David Chang on His Favorite Beer →

Beer snobs are the worst of the bunch. You know the old joke about cheap beer being like having sex in a canoe? I will take a beer that’s "fucking near water" every night of the week over combing out my neck beard while arguing about hop varieties.

For all the debatability of my rant here, let me make one ironclad argument for shitty beer: It pairs really well with food. All food. Think about how well champagne pairs with almost anything. Champagne is not a flavor bomb! It’s bubbly and has a little hint of acid and tannin and is cool and crisp and refreshing. Cheap beer is, no joke, the champagne of beers. And cheap beer and spicy food go together like nothing else. Think about Natty Boh and Old Bay-smothered crabs. Or Asian lagers like Orion and Singha and Tiger, which are all perfect ways to wash down your mapo tofu.

This sums up my feelings perfectly. Just a few months ago during my son's christening reception, Pacifico was flowing and it was fabulous. But to each his own as I snob just a tad on coffee and brew techniques.

State of Ramen

The state of ramen by Momofuku’s David Chang.

When we first opened Momofuku, I feel like our ramen made sense at the time; we were figuring out what it was like to make ramen in America. But now ramen is everywhere, and a lot of it is the same. I don’t want to go to every city and taste the same fucking thing. Everyone’s serving tonkotsu ramen, everyone’s serving pork. You could do a blind taste test and not have any idea where the fuck you’re eating. Everyone is sharing the same experiences, but ramen is not supposed to be about that; it’s food for people that don’t want the same experience, that don’t want to be part of the mainstream. Even in Japan, cooks are returning to pure, clean, simple chicken ramen, because everything else has been done. That’s it—you’ve taken noodle soup as far as you can fucking go, and now it’s gotta go back to the beginning.