it wasn't inspired by an awareness of strange loops. Without Hofstadter's idea, Chang would never have had this breakthrough on his own.
I'd argue that usage is more "technically" correct than David Chang, who's referring to the _entities_ as the isomorphisms rather than the relationships between them. (Though I understand his usage and find no problem with it in the given context.)
"The term isomorphism literally means sameness (iso) of form (morphism)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphism_(Gestalt_psycholog...
Perhaps the knowledgable people here (that unfortunately so far have preferred to be flippant and condescending instead of educating) could provide an explanation of showing us why "Isomorphic JavaScript" is a misnomer?
I think the problem stems from considering the running on server and client as the entities, rather than the representation produced on the server and reinstantiated on the client as something that can be manipulated.
It's the same code on the server side and client side.
So the client and server are isomorphic, because an object is trivially isomorphic to itself.
It's a fine idea to run the same code on the client and server. No problem there. The word choice may be confusing because you expect there to be some deeper concept you are missing.
Hence the "strange loop".
I really like fermented food. Love kefir (fermented milk product), kvass (a Russian fermented bread drink). Pickles, sauerkraut...
He mentions fermented chickpeas. If you get organic foods with less preservatives in them, say some fresh salsa or chickpea salads, it will ferment pretty quickly even in the fridge and you can sort of taste it. I rather like it, and have left some things around long enough for them to ferment a bit.
Btw, if you buy pickles and they have anything else in the ingredients besides spices, water, salt and cucumbers, you are probably getting just boiled cucumbers with vinegar, so the sourness doesn't come from fermentation but from the vinegar. That is a very different taste than a properly fermented pickle. So next time look at the label and see what you are getting. One brand I have been getting lately is Bubbies (http://bubbies.com/kosher_dills) found it in a smaller local store, but there are probably others.
Thanks for the tip on the pickles. Hadn't heard this before.
On the same subject, you can make your own "refrigerator" pickles, that are fermented in a non sealed container. It's a matter of personal preference when they're ready to eat, and they continue to work, so you can experience a variety of flavors over the space of a couple weeks.
Correction: you have to simultaneously have TOO MUCH salt and TOO LITTLE salt. I read David Chang one time...
(just practicing how to spin this article for maximum snobbery)
Britt's Pickles (pike place, Seattle) is wholesaling now but I don't know what their distribution area looks like. They also sell pickling kits if you want to try your own.
But I'm not a native speaker so maybe I'm confused about the definition of the word "pickling". Does it always imply fermentation? When you do it with vinegar is it just called "preserving" maybe?
I enjoy braised vegetables cooked so that there are varying levels of doneness throughout. It's as if all the best flavors in each manage to come through and you get this whole spectrum of what it means to be that vegetable.
Yes! I do that stuff too. Making me hungry just thinking about it.
Yes! A common technique among more advanced cooks is to add the same spice multiple times through the cooking process. Spices (and other ingredients) change in flavor in response to heat, so you end up getting several different flavors even though they come from the same original ingredient.
My favorite example of an ingredient that works like this is onions. A fresh onion is super crunchy and so pungent it literally makes your eyes water. Simmer it for hours and you've got French onion soup—something so soft and sweet it's practically a dessert.
That's all the onion changing in response to heat. When you use an onion, you aren't selecting an ingredient. You get to select any precise point on that continuum between sharp and soft that you want, just based on when you put it in.
Even with the same recipe, I'll vary it up each time I make it based on how I'm feeling. Sometimes I want my farmer's omelette to have some crunch and tang so I cook the onions less. Other times I want it smooth and savory so I cook them more.
(And, of course, once you take into account cooking temperature—slow and low versus hot and fast, and how finely you chop them—thickness effects how different the inside and outsides of each piece cook are—you realize even a single ingredient gives you a multi-dimensional space to explore).
for most people, the most dramatic example of this is a medium rare (or less) steak. black and blue is the extreme.
Interesting, any tips on spices that works particularly well with?
I can totally relate to the desire to have the onions be a bit more or less crunch in an omelette depending on your mood.
Another variant of the concept is red-eye gravy. Cook sausage, deglaze the pan with coffee. Then the gravy becomes a connector between the sausage you're eating and the coffee you're drinking.
That said, ssam bar and noodle bar are both good, but don't forget Fuku, the chicken sandwiches are very juicy!
This is what true art is about.
His use of "unfamiliarity" as a tool to evoke a shift in your point of view is actually a classic artistic device called "Defamiliarization"[1]. That is: The artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way in order to enhance perception of the familiar.
Or as Viktor Shklovsky put it first: The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.
On step further it can be described with the "Wundt" or "Hedonic curve"[2] that basically says, the most interesting experiences are those that are similar-yet-different to those that have been experienced previously.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization [2]: http://natcomp.liacs.nl/images/wundt.jpg
After our marriage, my wife's mother shared her precious cookbook with her and asked her to copy/translate it. My wife did so and she used that as the basis of her cooking since.
There was one important component of the recipes that my mother in law had neglected to add since it was second nature to her.
"Add salt to taste."
I was always confounded whenever I tasted the food that my wife made from one of those recipes and when I tasted the exact same food when my mother in law made it.
It was only a while later that we found out what the cause of the inconsistency was.
Why do you enjoy simple restaurant dishes (including salads) much more than your home-cooked equivalents? Salt.
When I dry rosemary I put all the broken bits and stems in a jar with some salt and leave it for a while, then I separate them before use. I'm curious what would happen if I just put a bunch of fresh sprigs in a jar to dry them, but I would have to start gifting it to people because damn that's a lot of salt.
"David Chang wears a Michael Kors sweater; Levi’s jeans; Satellite Wave watch by Citizen."
I would expect such a caption more from a fashion magazine than from a publication like WIRED. Is that a WIRED policy to treat its article subjects as fashion celebrities or was that just something added by a Photo editor/agency?
Fantastic article in every other way though.
Is there an evolutionary theory of why I might have evolved to love these? The only theory I could think of is that they're a marker of freshness in some vegetables. But nature never made anything as crunchy as the crunchy foods I love.
(I'm completely riffing though)
As long as you eat it before the ice cream melts and the brownie gets cold.
In my view, there's not much that a home cook can learn from a chef. Julia Child commented on the difference, and thought that being a good home cook is an art unto itself. A lot of what we do in home cooking is the art of the possible. We deal what's available at the supermarket, in season, whatever we can grow in our backyard gardens, etc. We may have limited equipment and limited budgets. Some of us live with vegetarians.
For instance, in our case the pork buns are made using our pizza dough recipe, and baked. We don't have those amazing giant steamers that you see in the kitchen when you go to dim sum. Our Ma Po's tofu is vegetarian, much as I love the combination of tofu and pork.
I think there's a ton we can learn from chefs. Personally, I've learned a few things from Alton Brown, particularly about reproduce-ability; being able to reproduce a recipe that you cooked once that turned out well. In an interview with him (I think it was on Radiolab but not sure) he mentioned increasing the accuracy of your measurements: use a thermometer to measure heat and measure your dry ingredients by weight, not by volume.
That's cooking, surely.
Incidentally the guy behind them has a fascinating, and tech relevant, biography.
No e-book version either.
Modernist Cuisine is probably the most well known reference for actual cooking theory, but it's crazy expensive, and some people have problems with supporting Myhrvold.
This was what I was expecting from this article, instead of a cooking philosophy, not that there's anything wrong with that. What I got served just didn't match the expectations.