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 ... isn’t your usual celebrity memoir; Chang proves to be brutally honest about many of his own shortcomings. He celebrates his successes, of course, but he is also forthcoming about his failures. And his willingness to speak frankly about his mental health struggles is especially welcome; even now, there’s a stigma that comes with those kinds of conversations. His feelings of otherness, of being an outsider no matter where he was, come through with a heartbreaking clarity ... He’s also a hell of a storyteller, a gifted and charming raconteur who breathes enthusiastic life into his tales – culinary and otherwise. Chang’s ability to capture the intensity of life in the kitchen makes Eat a Peach a fiery and compelling read. We also get a glimpse of the business side of things, a sausage-making aspect of restaurant entrepreneurialism that isn’t often fully reckoned with in memoirs like this ... The book closes with an absolutely dynamite section titled simply '33 Rules for Becoming a Chef.' It is a frank, thoughtful and hilarious dissection of the realities of becoming a chef, packed with good advice. Chang is unafraid of dealing in harsh realities; at times, it borders on the antagonistic. But it all springs from a place of honest love and affection for the vocation. As with the rest of the book, Chang’s combination of genuine affection and deep-running pessimism regarding the craft is prominent ... a delight, a book that will prove fascinating to anyone interested in the culinary world. Chang’s honesty and humor are just two of the many quality ingredients that make up the recipe for this delicious reading. Whether you’re a full-on foodie or simply a Food Network junkie, you’ll want to dig into this one.

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 ... an honest, ugly, raw dish of a book ... Mr. Chang apologizes for his behavior, but only broadly, abstractly, never directly to the individual workers he’s harmed ... There was a time when such a book might inspire a generation of young cooks to sharpen their knives and move to New York, much like similar chefs-behaving-badly memoirs, including Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and Bill Buford’s Heat. But Eat a Peach reads like a requiem, the last gasp of the celebrity chef. Do not open a restaurant unless you must, he advises the next generation of chefs, when he should have written: Do not operate a restaurant like I did ... Mr. Chang’s memoir will no doubt add more fuel to the funeral pyre. He might be called out for his episodes of bad behavior. He might be forced to divest his restaurant holdings, as has happened to other misbehaving celebrity chefs. Or he might take a different tack and use his capital and charisma to speak out about sustainable and equitable farm, health and wage-earning systems, like his mentor Tom Colicchio. Or, like José Andrés, he might help feed the nation’s neediest. In the wake of Covid-19, Mr. Chang has joined forces with other New York restaurant owners to address wage inequality in the city’s restaurant industry. But customers and critics will surely demand more. Whatever happens next, Mr. Chang knows that as the hill stretches ever higher, the Sisyphean peach that is his burden grows heavier by the day.

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 ... Since then, Chang has expanded his empire to include multiple eateries, a podcast, two Netflix shows — and now a memoir, Eat a Peach ... His tale of finding his way in the restaurant world while struggling with bipolar disorder is the literary equivalent of slurping hot broth at a communal table. Full of humor and honesty, it provides nourishment and a sense of solidarity.

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 is just as open about professional missteps as successes, lauding his talented team while never sparing himself criticism. He also applies brave transparency to the realities of coping with his bipolar disorder, and battling suicidal thoughts. Culinary-minded readers will find much instruction here as well as the intimate self-portrait of a chef who works hard not to be at the top of his game, but instead always growing.

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 ... Chang elucidates the numerous personal struggles he navigated during adolescence and early adulthood. It is during these moments of internal turbulence that Chang’s incisive observational powers shine ... To characterize Eat a Peach simply as a memoir of trauma and tenacity, however, would be deeply remiss. The text’s greatest strength lies not in its abstractions but, rather, in its fastidious commitment to illuminating the minutiae ... The deeply felt, startling candor with which Chang recounts his myriad adversities lends a confessional intimacy that keeps the text’s self-help bent from collapsing into didacticism. His is a paean to embracing the dual forces of turbulence and transformation, one that readers would do well to remember as they navigate the challenges of their particular realities.

David Chang is familiar to modern gastronomes ... There’s a lot to learn and appreciate from his ruminations, if readers can sort through the metawriting, a nonlinear second half, and the feeling that there are multiple projects jammed into one here, penned by an author unsure if he’s ready to face them. A post-epilogue chapter on '33 Rules For Becoming A Chef' is a stand-alone classic ... Rewardingly, by book’s end, Chang has found love, fatherhood and a head start on some peace.

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 ... Chang writes about the sweaty tension of his manic episodes and his dark depression, and there are stories of kitchen screaming fits, reflections on being in the 'cool chefs club,' and particularly affecting passages about Chang’s late friend, Anthony Bourdain. In the book’s most heartfelt section, Chang rhapsodizes about the egalitarian Asian dining ethos he wanted to import to the West and even allows himself a rare pat on the back for his influence. Foodies and chefs alike will dig into Chang’s searing memoir.

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 ... Chang’s memoir eventually becomes a smorgasbord of random recall, covering everything from contemplating the ideal volume of the music in his restaurants to his extended bouts with depression and anxieties about his open-ended future in food ... An entertaining, admirably candid self-assessment of life in the foodie fast lane.