Eat a Peach

Eat a Peach is David Chang’s foray into the chef memoir genre. The founder of many things, including the restaurant Momofuku and many others, a couple of Netflix shows, and a magazine. Fun fact, he also won the celebrity version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

So, another chef memoir. People seem to love the genre, and I have no problem saying I’ve read a couple of them myself. Chang’s go at one is interesting because, while the business is an important part of the book, the main focus is Chang himself. His life, his philosophy on things, his mental illness and attempts to understand them. The narrative scaffolding is the same for almost all of these books, so the set dressing is usually what makes them stand out.

Chang’s scaffolding is all over the place though. Not to say it’s bad or good, just to say it reads as more of a collection of short stories. In Educated, Tara Westover’s memoir leads to a certain meeting point (no spoilers but read that), while here, it seems like Chang doesn’t know where to end. Which, fair enough, his story isn’t even over. But he goes from his childhood to Vegas to his therapists office without a real chronological line, which some may see as a problem, but I don’t really mind. He tells the reader this book is going to be all over the place.

It’s tough to say read this or don’t read this. If you like chef memoirs, there are some things you’ll like, and others you’ll wonder why you’re reading. If you like Chang specifically, you’ll like some other things. It’s tough to nail down a specific genre on this, and it’s not because Chang is pandering, it’s because that’s who he is. This memoir comes across as extremely three dimensional. It’s Chang for better or worse.

And yeah, I don’t know the guy. Maybe one of his friends wrote all of it, maybe not. But to me, the fact that it goes in all of these different directions leads me to believe one of two things: that’s how he is, or this book had no creative direction at all, and I’m choosing to believe it’s authentic.