David Chang is a big deal New York chef. He owns four restaurants in the east village. Last year he was profiled in the New Yorker:

He never set out to become a famous person. He just wanted to see if he could open a noodle bar. Now he finds that he’s a public figure, criticized and praised—but mostly praised—by people he’s never met. “Getting these awards freaks me out—the last thing I want is a Michelin star—because I know I’m not the best,” he says. When he thinks about the cooks he worked with at Craft and Café Boulud and how they were so much more skilled than he, and had put in more years than he had, and yet here he was getting all these prizes and all this attention, he feels himself starting to panic. Sometimes he tries to comfort himself thinking about all the bands he loves that made great music even though they were terrible musicians, but somehow it’s not the same. “I feel like I’m losing my ability to understand reality,” he says, “like when someone loses their hearing, they can still speak English, but their speech eventually becomes distorted because they can’t hear themselves. I don’t want to be this crazy. It’s tiring. I just want some mental clarity. But I don’t like that I’m becoming more self-aware of all my problems. It doesn’t make me feel better—I just feel unease almost all the time. I’m a total head case right now, I cannot keep this up. All I want to do is f***ing move to Idaho and ski and fish and read books. All I want to do is run away and stop.”

There are several mother figures in his life who worry about his health and try to persuade him to run away and stop: Ruth Reichl, the editor of Gourmet; Dana Cowin, the editor of Food & Wine; Alice Waters, the founder of Chez Panisse. “I never thought that I’d be able to be, like, friends with Alice Waters,” he says. “And for her to actually care about me—that is so weird. I think Ruth told her that I had shingles, and that’s when Alice had an intervention at lunch. She was like, ‘You’re not doing anything more, no more, no more!’ ” Then, there are the older-brother chef figures who know he’s not going to stop but who tell him to calm down. Andrew Carmellini bought him yoga lessons. “It was just when Momofuku started to really roll,” Carmellini says, “and I was, like, ‘Dude, I’m telling you from personal experience, you need to chill out.’ ” Mario Batali, who has opened seven restaurants in New York, three in Las Vegas, and two in L.A., while hosting two programs on the Food Network and appearing regularly on “Iron Chef,” comes into Noodle Bar a fair amount and gives Chang counsel. “Mario’s big thing to me is ‘Dave, would you f***ing be happy?’ ” Chang says. “He loves it. He loves life. I want to love life as much as Mario loves life.” He sighs. “It’s not that I’m not happy; I’m just fearful for the future,” he says. “I’m fearful that everything’s gonna be taken away. Fear is a driving force for most of the things that I do. I don’t know if that’s healthy.”

I was downtown over the weekend and stopped into Momofuku Bakery and had the famous pork buns. $9 for two pork buns.

If you can restrain yourself you can eat one in four bites. I ate the first one in five and savored the second in six. At about a dollar a bite it’s so worth it. You can also order the pork buns with a deep fried, slow poached egg.

Believe it. These pork buns are the Truth, man.

Then I had a slice of Arnold Palmer cake. That’s a cake made like the drink–lemonade and iced tea.  It was wild. The desserts are playful and crazy. They used to have Lucky Charms ice cream. I saw Sour Patch kids ice cream, and Atomic Hot Ball ice cream while I was there. Could be hectic but could be amazing. They also sell specialized milk and butter.

Here’s a piece with good pictures.