Dinner Time Live with David Chang

All right, we have two great guests today. Kate Berlant, Mandy Moore.

It's hot outside. Summer is, uh, here.

I wanna make a light menu, cold.

It'll be some dishes that I would not normally make,

which is why I'll call it the Summer of Dave.

-The Summer of Dave. - That's right.

Things I never make. White gazpacho, spaghetti vongole, things like that.

Uh, upside-down plum cake.

Yum.

-A nice light change from last week. -Yes.

It's gonna be good. Stay tuned.

Um, good conversation. I hope I don't burn myself.

And we'll be good.

-Let's do this. -Summer of Dave.

Laughing, but it's real.

Looks like we're fake laughing. We're real laughing.

The laughter is real. It looked fake.

Welcome to Dinner Time Live. I'm Dave Chang. That's Chris Ying.

We are joined with Kate Berlant, Mandy Moore.

Thank you so much for joining us.

A lot of big fans of you are here in the audience.

-Thank you. Thank you. -Thank you.

-My heart is pounding out of my chest. -Same.

-Can you feel it? -But you guys do live stuff.

You do live stuff all the time too, right?

Not like this.

I'm starstruck.

I look over here. I'm starstruck.

Well, listen, I'm just going to make you some light summer delicious meals.

We've been joking that the menu is titled the Summer of Dave.

-Summertime Dave is here. -I don't normally cook light things.

I mean, yes, I do, but I always eat and cook hot soups and braises and stuff.

But you guys are coming on, I needed to change it up.

-The actress menu. - I know.

The actress menu. Hardly.

It's also peak farmer's market,

and, uh, wanted to highlight a lot of the fruits and vegetables there.

So, uh, you guys started off with a white gazpacho, um...

but we made it with pine nuts instead of almonds.

It's delicious.

We're gonna roll into a lobster salad,

but I'm gonna work on a couple other things.

Uh, this is gonna be a rockfish in papillote.

I have not made this since cooking school.

Ooh.

It's gonna be with sort of a ratatouille underneath,

but both of you don't love eggplants, so we removed the eggplant.

I don't wanna throw this one. I do love eggplant.

But I support you not loving it. Why didn't I just go with it?

I made the executive decision of no eggplants.

I feel like you threw her under the bus.

You should've just said, "I also don't like it."

It's worse than that.

I blocked connection between us, which is connecting over hating eggplant.

Instead, I... Why would I have done that? I hate eggplant. Ugh.

-Great. -Yeah.

-We're on the same page. -Well, we don't love eggplant either here.

- Look at that. -

- - Thanks.

I also had to pry it out of...

Mandy was so accommodating when we were talking about the menu,

and I insisted you tell me one thing that you don't love,

and I forced it out.

Kate and I were talking, we both love food.

We love planning our travels around eating and restaurants

and all of that, and huge fan of Dave's.

And so when approached with this opportunity,

"What do you like and not like?"

I'm like, I'll eat anything that you wanna cook.

Like, I'm not picky.

-But that weirdly makes it more difficult. - Right.

Because you need some parameters, I think.

-Restriction is freedom. Famously. - Yes. There you go.

And that's why I just decided to do summer menu too, ultimately.

Um, because it sort of makes sense right now.

Okay, is that the papillote?

- It is. Um... - Okay.

And I am shingling some of the zucchini and squash.

- Wow. - Hm.

We found out a couple of things right before we started.

First, that Kate has a deep personal relationship

to this white gazpacho.

- Yes. - Right?

Was I not supposed to reveal that?

Don't talk about my family.

Before we aired, you whipped out some Spanish

that was so perfect in its pronunciation.

-I was blown away. - That's all you're gonna get.

It's true, my mom, who's watching, I love you.

Uh, my family is Spanish.

And, yeah, I think I said...

- -

That's all you're getting because I fell off.

Now I'm ashamed, you know, but I'm getting it back.

But yeah, gazpacho, of course, but a white gazpacho.

- From Andalusia, you were saying? - Andalusia, yeah.

We found something else out, too, Dave.

Yeah, and I'm also going to, uh...

I don't know why I associate it with summer, but again, it is.

-I'm gonna make spaghetti vongole. Um... -

But we just found out that Kate loves carbonara pasta as well.

-And she's got a birthday coming up. - July 16th, everybody.

- Yeah. -It's not about me.

I'm not one of those people who, weeks ahead, makes it about them.

-But I did organically mention carbonara. -Yeah.

And then... What do you do?

So the question is, are you gonna pivot?

Uh... we'll see. This is why we're doing a live show, folks.

Because let's peel back the curtain.

We don't have any guanciale, which is traditionally used in carbonara.

You know who does?

Chris Bianco is literally down the street,

and he has, I believe, guanciale, so we'll see, but...

Listen, we support a pivot if it can happen.

-Of course. -It's up to you, chef.

No pressure. It'd be a birthday wish. No pressure, though. Birthday.

Huge pressure. My birthday. It's been a hard year. Yeah.

Um, someone might have to text Uncle Ted to give us more time on this show.

the clams would be a dream as well.

- Either way. - We'll see. We'll see.

Depends on how well you guys do. All right?

-All right? - Interesting.

Last week it was a bit of a competition with Sam and Tony.

I don't wanna make this a competition.

- Wait, a competition in what way? - Who is the best diner.

I'm so sorry to do this, but...

- - Sorry, guys.

-Come here. - This is real live television.

Come here, my friend. This is great television.

-I got you. -

This is amazing.

Hey, folks,

if you haven't seen the Chef's Table episode with the GOAT himself,

the reason why the pizza is delicious in America,

it's because of this man right here. Changed the game.

One of my close friends.

-I brought you some stuff. -We needed this.

Kate's favorite pasta dish.

-Hi. -Hi, I'm Kate.

-Hi, I'm Chris. -So nice to meet you. Big fan.

-How are you? -Doing really good.

You're on Dave Chang, so some nice guanciale.

We trimmed it for you nice, so that's for you. Beautiful.

-This seems canned, I just wanna say. -It's really not.

Dave's our neighbor. Dave's our beautiful neighbor.

- Do you wanna make carbonara? -

I'd love to. I gotta run back.

-I got that thing I told you about. -Oh, right.

-Oh, that thing. -It's actually a thing.

It's a funny thing. If I was drinking, I'd tell you more about it.

And some nice, we just grated that, Parmigiano Reggiano.

Well, now I have to make it. Thanks a lot, Chris.

-You have to. It's gonna be beautiful. - You know how...?

- Thank you. -Love you.

See you, guys.

-Okay. Love you already. - Thank you.

Okay. All right.

-You need it, you get it. -See you soon.

- Bye. -Thank you, Chris.

I don't know if the audience knows that this was not scripted.

Literally just happened.

You know how you know this is real and not staged is we didn't mic him up.

- Yeah, exactly. -There's nothing. You hear him.

- This is punk. This is truly... -Now the pressure's on.

I'm so sorry, Dave. I'm so sorry.

- That's... - That was crazy.

-I am flipping out. - What a jerk you are.

I'm experiencing community.

All I know, I remember from cooking school,

is if you have to use a stapler to seal your papillote, you haven't done it right.

You talk about papillote. What is the benefit?

I love it.

You know, it's something you rarely see,

and I think it'll be coming back more often

because it's a very experiential thing where they cut it open,

you get this aromatic presentation,

and basically you're steaming the fish in this parchment paper,

and you have ratatouille sans that horrible eggplant, right?

-Nobody likes eggplant. - Yeah. Gross.

You have rockfish, which is local.

You have some thyme, olive oil,

and it's on the bed of zucchini and squash.

Gonna pop them in the oven about 20 minutes, and, uh...

in between that, I'm gonna try to figure out

how I'm gonna have time to make everything else.

- Oh, my God. - He was so well-organized.

I was so well-organized.

I once experimented with papillote at home.

-Dave. -How did it go?

-Very well. -Ooh.

Well, I did, like, a crude rendering of the edges there.

But it's not... You know, it does steam it.

It's steaming it, right?

-It is steamed. - Yeah.

It is steamed, correct. Yeah.

Steaming fish. It's fun.

Someone say...

Dave has to use another stove now

because we've added another dish to this menu.

Okay, I gotta recalibrate here for a second. Okay.