Chef David Chang’s first public response to the death of his mentor Anthony Bourdain was a black box on Instagram. It was accompanied by the lyrics from American musician Will Oldham’s ‘I See a Darkness’. “Well, I hope that someday, buddy / We have peace in our lives... And pull the smiles inside...”
His second response was an incisive and searingly honest podcast about his own struggles with depression. Chang is bright, popular and incredibly successful. The 40-year-old restaurateur, author and TV personality is best known for founding Momofuku, a spunky New York noodle bar in 2004, which rapidly grew into a group of restaurants all over the world. He hosts the popular Netflix original series Ugly Delicious , has won countless awards for his food, and has recently launched a media company, Majordomo Media, under which he hosts a podcast, The David Chang Show .
So when he went public about his constant battle with depression on his podcast, it triggered a growing wave of responses from writers, chefs and regular people, comforted by the fact that they were not alone. The half-an-hour podcast titled ‘Mental Health and Holding on to Hope’ begins with Chang apologising in advance to listeners who may find it “too dark or self-indulgent” and saying it “doesn’t feel appropriate to talk about anything but Tony Bourdain... Maybe the best way to honour Tony is to talk about my own struggles. I taped this by myself on a recorder two days after I found out that Tony died...”
Chang continues, “The fact of the matter is we all need help. Even those of us that think that everything is going great. It’s so hard to ask for help. More specifically, it’s really hard to find that help.” He talks about how expensive a good psychiatrist can be, adding that he has been seeing one since 2003, “Everyday... It has been the most regular and the longest relationship I have ever been in.” He adds, “The one thing I’ve ever spent money on — most people would consider me a cheap ass because I don’t really spend money on anything except food — I always spent as much money as I had or could afford on mental health.”
A bad yelp review just makes me so sad. It makes me so angry
While it is commonly known that kitchens are high-stress, Chang opens up about the trauma of cooking. “There’s a lot of cooks that have PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder). Because that’s how stressful cooking was... Or at least the cooking I experienced.”
He says it took him years to get help, even when he knew he needed it. “In the past, particularly in an Asian household, the idea that you could get help for this was insane... I needed to see a professional because I was in despair. And I had had bouts of despair ever since high school. But I was just told to suck it up...” He adds, “I could never understand why. If I wasn’t gloomy, I was overly happy. Or I was gloomy and I was sad and I was depressed, but there was only smiles on the outside.”
He describes depression “like fighting some kind of invasive artificial intelligence of my psyche... It is constantly observing and getting data on how I am trying to beat this thing... And after a 15-plus-year battle with it, it is an incredibly complex organism. That is smarter than I am half the time...” He continues, “Sometimes I don’t even realise that I am in a state of depression because I don’t even recognise it. It has gotten so clever (at) morphing. It is evolving... I have to fight that every day.”
Sheer resilience
Momofuku was his way of fighting back. “2004 was about getting a restaurant open... A trick of mine is to set sometimes unrealistic goals for myself... before I go down a road of darkness.” He admits that opening a restaurant is one of the “most stressful, most difficult, high-failure things you can do,” but says work helped him battle depression. “Even when I had days (when it was) hard getting out of bed — it was like training for a marathon. It was just something you had to do. And when everything else didn’t make sense and my rational mind was not really working for me... I knew there was a purpose and I had get to work.”
In the podcast, Chang also opened up about his “huge issues with self-confidence. Approval. Self-love. I had a neurosis that I was not smart. That I was incredibly stupid. My paranoia was real. In retrospect, none of that was necessarily true. It’s hard to make sense of it all when you are in it.” He admits that therapy isn’t easy either. “I had some very expensive sessions when I would say nothing.” However, as Momofuku started to do well, he decided to pay for more sessions with his psychiatrist.
“I remember thinking: What’s the point of having money if I’m going to be dead anyway.” Discussing how he struggles with “imposter syndrome,” he talks of how he became so dependent on reviews for validation that he never really enjoyed success. “Work should never give you meaning... while I can tell you this right now, I still seek meaning through approval,” he admits, adding that he’s trying to find balance. “A bad yelp review just makes me so sad. It makes me so angry. I try not to read them any more...” The podcast concludes with Chang urging people to get help, “My heart goes out to anyone that has experienced anything similar. And I know it sounds a cliché, but you are not alone. You are not.”
Those in distress or having suicidal tendencies could seek help and counselling by calling the State Health Department’s helpline on 104 and Sneha suicide prevention helpline on 044-24640060.
