An Interview With Miami Chef Alex Chang: Part 1

This is the first installment in a two-part interview with chef Alex Chang. You can find the second installment here.

Alex Chang, executive chef of Vagabond Restaurant in Miami, pretty much defines what it means to be a modern Wunderkind. The 25-year-old self-taught chef (he learned to cook by reading Rachel Ray cookbooks as a teen) gained fame as a student at USC when he and his roommate launched an impromptu supper club called Paladar. The underground "restaurant" gained so much attention that a filmmaker decided to make a documentary about it, which debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival.  After college, Chang (whose background is Chinese and Mexican), cooked at restaurants around the world such as Lazy Ox Canteen and Animal in Los Angeles, Les Creations de Narisawa in Tokyo, Restaurante Pujol and Quintonil in Mexico City, and Belgium's Michelin-rated restaurant: In De Wulf.

Upon seeing Chang's film, international restaurateur Alvaro Perez Miranda asked him to helm the kitchen at Vagabond Hotel's newly revamped restaurant, Located in the Miami Modern (MiMo) historical district.  Chang's worldly approach and culturally diverse background fit perfectly with the global "Vagabond" cuisine envisioned they for the space.

Since opening six months ago, the restaurant's high-energy vibe and kitschy décor mixed with Chang's bold, universal menu has been a major hit. He spoke to us about adjusting to Miami from L.A., the challenges of local and seasonal cooking, and how insects are the wave of the future.

The Daily Meal: You are pretty much self-taught — you started cooking after reading cookbooks, then you traveled and worked in kitchens in L.A. and abroad.  How would you compare the two styles of learning?
Alex Chang: I think you can't compare to the real thing. Those experiences shaped my development, my technique—even the lessons you learn in life more than anything. But there's a fair amount that's really good about learning from books because you can absorb it the way you want to at your own pace and think stuff through in different ways. Most chefs are really avid cookbook collectors and I'm definitely one of them. That's how I'm here—Internet and cookbooks—I didn't know anything before.

What are some of your favorites?
Recently, The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz was really, really good, and MOMOFUKU was kind of the first book I really read from start to finish.

It seems Vagabond's theme of pulling from various regions works perfectly with your background, how did you pick which dish would highlight which region?
It's more about what I like and the flavors I like. My defaults are Japanese, Chinese, and Mexican. I'm Mexican and Chinese and I spent a lot of time in Japan, so those are the foods I mostly want to eat on my days off. Also things I picked up along the way working for different people. The thing about growing up in L.A. is that there are so many different ethnic cultures — you know Armenian food really well, you know Lebanese food really well, there's an insane amount of good Korean restaurants. You know all that food probably better than most people in other big cities, so I've brought a lot of that here. There aren't really any rules, as long as it tastes good. [pullquote:right]

Your first restaurant job was your supper club; how was that unique, in terms of learning your trade and learning how to serve?
It definitely was not conventional. There were some really good things about it; there's a certain amount of discipline and structure and submissiveness that's good about working for somebody else and learning their systems and approaches, but I also think working for myself taught me to be fearless and take a lot of risks and just say go for it, jump off the bridge, and see what happens. I also think something that's underrated is that there are so many people who work as cooks; so many cooks I've worked next to, who can cook me under the table. Pound for pound—knife skills, technique—I would never say I'm the best. But being self-taught forced me to be creative and accelerate my creativity and thought process to where now I can easily create dishes. Coming up with new ideas for stuff is really easy.

In the beginning, your clients were mostly people you knew, did that help you as far as getting honest feedback and how is it different now?
I think there are good things and bad things because your friends may be critical and they may not. I think the hard thing here is that the first two weeks I was so nervous about everyone's feedback, and then I realized I kind of just had to stick to the fact that I know how to cook good food, some people just might not get it or it may not be for them.  But that was a really hard thing for me to swallow.  Because literally every single person that would walk out, I would think, Oh my god were they happy? Did they not like something? But then you just realize there are some people this restaurant isn't for and maybe they don't get it.

This is the first installment in a two-part interview with chef Alex Chang. You can find the second installment here.