David Chang to expand to Los Angeles

Chef and restaurateur David Chang is joining the growing number of New York chefs opening restaurants in Los Angeles.

Chang’s New York-based Momofuku Group confirmed reports Monday that the chef is planning a new restaurant in downtown Los Angeles in late 2017 called North Spring.

The menu is still in development, but will draw inspiration from “L.A.’s diverse culinary landscape and California’s bounty,” the company said in a statement. 

Momofuku Group is hiring for the restaurant, including a chef de cuisine, executive sous chef, sommelier, floor manager and assistant general manager.

Chang’s Instagram account indicates a recent trip to Los Angeles, including visits to the Korean restaurant Sun Nong Dan in the San Gabriel Valley and Cassell’s Hamburgers.

The restaurant group’s Milk Bar concept, a bakery spinoff by pastry chef Christina Tosi, is also coming to Los Angeles. 

Most of Chang’s restaurants are located in New York City, including the original Momofuku Noodle Bar, Ssäm Bar, Ko, Má Pêche, Fuki, Nishi and Milk Bar.

The group also operates Momofuku and Milk Bar locations in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. Outside the U.S., the two concepts have outposts in Toronto, as well as the concepts Nikai, Daisho and Shoto, along with Seiobo in Sydney. 

Other New Yorkers coming to Los Angeles this year include Dominique Ansel, who’s planning his first full-service restaurant. Daniel Humm and Will Guidara of Eleven Madison Park and Nomad are bringing a Nomad restaurant and hotel this year to L.A. And Jean-Georges Vongerichten opened his eponymous new restaurant in the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills earlier this year. 

Chang told the Los Angeles Times that New Yorkers are likely drawn to L.A. by the weather, the produce, the multicultural environment and because “things seem possible. There’s a greater sense of optimism here, a greater sense of risk taking, and maybe that has to do with some of the economics, where you have younger chefs doing more interesting things.

“And I don’t think it’s because there aren’t interesting things happening in New York,” he added. “It’s just becoming harder to find them.” http://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-fo-david-chang-momofuku-los-angeles-20170714-htmlstory.html

Contact Lisa Jennings at [email protected]

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