How Constraints Led to Two Michelin Stars

Chef David Chang on the broken water heater that changed everything

David Chang’s restaurant got shut down by the health department. What happened next is an incredible example of a constraint turning into invention.

For one of the preorder-bonus Q&As (available to anyone who orders the book from a U.S. retailer), I interviewed Chang, founder of the Momofuku restaurant group. Some people I write about in Inside the Box imposed constraints on themselves. But for Chang, constraints were heaped on him, and they consistently spurred creativity. Here’s an excerpt from our interview on how a broken water heater led to the birth of a two-Michelin-starred restaurant:

“I’m terrible at imposing constraints on myself. Left to my own devices, I want all the colors. I don’t stop. I don’t edit. I need someone to hand me a deck: Here’s what you’re working with and here are the rules, and only then do I get the best out of myself. When my back is against the wall, that’s when something clicks.

The best example is what happened at 163 First Avenue and how it accidentally created Momofuku Ko.

We got so busy that we eventually got shut down by the health department. We ran out of hot water. Our water heater ran on electricity and we needed to upgrade, but the building couldn’t support the amperage and wouldn’t allow a gas conversion either. We asked. We pushed. The answer was no. No hot water meant no operation. Simple as that.

I didn’t choose that constraint. It chose me. And it forced a question I never would have asked: If we can’t run the Noodle Bar at full volume, what can we run?

We did the math. The water heater could support 24 to 36 people a day. That’s not a restaurant, that’s a funeral, unless you rethink everything. So you work backwards. What does a menu look like that generates enough revenue at that volume to keep the lights on?

The answer was a tasting menu. Not because I’d always wanted to do fine dining. I’d never intended to open one. But the constraint made the math undeniable. When Ko opened in 2008 the menu was $85 and beverage was another $85, so $170 all in. The same 600 square feet. The same open kitchen. The room that had seated 27 now seated 12. We changed the frontage and upgraded the stove but the bones were identical. The constraint was the same. Only the ambition had changed.”

The constraints didn’t stop there. The kitchen’s ventilation hood sucked warm air out in winter and cool air out in summer, making the tiny dining room miserable for guests. The only solution was to shut the ovens off almost entirely in summer and build menus around cold preparations, then run them full blast in winter with every dish built around warmth. The result, Chang told me, was more interesting than anything he would have designed with unlimited resources.

If you’ve already preordered Inside the Box from any U.S. retailer, you can fill out the form here to get the rest of David Chang’s Q&A, as well as several others from leaders in their fields talking about how constraints shaped their work and lives. (If you haven’t ordered yet, the page with the form also has links to retailers.)

I think Inside the Box is my best writing, so in the few weeks before publication I’m going to keep sharing thoughts related to it. If you like this newsletter, I think you’ll love the book. I hope you’ll consider picking it up.

Thank you for reading, and thank you for your support. I know there are a lot of other forms of content that vie for your attention these days, but I still find that books spark new insights for me in a way that nothing else does. If you read my new book, I hope you’ll feel the same.

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Until next week…

David