David Chang’s appearance on Jimmy Fallon last night was disappointingly brief, but his latest interview (now up on SFWeekly.com) doesn’t disappoint. He finally addresses fig-gate, and not surprisingly, he echoes panelmate Anthony Bourdain’s comment by saying his criticism of the San Francisco food scene was taken out of context. Chang thinks the whole thing is “retardedly stupid,” and says, “I’m not gonna retract what I said. I think everybody needs to chill out. People need to smoke more marijuana in San Francisco.” Ha! That won’t be taken out of context! So what was the original context, anyway? Well, San Franciscans (and, okay, New Yorkers too, Chang now allows) just aren’t being creative enough with their great produce.
I did mention restaurants like Chez Panisse and Oliveto, they’ve been wildly important, but we need more people doing more creative stuff, and not just in San Francisco but in New York, too. I mean, Quince is hard-school Alice Waters, and yet it’s a wonderful restaurant. Of course not everybody is doing figs on a plate. I’m really excited about a lot of restaurants in San Francisco, you’ve got so many great chefs. There’s Nancy Oakes, Gary Danko, Roland Passot.
So there you go, San Fran. D-Chang has officially thrown you a bone. Now do something creative with it.
