
David Chang’s Unified Theory of Deliciousness - tptacek
http://www.wired.com/2016/07/chef-david-chang-on-deliciousness/
======
elsherbini
David Chang himself throws me for a Strange Loop. On the one hand he is a
genius and I'm so intrigued by his take on food, but then he'll talk about how
he loves gas station hotdogs or orange chicken from Panda Express. I love that
he can be pretentious in his unpretentiousness.

If you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend the PBS series The Mind of a
Chef. The first season is all about David Chang, narated by Anthony Bourdain.
It's on Netflix and at least the Ramen episode is on Daily Motion.

~~~
taneq
I've always held that if you don't enjoy something across a wide range of the
spectrum on which it exists, you can't really call yourself an enthusiast.

If you say you're a sushi connoisseur, but you only like top-shelf sushi
prepared by world renowned chefs, then you don't really like sushi. You just
like nice things. If you say you're a wine aficionado, but you will only drink
wine that you've read is good, you don't really like wine.

~~~
jacobolus
Does a steak enthusiast need to enjoy a thin cut of pure gristle, cooked until
it’s blackened on both sides? Or a haut cuisine “deconstructed steak” which
can be eaten in one bite?

Does a coffee aficionado need to enjoy a cup from the local 24-hour diner
which was made by over-extracting cheap stale beans and then leaving the pot
to sit on a hot pad for hours? Or a cup of instant coffee mixed with non-dairy
creamer and two tablespoons of sugar?

Would a code connoisseur need to have an aesthetic appreciation for a
corporate 500 kloc Java project that does nothing useful?

* * *

Someone who is deeply satisfied to eat anything called “sushi” is just a very
hungry person, and someone who has an insatiable thirst for every type of wine
is an alcoholic.

Or in other words, there’s a big gray area here. There is a very wide range of
quality in most things, from «entirely unpalatable and probably poisonous» to
«divine once-in-a-lifetime experience», as well as a wide range in particular
tastes and preferences. Different people have different standards, and that’s
okay.

One group of people can like student art films with no action and long
philosophical monologue voiceovers by entirely unlikeable characters. Another
group of people can like superhero movies with a predictable plot, flat
characterization, and lots of explosions. Both groups can plausibly say they
like “movies”.

~~~
abtinf
Your reaction to the parent says more about you than the point the parent was
trying to make.

>[If] you only like top-shelf sushi prepared by world renowned chefs....

>[If] you will only drink wine that you've read is good...

Both of those are examples of a second-handed appreciation for the subject
matter. In the first case, the person is substituting pricing signals and
reviewer opinions for their own independent judgement. In the second case, the
person is not only substituting reviewer opinions for their own judgement, but
also denying themselves even the opportunity to learn how to judge the
subject.

An enthusiast or connoisseur is a person with a first-handed view of a
subject. In order to develop a first-handed view, a broad understanding of the
material, associated topics, and direct experience with the full breadth of a
subject is necessary.

In the case of sushi, the enthusiast needs to understand the varying quality
of sushi available, methods and techniques of preparation, the flavor profiles
of fish, the effect of garnishes and sauces, and so forth. You can't
appreciate great sushi until you understand bad/mediocre/good sushi.

In the case of wine, the enthusiast should have extensive experience with
wines at many price points, understand the production methods, understand
types of fermentation, know the various types of grapes, and so forth.

In my experience, enthusiasts for a specific topic are almost _never_ snobs.
I've met beer enthusiasts who don't necessarily enjoy common beers, but they
are nevertheless in awe of the production process and uniform quality. I've
met wine connoisseurs who dislike many $30 bottles but generally enjoy $2 wine
from Trader Joes (aka two-buck-chuck).

~~~
franklinho
I agree with you completely.

I'll add the point that if all you've ever eaten is the best of the best, you
don't really appreciate something as much as if you've experienced the middle
or lower ends.

Anecdote: I dry age my own steaks, and I've realized that people don't really
appreciate them as much as if they're eaten side by side with a "control"
steak that's unaged.

~~~
andrewem
Similarly to your dry aged steak anecdote, I has two bottles of the same brand
of port, one aged 10 years and the other 20. The 10 year tasted great to me,
but once I had it alongside the 20 year, I realized the 10 year had a somewhat
unpleasant aftertaste which I hadn't noticed drinking it on its own.

------
chubot
Ha, he actually used the word "isomorphism" correctly, in contrast to recent
JavaScript terminology :)

I don't really think he used the concept of "strange loop" correctly, because
there is no self-reference involved in his examples. It's more of a "paradox"
(something that's undersalted and oversalted at the same time)

~~~
harveywi
I just searched for the JavaScript isomorphism conundrum and did a facepalm.
JavaScript seems to be a breeding ground for getting all kinds of things
wrong. Just the other day on HN [1] - a JavaScript developer had misused the
term "predicate," someone provided a correction, and then a whole host of
responses emerged to defend the botched definition in a variety of
manipulative ways(appeals to emotion, shame, "it's just like your opinion
man," etc.).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12107737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12107737)

~~~
dllthomas
Following your link, I do not see a single defense of the botched definition.
The contention seems to be entirely over whether it is bad form to point out
an incorrect definition without providing the correct one.

~~~
XaspR8d
While I agree the ensuing argument was excessive, I'll provide a defense of
the "botched" definition.

The _top_ definition for "predicate", that most people are familiar with, and
that was omitted from the dictionary quote, is:

> 1\. (grammar) The part of the sentence (or clause) which states something
> about the subject or the object of the sentence.

And in that context, it was a perfectly valid use of predicate, effectively
synonymous with "unary function".

Sure, someone could & should have pointed out that the term was confusing
because it has a more specific meaning in a computer science context, but all
of the responses were simply "you're wrong" and creating in-group/out-group
boundaries[1] rather than trying to _understand_ the communication mismatch.

[1] It's usually a bad sign when someone comes in and says "serious
programmers should know [...]". :P

~~~
ssalazar
I am making serious mental contortions to try to figure out how a grammatical
term about the structure of sentences can be synonymous with a unary function
and I just can't do it. It seems pretty clear that the instance of the word
that inspired that discussion took the computer science definition and
mistakenly expanded its definition.

~~~
XaspR8d
Perhaps I was particularly sensitive to it because it matched my internal
models. Here's the way I break it down:

In classical/antiquated grammar, most sentences can be divided into a subject
and a predicate. The predicate indicates what the subject does/is. While there
are issues with agreement and semantics, on a broad syntactic level, the
subject is arbitrary and can be replaced with another valid subject:

    
    
        The angry dog  // jumped over the fence.
        My grandmother // jumped over the fence.
        Twelve apples  // jumped over the fence.
    

Since the predicate encodes the action, to me it makes sense to think of this
relationship as a predicate function taking a subject argument. Even if the
subject is plural or conceptual it is still just a single subject object,
hence unary.

Then, in the OP's js context of Object.map we have a situation like this:

    
    
        import map from 'just-map-object';
        function jumpedOverTheFence(subj) { \\ impl };
        var things = ['The angry dog', 'My grandmother', 'Twelve apples'];
    
        map(things, jumpedOverTheFence);
    

Obviously I'm doing some weird things for brevity like conflating strings and
objects there, but hopefully gets the point across.

IMO the analogy actually extends fairly well too. Agreement is a good match
for typing (A singular typed predicate "walks" can't take a plural typed
subject "Some dogs" => "Some dogs walks" fails at the syntax level), and
semantics match internal expectations of functions (The "12 apples jumped..."
breaks internal, but untyped expectation that the subject would have agency or
control over its actions, like a "chooseTo" method or a "consciousness"
property.)

------
rdtsc
> I got really into experimenting with fermentation

I really like fermented food. Love kefir (fermented milk product), kvass (a
Russian fermented bread drink). Pickles, sauerkraut...

He mentions fermented chickpeas. If you get organic foods with less
preservatives in them, say some fresh salsa or chickpea salads, it will
ferment pretty quickly even in the fridge and you can sort of taste it. I
rather like it, and have left some things around long enough for them to
ferment a bit.

Btw, if you buy pickles and they have anything else in the ingredients besides
spices, water, salt and cucumbers, you are probably getting just boiled
cucumbers with vinegar, so the sourness doesn't come from fermentation but
from the vinegar. That is a very different taste than a properly fermented
pickle. So next time look at the label and see what you are getting. One brand
I have been getting lately is Bubbies
([http://bubbies.com/kosher_dills](http://bubbies.com/kosher_dills)) found it
in a smaller local store, but there are probably others.

~~~
MegaDeKay
Start making your own kimchi and there is no going back. Stuff goes with
everything: in paninis, on oatmeal with a poached egg and sesame seeds, on a
baked potato...

Thanks for the tip on the pickles. Hadn't heard this before.

~~~
analog31
Indeed. It's not hard. My family started making kimchi, by just adapting a
mainstream sauerkraut recipe. You have to get the amount of salt right, hence
the reason for starting with an "official" recipe. Too much salt will cause
"yellow kraut" which is a disaster. We used nappa or Chinese cabbage, and then
began to experiment with our own amounts of red pepper and other stuff. A
half-gallon batch is not to hard to manage.

On the same subject, you can make your own "refrigerator" pickles, that are
fermented in a non sealed container. It's a matter of personal preference when
they're ready to eat, and they continue to work, so you can experience a
variety of flavors over the space of a couple weeks.

~~~
liamconnell
> You have to get the amount of salt right

Correction: you have to simultaneously have TOO MUCH salt and TOO LITTLE salt.
I read David Chang one time...

(just practicing how to spin this article for maximum snobbery)

------
grandalf
His description of saltiness reminded me of something I like to do:

I enjoy braised vegetables cooked so that there are varying levels of doneness
throughout. It's as if all the best flavors in each manage to come through and
you get this whole spectrum of what it means to be that vegetable.

~~~
munificent
> I enjoy braised vegetables cooked so that there are varying levels of
> doneness throughout.

Yes! A common technique among more advanced cooks is to add the same spice
multiple times through the cooking process. Spices (and other ingredients)
change in flavor in response to heat, so you end up getting several different
flavors even though they come from the same original ingredient.

My favorite example of an ingredient that works like this is onions. A fresh
onion is super crunchy and so pungent it literally makes your eyes water.
Simmer it for hours and you've got French onion soup—something so soft and
sweet it's practically a dessert.

That's all the onion changing in response to heat. When you use an onion, you
aren't selecting an ingredient. You get to select any precise point on that
continuum between sharp and soft that you want, just based on when you put it
in.

Even with the same recipe, I'll vary it up each time I make it based on how
I'm feeling. Sometimes I want my farmer's omelette to have some crunch and
tang so I cook the onions less. Other times I want it smooth and savory so I
cook them more.

(And, of course, once you take into account cooking _temperature_ —slow and
low versus hot and fast, and how finely you chop them—thickness effects how
different the inside and outsides of each piece cook are—you realize even a
single ingredient gives you a multi-dimensional space to explore).

~~~
grandalf
> to add the same spice

Interesting, any tips on spices that works particularly well with?

I can totally relate to the desire to have the onions be a bit more or less
crunch in an omelette depending on your mood.

~~~
beat
I think of it more in terms of different techniques applied at different
stages. One example is deglazing. Fry a piece of meat, and little sticky bits
of meat and caramelized fat stick to the pan. Remove the meat, wash the pan
with wine or some other liquid, scrape the meat remnants into it, and you get
a sauce for the meat.

Another variant of the concept is red-eye gravy. Cook sausage, deglaze the pan
with coffee. Then the gravy becomes a connector between the sausage you're
eating and the coffee you're drinking.

------
tptacek
This is _way_ more Godel, Escher, Bach than you expected in an article by a
chef.

~~~
j10sanders
Sure, but he totally missed the idea of the book. Something tasting salty and
not salty is not an instance of self-reference and neither were any of his
other examples.

~~~
devilsavocado
I don't think he missed the idea at all. He's not saying that his food is an
example of a strange loop or self-reference. He's saying that the reaction to
a dish can be similar to the reaction of coming across a strange loop. He says
that "When you hit a strange loop like this, it shifts your point of view:
Suddenly you aren’t just thinking about what’s happening inside the picture;
you’re thinking about the system it represents and your response to it".
That's the idea that he wanted to express in his food. He then provides the
example of Spicy Pork Sausage & Rice cakes and other dishes that expressed
that idea for him. All those dishes were no longer just about the dish, but
about the reaction and response to the dish.

~~~
j10sanders
That's a good reading of it! I was hoping he would reach for a deeper
connection though.

~~~
tripzilch
You're right, that would be very cool (but IMHO also a little unlikely). He
did right though, by not forcing this deeper connection when it's not really
there, instead referencing that "huh?" feeling, which _is_ common to both.

------
bradleyjg
If you are in NYC, I highly recommend momofuku noodle bar and momofuku ssam
bar. I've never been to Ko, but I've heard great things. I'd recommend taking
a pass on ma peche.

~~~
radicality
Ko is allright, definitely check it out (my write up [0]). I've done 5/6 of
the 3 Michelin stars in NYC and 5/10 2-star ones, and if you only want to pick
one, Ko is allright but I would recommend Atera instead of Ko from the 2-star
tier. For the really great stuff in 3-star tier, definitely Chef's Table
Brooklyn Fare.

That said, ssam bar and noodle bar are both good, but don't forget Fuku, the
chicken sandwiches are very juicy!

[0]: [https://rafal.io/posts/momofuku-ko-new-
york.html](https://rafal.io/posts/momofuku-ko-new-york.html)

------
daralthus
> Suddenly you aren’t just thinking about what’s happening inside the picture;
> you’re thinking about the system it represents and your response to it.

This is what true art is about.

His use of "unfamiliarity" as a tool to evoke a shift in your point of view is
actually a classic artistic device called "Defamiliarization"[1]. That is:
_The artistic technique of presenting to audiences common things in an
unfamiliar or strange way in order to enhance perception of the familiar._

Or as Viktor Shklovsky put it first: _The purpose of art is to impart the
sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The
technique of art is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms difficult to
increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of
perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged._

On step further it can be described with the "Wundt" or "Hedonic curve"[2]
that basically says, the most interesting experiences are those that are
similar-yet-different to those that have been experienced previously.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamiliarization)
[2]:
[http://natcomp.liacs.nl/images/wundt.jpg](http://natcomp.liacs.nl/images/wundt.jpg)

------
gjkood
Interesting personal anecdote on salt.

After our marriage, my wife's mother shared her precious cookbook with her and
asked her to copy/translate it. My wife did so and she used that as the basis
of her cooking since.

There was one important component of the recipes that my mother in law had
neglected to add since it was second nature to her.

"Add salt to taste."

I was always confounded whenever I tasted the food that my wife made from one
of those recipes and when I tasted the exact same food when my mother in law
made it.

It was only a while later that we found out what the cause of the
inconsistency was.

~~~
thedudemabry
This was one of the biggest level-ups in my own personal cooking, realizing
that salting (and to a much lesser extent peppering) to taste makes or breaks
the dish. Most home cooks I know will skip that step out of ignorance or
health concerns, not realizing that it will make the dish taste awful.

Why do you enjoy simple restaurant dishes (including salads) much more than
your home-cooked equivalents? Salt.

~~~
hinkley
I bought some truffle salt a couple years ago and now half the time I'm using
flavored salts of one variety or another.

When I dry rosemary I put all the broken bits and stems in a jar with some
salt and leave it for a while, then I separate them before use. I'm curious
what would happen if I just put a bunch of fresh sprigs in a jar to dry them,
but I would have to start gifting it to people because damn that's a lot of
salt.

------
gjkood
I noticed one of the photo captions in the article. It was suffixed with the
following phrase:

"David Chang wears a Michael Kors sweater; Levi’s jeans; Satellite Wave watch
by Citizen."

I would expect such a caption more from a fashion magazine than from a
publication like WIRED. Is that a WIRED policy to treat its article subjects
as fashion celebrities or was that just something added by a Photo
editor/agency?

Fantastic article in every other way though.

~~~
coldpie
I agree it's a little unusual, but I don't see how it detracts from the
article in any way.

~~~
gjkood
It absolutely doesn't detract from the article in any objective way. It's just
a pet peeve and probably misplaced considering David Chang is also a TV
celebrity in addition to a masterful Chef.

------
arafa
Really great article. I think I had some kind of weird meta-experience reading
it where I was reminded of Godel, Escher, Bach in the unfamiliar context of
cooking. I'm sure the author of this article would've appreciated that (as
well as the author of G.E.B.).

------
hackaflocka
I have a love of crunchy foods. I mainly love the crunchy sound as I eat them.

Is there an evolutionary theory of why I might have evolved to love these? The
only theory I could think of is that they're a marker of freshness in some
vegetables. But nature never made anything as crunchy as the crunchy foods I
love.

~~~
sporkologist
Cooked meat can have a crunchy burned exterior, which indicates wonderful
tasty easily-digestible protein, great for our energy intensive brains.

------
nwah1
Well, this theory explains the appeal of a hot fudge brownie sundae. A warm
brownie and cold vanilla ice cream, individually are both pretty good, but
combining them becomes hypnotic.

As long as you eat it before the ice cream melts and the brownie gets cold.

------
fillskills
That is so amazing and goes with the theory put forth in the book On
Intelligence (by Jeff Hawkins). The theory is that the mind noticies things
that are out of place. If it is too close to an existing pattern, brain will
put it into that pattern. To stabd out the new item/concept has to be far
enough from any existing pattern. So if a dish is salty and not salty at the
same time, it doesnt fit in any of two patterns familier to the brain.

------
bcheung
Did anyone get any actionable concepts from that article? Seems like an
interesting read but not sure how to any of it to my own cooking.

~~~
analog31
More glutamic acid. Oddly enough, my family already makes two of the magic
dishes mentioned in the article: The pork buns and Ma Po's tofu.

In my view, there's not much that a home cook can learn from a chef. Julia
Child commented on the difference, and thought that being a good home cook is
an art unto itself. A lot of what we do in home cooking is the art of the
possible. We deal what's available at the supermarket, in season, whatever we
can grow in our backyard gardens, etc. We may have limited equipment and
limited budgets. Some of us live with vegetarians.

For instance, in our case the pork buns are made using our pizza dough recipe,
and baked. We don't have those amazing giant steamers that you see in the
kitchen when you go to dim sum. Our Ma Po's tofu is vegetarian, much as I love
the combination of tofu and pork.

~~~
kerkeslager
> In my view, there's not much that a home cook can learn from a chef. Julia
> Child commented on the difference, and thought that being a good home cook
> is an art unto itself. A lot of what we do in home cooking is the art of the
> possible. We deal what's available at the supermarket, in season, whatever
> we can grow in our backyard gardens, etc. We may have limited equipment and
> limited budgets. Some of us live with vegetarians.

I think there's a ton we can learn from chefs. Personally, I've learned a few
things from Alton Brown, particularly about reproduce-ability; being able to
reproduce a recipe that you cooked once that turned out well. In an interview
with him (I think it was on Radiolab but not sure) he mentioned increasing the
accuracy of your measurements: use a thermometer to measure heat and measure
your dry ingredients by weight, not by volume.

------
kaybe
Can anyone recommend sources (preferably online) along the lines of cooking
theory similar to this?

~~~
bradleyjg
I know you said preferably online but see if any library you have access to
has a copy of the five volume set Modernist Cuisine.

Incidentally the guy behind them has a fascinating, and tech relevant,
biography.

~~~
azinman2
You're forgetting one of the biggest patent trolls, too.

~~~
radicality
Is that relevant? It doesn't make his other positive and fascinating
achievements any less great.

~~~
azinman2
I believe that a super negative act can easily mar someone's reputation, and I
think most on HN would agree that Intellectual Ventures is a pox on our
industry. Similarly, lots of people on HN have changed their perception of
Theil after his gawker stints have come to light.

------
IamFermat
I like his food. I think a lot of his fame is due to his attitude but I do
applaud him for trying to think more meta about what we think we like to eat.

------
halestock
offtopic: has wired stopped blocking adblock users?

~~~
gorhill
I just checked, they are still using their anti-blocker on other articles, but
for this specific article it does not kick-in.

~~~
JoelBennett
I find it entertaining that they consider Ghostery and ad-blocker. I don't
mind ads, but I do mind things that track me.

