The Dave Chang Show

Dave and Chris call up Stanley Cheng, CEO since 1972 of the cookware-revolutionizing Meyer Corporation, for an insider’s guide to the industry and a few sure-fire picks for home cooks. Discussed: a positive version of Hydra, cooking with Targaryen dragon fire, abandoning the cast-iron skillet, the right pans to buy, flat-bottom woks, the slipperiest material in the world, the silicone-coating racket, nonstick’s high-heat Achilles’ heel, Dave’s golf game, and a paternal assessment of the Anyday. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Stanley Cheng Producer: Sasha Ashall Additional Production: Jordan Bass and Lala Rasor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s Day 7 of Noelle’s Trader Joe’s–only diet, so at the tail end of that experiment within an experiment, Dave and Chris check in on Noelle’s highs and lows. Also: quantifying grocery store quality, tantrums on a plane, shrimp scampi pizza, a dearth of snow crab, and another poor soul entering the Wheel of Constraint’s dreadful grasp. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Noelle Cornelio Producer: Sasha Ashall Additional Production: Jordan Bass and Lala Rasor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What happens when the Wheel of Constraint rolls into the City of Second Chances? Dave reports on a weekend to remember in Las Vegas, and Chris and Noelle weigh in with their own wheel-inspired winnings. Also: an erotic ramen photo shoot, honey-butter hot chips, meeting your match at Moon Palace, an extremely delicious rum, what to order from room service at 4 a.m., mortadella penance, some wise advice from Helen Rosner, and a rundown of Trader Joe’s highs and lows. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Noelle Cornelio Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Additional Production: Jordan Bass and Lala Rasor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With Week 1 of their Wheel of Constraint ordeal wrapping up, Dave, Chris, and Noelle might just be close to the renewed food gratitude they’ve been hoping for. But with that gain comes the requisite pain. Discussed on today’s MOIF: drinking from a puddle on 1st Avenue, self-soothing with shellfish, Dave endangering the no-sugar seal, pining for tortellini, new frontiers in freeze-dried food, the military MRE minefield, a perfectly ripe mango, letting go of “the best,” Wirecutter asking the wrong questions, outsourcing the question of life, knives made by swordmakers, and a Momofuku-enabled expulsion of one Master from their Domain. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Noelle Cornelio Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Additional Production: Jordan Bass and Lala Rasor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s the only day of the year that stands neck and neck with SantaCon in the cockles of Dave’s heart—which means it’s time for an especially amorous #AskDave After Dark. Among the topics tenderly contemplated: why everything that tastes good is bad for you, eating Mexican food in Northern Virginia, considering a career as a master pickpocket, setting Dave Chang traps in Bristol Farms, the enigma of Trader Joe’s, oxtail arbitrage, grocery-store finger bowls, Sophie B. Hawkins, jumbotron marriage proposals, Boiling Crab date night, and Dave’s heartfelt recipe for chocolate-covered strawberries. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Additional Production: Jordan Bass and Lala Rasor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave, Chris, and Noelle check in midway through Day 1 of a monthlong sugar-banishment ordeal, and things are already looking tense. With two meals down and 88 to go, are they prepared to make it to the mountaintop? Surveyed through the hunger pangs: what Dave had for lunch, a NASA recipe taste test, eating cassoulet on the space station, the underground MRE economy, negotiating the terms of the no-sugar program, the Charles Barkley rule, low-grade-sad Chris Ying, Dave gaining strength like Vigo the Carpathian, protein-shake smelling salts, and somehow coming out of this with gout. (Plus: Listen to the end to learn how you can help bring back Dave’s favorite podcast—Recipe Club.) Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Noelle Cornelio Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave, Chris, and Noelle assemble for a fortifying round of MOIF before grappling with their greatest challenge yet: the Wheel of Inspirational Constraint. Assessed along the way: lemon-pepper bagels, land scurvy, America’s Most Valuable Texture, Dave’s pyrotechnic oven mitt test, the importance of the single-purpose kitchen towel, making Teddy Roosevelt proud, cutting the top of your finger off on your first night on the job, and dueling schools of thought on how to say “molybdenum.” Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Noelle Cornelio Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Galaxy Digital CEO, prison reform advocate, and blockchain evangelist Mike Novogratz returns to the show to guide Dave and Chris through the wilds of web3, NFTs, and the crypto economy, and to break down what it all might mean for art, entertainment, and the way we eat. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Mike Novogratz Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave, Chris, and Noelle combine their MOIF powers once again, in an action-packed episode encompassing Chris burning his eyebrows off, keeping your friends close but not too close, Peking duck pizza, taking on Big Oven Mitt, flats vs. drumettes, dinner-table privacy screens, movie-theater nacho cheese, the beauty of 'Ratatouille,' the Dave Chang cut of 'Julie & Julia,' and the thrilling debut of the 'Dave Chang Show' Discord. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Noelle Cornelio Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A few weeks ago, Henry Louis Gates brought Dave onto PBS’s 'Finding Your Roots' for a deep dive into the Chang family lineage—and turned up some incredible stories of intercontinental achievement and Jazz Age entrepreneurialism along the way. Today, Professor Gates joins us to discuss his own journey, his hot-sauce collection, and what they discovered in the far reaches of the Chang family tree. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Professor Henry Louis Gates Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Does wanting to make pizza at home mean the universe is telling you to never, ever make pizza at home? Dave straps on his Socratic sandals to guide us through a head-spinning dilemma, alongside metaphysical considerations of food-photo truthers, perfect-email hell, making your own wedding cake, the calzone-shaped cup of the carpenter, and the worst pizza Dave has ever had. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Noelle Cornelio Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The creator of the captivating podcast turned TV show 'Song Exploder' joins Dave and Chris to explore the kitchen equivalent of demo tapes, the as-yet-unrealized dream that is Cookie Exploder, that time U2 put an album on everyone’s phone, eating like a Buddhist monk, disrobing at a dinner party, what makes great restaurant music, and Dave’s unbroken record of never having watched 'The West Wing.'  Listen to Hrishikesh’s dinner-party playlist here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6Pxi5QSinRtBvQfselifLB?si=9d06714e63a34cd8 Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Hrishikesh Hirway Associate Producer: Sasha Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dave and Chris assemble for a late-night review of recent meals, the best sick-day foods, and a few different international mysteries. Also considered: the healing powers of mapo tofu, Dave's post–'Hot Ones' death throes, eating beef jerky in Copenhagen, asking for seconds at the sushiya, chicken soup component rankings, Dave's praise for matzo balls, the ham–chicken broth nexus, eating as exercise, and the strange allure of the unfilled dumpling. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When L.A.’s Guelaguetza restaurant opened in the mid-’90s, mole and mezcal and all the other treasures of Oaxacan cuisine were a long way from the cachet they carry today. Co-owner Bricia Lopez joins Dave and Chris to talk about how her family helped put their culture on the map. Discussed: where Dave will retire, hunting wild boar in the 1930s, opening a Oaxacan restaurant in Koreatown, eating tlayudas at the Four Seasons, bringing your kids into the industry, Chris’s unwarranted tie-dye skepticism, making mole vs. making bolognese, smoke as a condiment, culinary bullshit detectors, roasting chiles and complaining, and Dave’s chipotle pepper misadventures. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Guest: Bricia Lopez Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We were supposed to record a MOIF, but Dave and Chris got in an argument about the topic. One wanted to talk about curry. The other wanted meatloaf. Which one would you rather they discussed? Well, it doesn’t matter, because they didn’t end up talking about either. This is what a podcast sounds like after our cohosts fight, storm off, make up, and finally record a podcast about their kids being their best friends, flannel pajamas as a medieval torture device, and possibly reapplying to college. Hosts: Dave Chang and Chris Ying Associate Producer: Sasha Ashall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices