Street Food, Asian American StyleOppositional Taste in
Post-Millennial U.S. Food Culture
Martin RobertsUniversity of Derby,
[email protected]@mroberts711
Inter-Asia Cultural Studies ConferenceAirlangga University,
Surabaya, Indonesia8 August 2015
I knew Id call it Momofuku, which translates from Japanese as
lucky peach. Thats where the logo came from. Its also an indirect
nod to Mr. [Momofuku] Ando: I owed him for a thousand
meals-in-minutes and besides, its a fucking killer name. Maybe the
best first name ever. The restaurant was, for me, a fuck-you to so
many things. Mea Korean Americanmaking Japanese ramen was
ridiculous on its face. Mea passable but not much better
cookopening up a restaurant while my peers, guys I worked with who
were so much more talented than me, were still toiling under other
regimes, paying their dues, learning. It is no accident that
Momofuku sounds like motherfucker.
David Chang, Momofuku (2009): 28, my emphasis.
[T]he word chef can in fact be a derogatory term. What a joke,
what a meaningless term it is these days: a fool in a black chefs
jacket who has no fucking clue about anything. But when you work in
a kitchen, your boss is your chef, and you call him or her that.
When they deserve it, its an honor to call them that. When I meet
with or talk about my mentors, Im likely to call them chef: like me
and Uncle Choi, I recognize theres a si-fu and a kung-fu, and I
dont want anybody to think that I dont know the difference
(Momofuku, 217-218).
David Chang, Momofuku (2009): 217-218.
dont be a fucking hooliganthank you grasshopper