MEETING GROUND | Writer Peter Meehan and restaurateur David Chang at Momofuku Noodle Bar, the chef's beloved ramen shop that sparked the pair's collaborations. Photograph by Ian Baguskas

David Chang and Peter Meehan take pride in the dark worldview they share. "We're always trying to see whose glass is more empty," says Chang, the New York chef who's made a name out of fusing high and low, to fantastic results. "Joy is not part of the equation," agrees Meehan, a food writer known for his gruff wit. Despite their dedicated stance against optimism, however, they both love to get people excited about food. And if you get them talking about their new food journal, "Lucky Peach," you catch glimpses of unbridled enthusiasm.

They met in 2006 after Meehan reviewed Chang's first restaurant, Momofuku Noodle Bar, an innovative shrine to ramen that caused an immediate sensation. That year Chang opened Momofuku Ssäm Bar, a hot spot known for its enormous pork-butt bacchanals, and in 2008 came Momofuku Ko, his 12-seat bid at Michelin stardom.

In the wake of Momofuku's success, Chang was hounded to write a cookbook, and Meehan was the only collaborator he considered. The 2009 book, simply called Momofuku, was an unlikely hit—expletive-filled, cheering on culinary failure and offering rambling recipes that puzzled home cooks and left fellow chefs feeling inspired and threatened. When television producers started calling, Chang again turned to Meehan. Their concepts, however, were "too weird to sell to a network," says Meehan. So they decided to release these ideas themselves, in the form of a repeatedly postponed iPad app whose content is still shrouded in mystery (Meehan himself describes it as "a work in progress"). To capture the abundance of content they were creating, they teamed up with McSweeney's, Dave Eggers's indie publishing house, and "Lucky Peach" (the English translation of momofuku), a seasonal magazine, was born.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT | The second issue of "Lucky Peach," Chang and Meehan's seasonal magazine. F. Martin Ramin

The magazine's tone is so casual it's almost drunken. Its aesthetic is a graphic pulp pastiche of drawings, photo essays and kitsch—you'll discover traces of comic books, handwritten script and recipes presented in science-lab format. In the mix are contributions from celebrated food-world heroes, such as Anthony Bourdain, Ruth Reichl and Wylie Dufresne. "Lucky Peach" follows no preset pattern and maintains its intelligence and complexity without talking down, a perfect manifestation of its creators' considerable skills.

Chang on Meehan

I didn't know who peter was. He kept coming to the restaurant and sending emails—random things, fact-checking things that we had done on the menu. At the time, I didn't know he was a food critic. So I think we both didn't expect to become friends. But it was an instant like. He was about as negative as I am. There was a—rapport isn't necessarily the word—we just saw the world with the right type of pessimism.

We're like brothers. We always argue about something. He always wins. We know how to push each other's buttons; we know how to get the best out of each other. Basically, all we do is make fun of each other all the time. We're the same age [34]. He's just the one who has the kid.

"Lucky Peach" is all Pete, Pete and Chris Ying. I can take very little credit for it. I just tell them, "Ah! What about this?" And then I walk away. No one had any idea that the f—ing magazine would be read. It was an idea; I thought it was like, well, okay, whatever. It was something we could do because we had so much s— from the app that had yet to be released. All I have to do is write an essay, I think, maybe a couple of other things. But, even if I write something, Peter's going to edit the f—ing s— out of it. The way I look at our relationship is, it's like Bob Zmuda and Andy Kaufman. Someone's writing it and someone's acting it out. It's one and the same, but done in different ways.

BROTHERS IN BARS | Meehan and Chang in Tokyo at La Jetée. Jeremy Leach/Zero Point Zero Productions

We're hoping to succeed; we're okay with failure. We just don't want to land in between. The app idea, which came first, was a way we were hoping to make TV without going through all the TV hoops. The magazine came later. Of course you want your peers and the public to engage with something like this, but I don't have any idea of who the people are or what they really think of it. I'm always prepared for people to be like, "This is just f—ing too ridiculous," and then it will all be over. That hasn't happened yet.

We could wind up hating each other, I think, and still end up having a really productive working relationship. But we get along, and we should get along forever. I think we'll keep on working as long as we can do fun projects and produce good work. Just finding people you get along with, like-minded individuals, I guess that's how things work.

Meehan on Chang

The night I really met him was at a Hold Steady concert in Greenpoint. He came up behind me with a beer, and we were both drunk, and, I don't know, we just talked for a few minutes, and we were just happy and there'd just been a loud rock concert. I thought, I could either keep writing about this guy, and obviously he had a career and a trajectory that was going to be worth following—but I felt like everybody was already on his tail at that point—or I could take that beer and we could have a drink together. And I took the beer. I do occasionally regret knowing David Chang, but I do not regret taking the beer.

I remember we had plans to spend a month on the cookbook, nothing else. It ended up being two days, and we went out to [restaurateur] Ken Friedman's rental house in Montauk. The first night we pulled up 10 pounds of blue crab and drank all the champagne that was still in the fridge. The next day we were sitting on the deck and I was trying to get him to tell me stories or talk to me about ingredients, and it was like banging my head against a wall all day long, in the hot sun, with a hangover. But then the fifth time I'd ask a question that day, you know, I'd get to an answer. There's nothing clean or linear about the way we work together. But if we just need to run into each other a bunch of times, then that's the process.

The magazine isn't the by-product of external pressure. I wasn't all like, "F— 'Bon Appétit'; I'm starting my own food magazine." I like "Bon Appétit." It was an opportunity to work with friends at McSweeney's, a chance to try my hand at a new format, and a chance to showcase and support some writers and artists we know. The first audience I think about is us: Can we make something we don't hate? Then it's my friends: Can I create something they will think is cool even though they have to listen to me bitch all the time? Then it's people out in the world. And my secret hope is that a certain aspect of the magazine leads them down an unexpected alley—reading more Junichiro Tanizaki, or chasing down a Bill Orcutt record, or seeking out Kay & Ray's potato chips.

I think Dave is incapable of stopping himself from following ideas that interest him. He doesn't have a brand he's worried about; he's not worried about a message; he's not interested in trying to create something that's going to be a blockbuster. Failure is an option, but only when you've done something that says, "This is the most honest thing we can put out there." So that allows us to make it as weird as we want because we believe in what we're doing.

I can't speak to how he runs his businesses, but he has just scores and scores of talented people, and he is creating scenarios where they run this restaurant and this restaurant—Dave Chang is not the chef of it. I'm probably in a much more stoney-baloney sort of way into that idea, but, also just creatively, that's exciting to me. You find people and let them really go out on their own with it and then shape it as much as it needs to land on its feet.

—Edited from Charlotte Druckman's interviews with David Chang and Peter Meehan