AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
The story of chef Darren Chang starts, as so many chef stories do, at a kitchen table. That’s where his mother, after a full day of work as a bookkeeper in Los Angeles, would still return every night and cook without shortcuts. “As a kid, you just think that Mom always makes dinner. It’s like school lunch—it’s always there on time and without fail,” Chang says. Later, he realized she wasn’t just feeding the family; she was insisting on a ritual. “Often mom wouldn’t eat much but sit and watch us enjoy the meal.”
That sort of devotion—quiet, relentless, immigrant-parent devotion—runs like a line through Chang’s story. His father, David, ran a business for 30 years, one that gave jobs to other immigrants. His mother, May, kept her kids tethered to their Taiwanese heritage through food. And his grandmother, whose saucy pork noodle recipe still appears on the menu of his new Denver restaurant, Pig and Tiger. “The saucy pork noodle, zhajiangmian, was my childhood favorite,” Chang says. “It didn’t require much adjustment for the restaurant. We were fortunate to find the exact sauce brand that really has that taste that reminds me of home.”
He’s carrying all of that history into Pig and Tiger, a restaurant that’s become one of the most talked-about spots in Denver. Chang, along with chef and partner Travis Masar, is filtering Taiwanese tradition through the lens of Los Angeles street food and his own personal history.
Darren Chang
Chang grew up the youngest of his siblings, surrounded by both the hustle of his parents and the crosscurrents of Los Angeles food culture. On Saturdays, when his mother left early for errands, she’d often leave behind fan tuan—sticky rice wrapped around fried dough, pork floss, and mustard stems—on the counter. For him, it was the flavor of childhood. “When it was fan tuan, it was always a happy dance moment,” he remembers.
His first glimpse outside his family’s table came at a cookout with one of his dad’s employees, where pollo asado, tamales, and fresh tortillas introduced him to a new kind of communal cooking. The flavors blew his mind, but more than that, it was the discovery that food could be both wildly different and yet familiar in its togetherness.
Taiwanese street corn
Chang’s first real steps into kitchens happened in Denver, under chefs Carrie Baird and Kevin Grossi. He credits them with teaching him more than technique. “While I learned about the details of food and cooking techniques, I have taken more about learning to be a professional and a leader,” he says. “Accountability, work ethic, punctuality, communication, and compassion. A big part of who I am as a chef and leader is from lessons learned while working for both of them.”
LA beef roll
Pig and Tiger
Those lessons set him up for what would come next: working in Los Angeles under Shirley Chung at Ms. Chi. There, he honed his style and found a collaborator in Travis, with whom he would later open Pig and Tiger.
Today, Pig and Tiger in Denver is where Chang translates the flavors of his upbringing into something uniquely his own. Some dishes are family heirlooms, like the zhajiangmian noodles, preserved nearly untouched from his grandmother’s kitchen. Others are reinterpretations.
Braised pork rice
The one he says feels most personal is the L.A. Beef Roll. Traditionally, it’s a scallion pancake wrapped around braised beef shank, but Chang remade it through the lens of his Los Angeles upbringing and taco culture. Partnering with local tortilla maker Raquelitas, he swaps in charred scallion tortillas and layers in lengua, his dad’s favorite taco meat. It arrives at the table as a build-your-own taco spread, complete with onions, cilantro, escabeche, and a ginger-tomatillo salsa. “It’s very identifiable to me and my story,” he says. “It takes parts of my background as a Taiwanese-American growing up in Los Angeles and adds elements of eating tacos with my Dad.”
In a way, what Chang is doing with Pig and Tiger isn’t so far removed from what his father did in his office: building opportunity for others. “The hospitality industry is driven and supported by the hard work and dedication of immigrants,” he says. He sees his work not just as cooking, but as continuing a family tradition of turning labor into something that supports and nourishes others.
Chang and Travis Masar
From the grandmother’s noodles that still taste exactly like home, to tacos reimagined with beef tongue, Chang’s story is a reminder that restaurants aren’t built out of nothing. They’re built out of childhood kitchens, immigrant struggles, Saturday morning fan tuan, and the small but mighty decision of a mother who cooked dinner every night without fail.
Shaved ice
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