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“Every day, doesn’t matter how great we were yesterday. Every day we have to come in and go, what can we do differently today? What can we do better today?” ~ Josh Loeb Twenty years in the restaurant business gives you plenty of stories, but I wanted to hear what keeps Josh Loeb excited about showing up tomorrow. The co-founder of Rustic Canyon Family Restaurants joins Five Rules for the Good Life to share his Five Rules for Longevity in Restaurants as Rustic Canyon celebrates its twentieth anniversary. We talk about quality, keeping it fun, having each other’s backs, and the work behind a seemingly simple dish that makes you wonder why yours never tastes quite that good at home. From knowing when to retire a beloved burger to giving each chef room to find their voice, Josh shares what it takes to keep a neighborhood restaurant growing alongside the people who love it. What I love about Josh and his colleagues is that twenty years in, they’re still pushing, still refining, and still asking what they can make better. That might mean spending more time on a stock, rethinking a sauce, or letting go of a dish that everyone once thought would stay on the menu forever. Having spent so much of my own life in the food world, I have a lot of respect for people who can keep that curiosity alive while doing the daily work of taking care of their team and their guests. Rustic Canyon remains one of my favorite places to eat in LA, and hearing Josh talk about the care behind it makes the trip across town feel even more worthwhile. A Personal Note Before we get into this week’s episode, a quick personal note. The documentary that I produced alongside director and producer Jeffrey Reiner on legendary winemaker Randall Grahm, The Terroirist, will have its global premiere this Saturday, October 17th at the Santa Cruz Film Festival and then a follow-up screening at the Green Film Festival of San Francisco on October 18th. We will also be a part of the Austin Film Festival and have its New York East Coast debut on November 9th at City Winery. The documentary has been three years in the making and we are so excited to share it with the world. Now on to this week’s episode. Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today I sit down with Josh Loeb, the co-founder of Rustic Canyon Family Restaurants, whose flagship restaurant, Rustic Canyon, is celebrating their 20th anniversary with a series of guest chef dinners throughout October. He’s here to share his five rules for longevity in restaurants. He talks about the importance of focusing on quality, how to keep it fun while keeping up your craft, and that by having everyone’s back, you build trust with everyone you work with. It is a great conversation for anyone who’s looking to stay in the long game or for anyone looking to pick up insights for someone who’s been in the business for over 20 years. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Josh, always good to see you. Thanks again for having us in the other week. Always one of my favorite places to eat in LA. Welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me. Twenty Years of Rustic Canyon It was a great meal and you served quite a few great meals over your 20 years in business, which is truly an incredible and unique milestone. Is there anything from those early days that still guides you today? The restaurant was always built around change, but also being really familiar and staying the same. The core principles are the exact same that they’ve been since day one, and that’s really boiled down to three things, which is great ingredients across the board, all the way through the kitchen, craft, making everything from scratch, and then making sure that we’re taking our work very seriously, but not taking ourselves very seriously. We want it to feel really warm, cozy, and hospitable. I always wanted Rustic to be the best neighborhood restaurant in America. For some people, a neighborhood restaurant is a restaurant where it’s the same menu and you go in 20 years later and it’s exactly the same. And it’s so comforting and I get that. That’s a great thing also. For me, I like change. I like to know that I’m going to have certain core things. I know it’s always going to be approachable, and I know it’s always going to be delicious, and that’s always going to be seasonal. Our menu has changed a lot. It’s funny, our first chef, we lost all our files because it was pre-cloud. Our computer crashed. I’ve been texting with him because he’s coming to the first dinner and we’re doing it all together. Samir just sent me a video. He had kept every menu printed. And so I was like, oh my god, this is amazing. So I’m so excited to dig into those. Having all those great menus, having all that change, you’ve been in and out of different moments in food trends and cooking. What have you followed and what have you avoided to keep your mission at Rustic Canyon the way you want it to be? I don’t believe in trends as much as I like to create a timeless experience. There are certain trends that come back and back all over again, and that’s a good thing. It’s like the same reason we’ve always had a chicken dish, a steak, and a fish. Certain things to ground yourself in a restaurant. Of course. We’ve had different chefs. Jeremy obviously is a genius when it comes to the way he works with things. And he took Jeremy’s inventive, imaginative cooking to another level because that’s really at the core of his passion for cooking. We’ve gone through times where we’ve introduced different aspects in it, but it’s always been let’s still ground in these timeless qualities of what a neighborhood restaurant is and should be. The ability to be both timeless, but then also embrace the new types of dishes is such a tricky balance. You’ve had customers that have been regulars from day one, but you always need to be open to getting new people in as neighborhoods, as tastes change. How do you strike that balance? Making sure there’s always room for the people who have supported you versus bringing in new people to experience what you’re doing. It’s about me trusting my intuition and me making sure our chefs trust their intuitions. Not feeling married to too much of a format. I remember reading this great book about truth, and it was there is truth, but it’s not always the same. Yes. There’s truth in every moment that changes and evolves depending on how things evolve naturally. That’s a good barometer. If we were successful under Evan cooking this beautiful Italian food, then all of a sudden Jeremy comes in and we create a restaurant where it’s supposed to evolve and change with the chefs. We’re saying, hey, you need to cook his food. It just dies. We’ve had that with dishes from the very beginning. Zoe started six months in. We had this one dessert. People loved it. Roxana Jullapat had created it because she was our opening consulting pastry chef. It was a rocky road bread pudding. It was decadent and had melted marshmallow and all these things on there. My mom loved it too. She still laments for it. We weren’t even supposed to have a pastry chef, and all of a sudden Zoe cooked for us, and it was incredible. I was like, oh my God, your stuff is so beautiful. Initially, I was like, we’ll keep the bread pudding for a little while. Then as soon as she started, I was like, it’s so weird for you to cook someone else’s bread pudding. Same thing happened with Jeremy and with the burger. We kept it for a little while. That was really Evan’s burger, and it fit a different time at Rustic, and it wasn’t the same. There were just so many different dishes that at the time, you’re like, we’re never taking this off the menu. Then all of a sudden, the menu changes, and you’re like, oh, it really feels weird to leave it on there. It’s walking that balance, trusting intuition along the way. Trusting that intuition, being open, and keeping the doors open are some of the reasons why when people look at examples of restaurants that have stood the test of time in the restaurant business, they look to Rustic Canyon, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for longevity in restaurants. Yeah, cool. Rule One: Focus on Quality For everything to change, for everything to evolve, for you to feel flexible in going in different directions as tastes evolve, having this fundamental allows you to feel that you can take those risks and makes up your rule number one. A hundred percent. Rule number one is about quality. That’s always been a non-negotiable for us. Everything has to be the best possible quality, the most thoughtfully curated version of that. It’s really easy when you’re working with farmers. There’s zero steps of separation between you and the process. Quality is the building block for everything. It is ingredients, but if you hire a good person, and that person might not be as well trained, but you can train them. Yeah. That’s a better hire than somebody who’s got a ton of experience, but is unreliable, untrustworthy. Quality will show. A good piece of fish ideally is perfectly executed, but if it’s not, you still taste it. Yeah. And a bad piece, you have to go do a lot of stuff to obscure what is wrong with it. Rule Two: Keep It Fun Knowing that you’re always going to get a good meal at Rustic is why people keep coming back, but also the atmosphere and the vibe that just welcomes you each time you show up and is the fundamental part of your rule number two. Rule number two is keep it fun. And we all know that feeling. When you walk into a restaurant and the staff is happy to be there, even if it’s a closed kitchen, you can tell by the way the plates come out that people are enjoying and taking pride

“I started Queer Soup Night because the things I knew how to do were make a lot of food and throw a party.” - Liz Alpern Liz Alpern knows how to feed people and give them a reason to come together. The creator of Queer Soup Night joins me to share her Five Rules for Nourishing a Crowd with Soup, from thinking through where people will eat to keeping things simple with a little flair. We get into the resourcefulness behind a great pot of soup, the power of showing up for your community, and why making a shopping list can be its own act of self-preservation. With her forthcoming Queer Soup Night cookbook arriving in January 2027 and now available for pre-order, Liz shares an approach to hospitality and activism that starts with the skills you already have. Liz and I say “soup” 51 times in this episode, which feels like an appropriate level of enthusiasm. I love how deeply she cares about soup and how that passion carries into her activism and the community she’s built around feeding people. She thinks about everything from what’s in the pot to whether someone walking through the door will feel comfortable, welcome, and cared for. Her rule about starting with what you know really stays with me: Liz knew how to cook and throw a party, and she put those skills to work bringing people together when they needed it. Introduction Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m joined by the creator of Queer Soup Night, Liz Alpern, whose new book, Queer Soup Night, the cookbook, Over 50 Ways to Activate Community, will be available everywhere January 2027. She’s here to share her five rules for nourishing a crowd with soup. She talks about the importance of understanding where the crowd will be eating, how despite best efforts, you can’t make everyone happy, and that it’s always great to keep it simple, but add a little flair. It’s a great conversation for anyone interested in upping their soup game, but also understanding how to feed people and create community around activism. When you have a moment, please subscribe and rate this podcast. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Liz, so nice to meet you. Thank you for taking the time. I’m so excited to talk to you about Queer Soup Night and the new book. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I’m so glad to be here. Soup Community and Activism There are so many dishes that exist in almost every culture. Bread, noodles, but almost none as prevalent as soup. Yes. What is it about this dish that connects people all over the world? Oh, I could talk about this all day. A few things come to mind for me. At the heart of soup is resourcefulness. Whatever you got, you can turn it into soup. My ancestors in Eastern Europe were able to pull together a few scraps of chicken, a half an onion, and a crusty carrot and turn it into something. When you’re talking about the way that ancestral cuisine developed, we’re talking about cultures that were resourceful, that didn’t have grocery stores, that didn’t have refrigerators. Every culture around the world developed in this way. So every culture around the world developed a resourcefulness and soup is it. You can get so much out of so little. I love soup. I love how democratized it can be. I have always believed that food is and should be political and stand for something. What drove you to bring together community, activism, and soup? I have always been a passionate soup lover, if you can’t already tell from the way I speak lovingly about soup. Always dreamed of feeding everybody soup. So much of what I love about soup is the abundance. You can just picture that giant pot of soup. I always envisioned serving my friends and community that soup and certainly did in my own home. I always wanted to make it bigger. It wasn’t until the first election of Trump that I felt propelled to take some initiative and do something different. A lot of people were looking for ways to get more involved in some of the resistance work that was happening. I felt like this was an amazing opportunity for me to feed people that I’d always wanted to. It turned out that people wanted the soup. I love how you’ve brought people together all over the country and that these voices are represented in your new book, Queer Soup Night, which is part cookbook, part manifesto, part activism guide. You got it. Why did you want to bring all these elements together in this book? We have been throwing this party, Queer Soup Night, since 2017. Our 10-year anniversary was coming up. Congratulations. Thank you. It felt important to me at that time to mark this moment of having really committed to this model and seeing it grow for all this time. Simultaneously feeling like the world does not feel safer. The world does not feel more comfortable for queer people. If anything, we are in way more dire straits or in a space of alarm. We throw events all over the country. We have chapters all over the country, but that doesn’t mean we have chapters everywhere. At any given time, we maybe have around a dozen chapters that are actively throwing events, anywhere from New Mexico to Brooklyn to Oakland to Chicago. But there are so many places where Queer Soup Night hasn’t happened yet. People hear about us. They follow us. They reach out to us. We wanted to find a way to give a little of that magic, a little bit of that fire that Queer Soup Night gives you, and that nourishment that Queer Soup Night gives you to places that we hadn’t been yet. A book just felt like such a natural place to go with that impulse. We had hundreds and hundreds of chefs cook for us. There were so many good recipes. We have 51 soup recipes plus much more content. But the 51 recipes, each recipe is from a chef who has cooked for us before, and it tells often the story of what’s meaningful and important to them. Often it was a recipe that they cooked for a Queer Soup Night event. It’s just a snippet, but we really wanted to find a way to bring Queer Soup Night to a lot more people and a lot more homes and a lot more places. I love how you’ve brought together this messaging, showing people how to bring together people over soup, community, and support, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for nourishing a crowd in soup. That’s right. Rule One: Consider Where Your Crowd Will Be Eating For anyone who’s been politically active or activated in the last decade, they know that the fight is everywhere. Your first rule talks about what it means to go to where you need to take care of people. What’s your rule number one? Rule number one is consider where your crowd will be eating. We’re talking about soup, so it has some logistical challenges. We really love feeding people in public spaces that are easily accessible. Queer Soup Night has our own rule internally, where we say we like to be in bars, restaurants, parks, outside, anywhere that somebody could spontaneously show up. Actually, when you’re feeding a crowd, the where matters because you need to figure out, are people going to need seats? Are they going to be comfortable? We want to bring hospitality to our nourishment. When we nourish people, it’s not just about food. It’s about the environment. The where of it all is also about saying, hey, are people going to be able to find it? Are they comfortable when they get their soup? How are we going to serve the soup? Where are we going? Where are we getting the soup? Do they have a spoon, napkin, garbage? As a hospitality person, I’m just all about it. Rule Two: Keep It Simple but Add a Little Bit of Flair When people make soup, especially for the first time, they think it’s a kitchen sink, empty the fridge type of endeavor. Your second rule talks about keeping focus and keeping this in mind when making soup. What’s your rule number two? Rule number two is keep it simple, but add a little bit of flair. Love it. I am a big proponent of don’t go overboard when you’re making soup. This is soup, folks. You know what people want when they want soup? They want comfort. So you don’t need to make a soup with 16 garnishes and a foam on top. No. You need it to be simple, nourishing, and taste really good. However, a little bit of flair goes a long way. If you’re making a simple lentil coconut curry soup, the soup of vegan homes everywhere, that one of the first things I certainly learned to make when I was cooking on my own, add a garnish. Add some toasted seeds with some spice. Add a crostini that you’ve made, that drizzle of olive oil. Add some fresh herbs. Give it something to make it feel special while staying nourishing. Rule Three: You Cant Make Everyone Happy but You Can Aim for 90 Percent When you’re serving a lot of people, as soup is one of the great meals that you can stretch. That’s right. There’s a lot of spoons going in. Yep. But that doesn’t mean that everyone’s going to enjoy it, and it ties directly into your rule number three. My rule number three is you can’t make everyone happy, but you can aim for 90%. And I think you should aim for 90% happiness. When you serve food to people, when you’re in the hospitality industry, when you’re a chef, you are constantly going to get feedback. You’re going to get critiques, and you’re also going to get questions. Yeah. Does this have onions? Does this have garlic? Does this have peanuts? Does this have dairy? Does this have soy? You should be keeping in mind who your crowd is and how you can make them happy, but know that probably about 10% of the people will have some allergy you can’t please. 10% of the people just might not like cumin, and that’s okay. Look, aim for 100. Yeah. When I’m serving people, I know that it might happen that there’s still somebody who doesn’t like what I made, even if I made something really good. It’s just about peace of mind. It’s about saying it’s ok

“Touch everything when you’re at the market. It’s OK if you look weird sticking your nose in bunches of this or that. You’ll look like a pro to anybody who knows what they’re doing.” - Julia Sherman Julia Sherman, artist, author, and creative force behind Salad for President, joins me to share her Five Rules for Making a Better Salad. We talk about finding joy in the process, cooking with all your senses, checking your ego, and finding fresh inspiration at the market. Julia also makes the case for giving dressing its due—and for making a salad you’re genuinely excited to eat. I love salad, and I love that Julia is on a mission to help everyone make better ones. She sees a bowl of vegetables as a chance to play with color, crunch, flavor, and whatever looks good at the market. By the end of our conversation, I wanted to get into the kitchen and make my one reliable salad twelve different ways. Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with chef, artist and author Julia Sherman, whose new dressing mixes salad for president is available everywhere. She’s here to share her five rules to make a better salad. She talks about the importance of cooking with all of your senses, how to nurture your inner shopaholic, and that by using the freshest produce leads to the best results. It’s a fantastic conversation for anyone looking to up their salad game with tips from the master who makes every bowl beautiful. Please take a moment to subscribe and rate this podcast. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Julia, always a pleasure when I get to see you, and I get to chat. Loving Salad I know you have a lot on your plate right now. Thank you for making the time. Of course. My favorite thing to do is to talk, so... You literally wrote one of the books on salad. What do you love and what have you always loved about this type of dish? I’ve loved salad since I was a little kid, which was strange then. My love of salad is layered. I’m a passionate gardener. I’m fascinated by plants, produce. Salad to me is such a direct way to work with that material. It’s really about honoring the ingredients. It’s about not doing too much to them, really building a dish around produce. One side of it is aesthetics. It’s really about composition. It’s about color, what plate you use. The last thing was really that I used it as a foil to start conversations with artists. I wanted to be setting myself up for a life where I was cooking with artists and facilitating conversation and how could I do that in a way that didn’t feel intimidating? Everybody has a salad that they make. Even the simplest salads are exceptional. I found that salad was a thing that I could use to get my foot in the door with artists by saying, would you make me a salad? When they would say that that was an unusual request and they were a little befuddled, I would be able to explain to them salad can be conceptual, a salad can be putting things together in a way that’s about contrast and juxtaposition. Maybe it’s not even edible. It was this really open ended prompt that did loop back to the way that I prefer to eat, but was also a framework for a conversation. I feel like salads have been in the conversation so much these days. Salad Trends I rarely go out to eat or even have a meal or salad isn’t a big part of it. Why do you think salads are trending right now? If I’m going to be idealistic, it’s because people are awakening themselves to the greater world of fruits and vegetables and that the monocultures that we’ve all been living in are depressing and uninspiring as more and more people shop the farmer’s market and even what you see the farmers are offering has changed so much. It’s sort of a status symbol to know your fruits and veggies to start to have more of a specific grasp on what the full spectrum is that’s out there. Salad for President, Dressing For You You’ve been such a good guide and teacher, both in your cookbooks, through your social video content. And now you’ve gone as far as creating your own line of instant dressings, also titled Salad for President. What inspired you to bring the flavors you love directly into people’s kitchens? Over time, I’ve been making salads under the moniker Salad for President for over 10 years now. The amount of times that I’ve heard people complain about making dressing, it’s a pain point. Sure. One of the things I love about cooking is that you don’t need a lot of pre-made stuff. But I do think that if the grand ambition is to get people to eat more salad, eat healthier and cook at home, if there are parts of that process that are daunting that somebody just hates doing and I can help with that, then that felt really exciting. I love it. Dressing needs to be fun and dressing can give your entire meal a personality. Most people, when they’re making dinner, throw together the salad at the end, everything’s hot and it’s on the table and they’re like, shit, I don’t have a dressing. It’s an afterthought. The dressings, just to explain the format, is they’re powdered. It’s a play or an update on an old fashioned form factor. The idea is that you make your dressing fresh every time you make it with fresh lemon juice and some olive oil, the powder, and you shake it up. It emulsifies. I just really want people to cook. I don’t understand why people eat every day. When people tell me they don’t cook, I want a diary of what do you eat every day? It blows my mind. If people could find a little bit of joy in the process of cooking and felt good about their vegetables, it would make a huge difference. If you have something that you can follow to a T and it’s foolproof and you make that 10 times and then maybe you start to get the confidence to play with it, add a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Suddenly you got a little bit of salad pride. I love how passionate you are about salad and it can be very, very infectious. The fact that you’ve really mastered not just one, but many salads makes me so excited for you to share your five rules to make a better salad. And I think before I felt comfortable with making what I consider my one and only salad, which I feel very dialed in about just one, just one, but part of it is that I look forward to making it and the steps that go into it, which makes it be rule number one. Rule 1: Love the Process All right. Rule number one is love the process. Yes. As I get older, I’m more and more confident in my identity as a process oriented person. It’s great. I love making things. If you don’t enjoy the process, it’s really, really hard to end up with a good result when you’re cooking. And I feel like I just had the best education in this, in opening a restaurant and watching people in the kitchen making my recipes, which were written down to the gram for every single ingredient, and then watching somebody make it who doesn’t really care, doesn’t have a connection to it, is crazy. It’s such a cheesy trope. Love is an important ingredient, but you have to feel it. When I was drawn to salad originally as a platform, it’s one of the things that a lot of people have one recipe that they’re like, I got this nailed. Yeah. And if that’s the thing you love, lean into it, iterate on it, make it 12 different ways. Figure out what you actually enjoy making and then explore that. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Classic salads are classic for a reason. They’re f*****g awesome. One of the things that I’ve come to realize about salad, even the most simplest ones are complicated, which can be intimidating, but if you cook with all of these, it’ll help you make a better salad. Rule 2: Cook With All Your Senses What’s your rule number two? Rule number two is to cook with all your senses. When I’m home by myself, I will do what every normal person does. I eat my dinner out of a mixing bowl and it does not taste good. You put that same thing on a plate and you treat it nice. It’s going to taste a lot better. The thing that I love about salad is that it is all about all your senses. You’ve got color, which is huge. You’re making a potato salad. Why do just white potatoes if it’s going to be all white with the dressing? Add some purple potatoes, add some pink potatoes. Think about color. Texture is really a much overlooked component. I worked at Chopped for five years, a creative director, and did a lot of work on their culinary team. I learned so much about the importance of crunch. We think about this with our snack food. The crunch is addictive. In a salad, it really drives the next bite. Smell. Don’t just think about what you think might taste good together, but think about two things that smell good together. Touch everything when you’re at the market. It’s OK if you look weird sticking your nose in bunches of this or that. You’ll look like a pro to anybody who knows what they’re doing. A good salad never fails to impress. I can understand that when people get in the kitchen and they want to serve something, especially if they’re going really big with a protein, they want the salad to match that level. That being said, there is nothing wrong with making a well-known, well-loved salad if you check this. Rule 3: Check Your Ego What’s your rule number three? Check your ego. This is something I really tried to keep in the forefront of my mind when I was working on the restaurant menu. Cookbooks, too. Yes. When writing cookbooks, there’s a point, if you’ve worked on it for too long, where you start to just get weird. Yes. To get back to the things that actually taste good. No one wants to eat your ego. And you feel that when you go to restaurants. You can feel when the person’s just up in their head, not connected to what people actually want to eat. For me, with a background as

“It starts with finding the best and then figuring out how to do it consistently.” - Dale Talde Dale Talde, co-founder and executive chef of Food Crush Hospitality, stops by to share his Five Rules for Staying in the Game. We talk about knowing what you do best, hiring talented people without giving away your equity, and why your next great opportunity may already be sitting in your inbox. Dale explains why the best product has to come before the business model, and how accepting eighty-five percent can make room for a family, a community, and the next project. It is a conversation about failure, longevity, and continuing to stand back up, with a little walk through our shared years in Brooklyn along the way. Dale is one of the people from the food world I have known the longest, and over the years we have been through a good amount together. We have watched restaurants open and close, projects come together and fall apart, and both of us keep finding the next reason to get back in the game. There is a particular kind of friendship that comes from knowing someone across that much time, through the wins as well as the moments nobody posts about. Staying in the game for a long time is something we both take pride in, and I am grateful that after all these years, we are still here, still creating, and still cheering each other on. Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. I’m always excited when I get to sit down with today’s guest, Dale Talde, who is the co-founder and executive chef of Food Crush Hospitality. He’s here to share his five rules for staying in the game. He talks about the importance of delegating and not giving up equity, how your next project can already be sitting in your inbox, and how 85% is the key number to long-term success. It’s a great conversation and a little bit of a walk down memory lane as we talk about our time in Brooklyn and how Dale has stayed in the game for so long. Please take a moment to subscribe and rate this podcast on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Dale, my brother, so good to see you. Dale’s Salad Days You’re looking stylish as ever. Thanks for making the time to stop by the show. Of course, brother. You know, we go so far back. Anything for you. I owe so much to our friendship, always a legacy. Speaking about going far back, you’ve been cooking for decades now. What do you remember from your salad days on the line that still rings true today? Coming to work stoned is a terrible idea, especially when you’re not very good. Absolutely. When you are starting off in this game, especially if you’re not the best cook and you’re still learning, come with a clear mind. Don’t party the night before. Take all that stuff very seriously. In our industry, we work hard and want to live hard too and party hard. But when I was a really young kid, I was really immature and I was just showing up to work. All the young culinarians out there come clear minded and even business owners. They see a lot of guys are just like, I’m going to live my life. And if I’m going to smoke a joint at noon and show up to work at two, how good of a boss are you going to be? Taking Risks Taking those risks, not taking it as seriously as you could in the early parts and even the middle parts of your career, did you ever feel like you were in jeopardy of getting bounced out of cooking professionally? A hundred percent. I worried about my job every single day that I showed up for work. There is an edge to a lot of great business owners and restaurateurs where they keep that edge. It could fall apart at any moment now, and I could be left with nothing. The ones that keep that edge oftentimes are really successful. With that edge comes a lot of neuroses. There’s a neuroticness about them at work that could be good or bad, how they channel that energy. When you have in your head that this can all go away at any moment now, you push. Pushing in a really positive thing in our world. Longevity Daily With your hospitality group, Food Crush Hospitality, and your restaurant Goosefeather, and everything else that you’re working on, how do you implement the idea of longevity in what you do on a day-to-day basis? I have this approach that I took from a mentor of mine, Stephen Starr. If it’s not broke, do not fix it. It pertains to a lot of the staff, how you manage staffing, how you manage your executive chef, your director of operations. With that, you have to constantly communicate with them about what is working, what’s not working. With them, you put them in a position to succeed, and it is succeeding. Don’t fiddle with it too much. It gives them this lack of consistency that a team really needs. Finding your footing and being consistent has been a trademark of your career. Rule One: Don’t Give Up Equity Being able to be in the culinary world for so long is so inspiring, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for staying in the game. When working with others, being part of a team, you need to really understand your position and the position and skills of the other people that you’re working with, which makes up your rule number one. Rule number one is don’t give up equity for jobs that you’re not the best at. There’s always someone who can do that job that you’re not great at. And you don’t have to give up any piece of your pie. You just pay them a really nice salary. When I left my last restaurant group, I went off on my own and I was just limbo. I had took a meeting with John Meadow, who is LDV Hospitality. I was like, John, this is kind of where I’m at. Thinking about actually going back to school. And yeah, I know you went to Cornell. The other side of this business, I’m not great at. The business side, the front of the house, wine, all that other stuff. He paused me and we’re having coffee. He goes, Gil, are you crazy? I go, why? He goes, you have the sauce that we are all looking for. Hire every other position. If you’re not a good business development person for looking at the project, you hire somebody for that. Do not dilute your ownership in any of this. When you start diluting all that, that’s when there’s too many cooks in the kitchen and that sauce just gets muddled. That ragu that you have starts to fade away. Sometimes the sauce breaks. Rule Two: Stand Up Strong Sometimes the sauce burns. A lot of times today, especially when you’re looking at social media, it looks like no one ever fails, but failure, bankruptcy, bottom of the barrel, which I’ve been at a couple of times is a big part of rule number two. When you get knocked down, but that’s not it. It is when you get knocked down in hospitality, you standing up for your next project is the most important. You’ll see a lot of people who will wallow in their sorrows. I’ll always be, or be embarrassed about closing a restaurant. It kind of mirrors a lot of entertainment industry. Not every show you make is a hit. Matter of fact, most of the shows you make are not going to hit. Most of the restaurants you make are not going to be hit. 1% of the restaurateurs who are those hit makers. That’s why they are who they are. Stephen Starr, Danny Meyer, the major food group guys. They’ve all closed restaurants too. How they deal with that closure. For me, it’s so hard to call them failure. You’ve still created something. 95% of the world will never know what it’s like to create like that. Never. Never. Being able to create something and having the opportunity are really unique and special things. Rule Three: Your Next Project is in Your Inbox Sometimes the hardest part about that is finding the next idea, finding the new project, finding a starting point on what is relatively a blank piece of paper. Looking through this is a good place to find that next big thing. What’s your rule number three? Rule number three is, you know, when you’re looking for your next opportunity, start digging through email. Yeah. That’s how I found Goosefeather. You look at opportunities that maybe at that point in time of your life, it was not a fit, but now it is a fit. I found my partners at Goosefeather because I had looked at that property probably a year and a half prior with my former partner and said, Hey, this isn’t the right fit for us right now. Yeah. I took a look back at that project solo. I was like, this is my jump off. I live in the Burbs now. I’m not commuting to the city. This is a community that needs something different. I get to keep all of it. I jumped on the project and said, it’s now seven years later. James Beard recognition, Esquire magazine’s best new restaurant, multiple local restaurant, best restaurant award, Michelin recognition. When you are looking for, Oh my God, we need servers. We need cooks. We need a manager. Look internally first, because the answer is oftentimes within the four walls of where you are. If you just act around the community that you’re in, people are gonna be like, I have a friend that needs a job. I worked at this restaurant. He just hit me up. The chef is leaving. He hit me up and he’s a great chef and interview. That’s what I mean by looking at your inbox. It’s a literal, but also figuratively look within your inbox or your close connections. Don’t be afraid to be asked your network. Okay. I’m looking for our next opportunity. If anyone knows anybody who needs F&B it might be not the right project for that person, but they might pass it off to you and it might be the perfect project for you at the time. That balance of finding the right project for you at the right time. What is speaking to creatively is always in juxtaposition with the money and the budget and the cost and the revenue of everything. Rule Four: Start with The Best Your fourth rule talks about finding the right type

"Great risk, great reward, great failure, but great reward." - Dave Beran James Beard Award–winning chef Dave Beran, the chef and owner of pasjoli and Seline in Santa Monica, joins me to share his Five Rules for Finding Your Culinary Voice. We talk about the importance of self-awareness, learning how to accept the hard truth, and surrounding yourself with people who believe in you enough to tell you what you need to hear. Dave also explains why defining your identity gives you the foundation to take bigger risks—and why confidence sometimes has to arrive before certainty. Together, his rules offer an honest look at the long, complicated, and deeply personal process of discovering who you are through the work you make. What I love about Dave is his continued effort to refine his voice, even after the awards, the acclaimed restaurants, and all the proof that he could simply keep doing what already works. He remains willing to question himself, listen to hard truths, and keep editing until the food feels completely his own. Finding your voice is not a single revelation; it is a lifelong process of paying attention, taking risks, and having the confidence to change when something no longer feels true. Watching Dave continue to do that work reminds me that mastery is not about reaching a final destination—it is about caring enough to keep searching. Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with Dave Beran, the chef and owner of pasjoli and Seline here in Santa Monica. He is the recent recipient of Best Chef: California from the James Beard Awards and is here to share his five rules for finding your culinary voice. He talks about the importance of self-awareness, being able to define your identity, and having the confidence to take risks. It is a great conversation for those starting their culinary journey and those looking to refine their cuisine as they move through their career. If you have a moment, please subscribe and rate this podcast wherever you listen. So, let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Finding a Culinary Voice Dave, always a pleasure to see you. Congratulations on everything. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Going back to that first restaurant job you had in Bay Harbor, Michigan, at Latitude, did you have an idea of the chef you wanted to be, and has anything stuck from that time? No, I had no idea. Latitude was cool. That was a fun summer job. I’d just eaten at a couple Chicago restaurants with my dad. Went there and I saw this, like, cool, fancy restaurant that seemed fun. Sure. Started cooking there. I was 19. I just thought it was neat. It was artistic. The food tasted good and everyone who worked there was cool. Yeah. This is a fun place to be. I didn’t know. I had no idea. Chicago is where you made your bones, and you worked at some of the most legendary restaurants, like Tru and Alinea. Now you have your own spots like pasjoli and Seline. What was the moment when your culinary voice started to coalesce? There’s been several points. For me, it’s been a moving target. There’s been a lot of times where I’m like, “Oh, this is me. Oh, now this is me.” Sure. As of recently, it’s the most confident I’ve been in what I’m trying to do. It’s very much ebbed and flowed. At Alinea, there was a point where I would say a quarter to a third of the dishes on the menu were things I’d created. It’s incredible. I thought they were mine. The bubblegum dish at Alinea was a very famous dish. In hindsight, yes, that was my dish, but that dish doesn’t exist without Grant Achatz and Alinea, for that matter. I was very good at doing what I could do through his lens and accentuating his own thought process and, frankly, helping to evolve the thing that he’d created. I get to Next and it’s all new. I hit a window of three menus—Hunt, Vegan, and Kaiseki—where I felt like this was my food. This was my style of menu. Now I look at some of those dishes in hindsight and I think it’s not so much that I had an identity as much as that’s when I felt most confident. They’d created a foundation for me to be creative. That was a framework. I was creating within that framework. I was very quickly reminded that it was not mine when we switched to Steakhouse. Suddenly, I was making a steakhouse menu, and the internal fights around that menu and the personal struggles that I had of, “I’m not going to do a four-course with à la carte,” and ego gets in the way. I realized that my creative evolution was ultimately going to do a disservice to that restaurant because the more in tune with what I was doing, the more in tune with myself and my desires, the more I was moving away from the philosophy of a restaurant that always changed. Then I get to Dialogue, and my food is the self-discovery of, well, what’s really mine and what’s not Alinea and what’s not Next. At the time, I thought it was awesome, but now I look back at it and I’m like, sometimes I look at dishes and I’m like, I just served five dishes that are identical. Here’s a purée with a sauce, with a dollop of something, with this. It was still just an unedited mess. Recognition and Self-Discovery You’ve edited with your new restaurants. You were recently awarded one of the top accolades with the James Beard Awards for Best Chef: California, and not that they’re the end-all, be-all, but feeling that you are the most confident that you have been in your career right now, what does it mean to be recognized? In 2014, I won the same award for Great Lakes. I got Food & Wine Best New Chef, Jean Banchet Awards for Chicago. I won all those that year, too. It was like Avengers, right? Collecting all the rings. At the time, I was king of the world. You couldn’t feed the ego more. It hit a point where it was just expected, like, “Oh, there’s another award and we’re not nominated? Come on, they messed up.” I just took it all for granted. Twelve years later, you get that long-list nomination. LA has not been an easy city. No. Since my time here, we’ve had multiple fires, strikes, protests. COVID. Pretty much every year, a quarter of the year is destroyed. You start to feel like a beaten dog after a while. When we saw that there was a Beard nomination for the long list, I was like, “No way.” You feel forgotten. Then we made the short list. Seline opening was very, very difficult. The restaurant was super confused when it opened. I was confused. I knew what it didn’t want to be, but I didn’t know what it was supposed to be. We were limping along. I hit this really dark point about six to eight months into being open. We’d talked about, “Is this restaurant going to stay open?” Grant Achatz’s wife, Sam, became this major focal point for me as far as helping me understand my own identity. She was just like, “I’d love to help you and tell people about your restaurant, help you get people in, but what’s your restaurant?” It was one of those conversations where I was like, “Well, you’ve been. It’s like this, and I’m like that, and you know my history.” And she’s like, “You can’t say it in a sentence. You don’t know what your restaurant is.” One hundred percent. “No one can talk about it. If they can’t talk about it, they can’t tell their friends to go. No one will ever go because no one will ever understand it, because they can’t digest this concept in a single sentence.” That was like getting hit with lightning. It’s a great lesson. Coming out of that, getting these accolades, it wasn’t about me anymore. It was about the team and the business and knowing that everyone who stuck with us when there were nights when we had four covers—to look around at all of them and say, “Hey, we’ve found our way.” This last year has changed my entire perspective on my self-awareness. It’s no longer the ego. I’d love to say I don’t care about them, but I care about them for very, very different reasons than I used to. The fact that you’ve had such a long journey, both in the kitchen and through personal discovery, makes me so excited for you to share your five rules for finding your culinary voice. You don’t get to where you are without cooking for other people, but then also looking inward, which ties directly into your rule number one. Rule One: Self-Awareness Self-awareness. You’ve got to know who you are. You’ve got to know who you want to be. You’ve got to know what your values are. We talk about that so much in the restaurant. We have our goals, our values, our priorities, straight from talking about how hospitality starts from within, who we want to be, who I want to be. Is the goal to do it for me, or is the goal to do it for the industry, for the team? What is your goal? And that was probably the hardest journey over the last year. For all these years, I’d talked about who I was as a chef and as a person and as a creative. And when it came down to it, when one of my closest friends looked me in the eye and said, “Who are you?” I couldn’t answer the question. Being forced to be inside the kitchen and being forced to be out in the public means that people are going to say what they think about you and your food and your life in a way that people who have a less outward-facing existence sometimes find hard to understand. Your second rule talks about what to do when other people weigh in on your life. What’s your rule number two? Rule Two: Be Willing to Look Outside Yourself It’s the willingness to accept, look outside of yourself, and just say everything you do isn’t just for you. You hit a point of being a creative and you feel alone. “No one understands me. No one understands what I’m doing. I have to do this all by myself.” Finally, someone does offer an opinion and you don’t like it. And you’re like, “Well, the

"If your vibe is you got there at five, but at midnight you’re still there because you just can’t get enough, we’re definitely not gonna kick you out. We’re gonna find a way to make it all work, and that’s where the sidewalk tables get created. Always leave room for excess is something we swear by." - Vanya Filipovic Vanya Filipovic, Marc-Olivier Frappier, and Jessica Noël, the co-owners of Montreal’s beloved Mon Lapin, join me from Montreal to share their Five Rules for Hosting Like a Montrealer. We talk about making room when there is none, finding the magic in a winter storm, never underestimating the wine, loving people more than perfection, and always leaving room for excess. Their rules capture the particular generosity of Montreal hospitality: the table is crowded, the bottles keep opening, and nobody is looking at the clock. I love these people, and I love Montreal—the food, the wine, the cold, the warmth, and the way a night there can become something larger than you planned. Few places have shaped the way I think about restaurants and hospitality more deeply, and talking with Vanya, Marco, and Jessica brings all of it rushing back. This episode takes me home, to a city where there is always another chair to pull up, another glass to pour, and every good meal feels like it could last forever. Five Rules for Hosting Like a Montrealer Introduction Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m back in the motherland of Montreal, chatting with the co-owners of Mon Lapin, Marc-Olivier, Vanya, and Jessica, whose new cookbook, The Mon Lapin Cookbook, will be out on Phaidon this fall and is available for pre-order anywhere you can get your books. They are here to share their five rules for hosting like a Montrealer. They talk about the importance of always pulling up a chair for one more person at the table, to see the excessive cold during the winter as a positive, and to leave your watch at home when decadence is on the menu. It is a conversation that means so much to my heart and reminds me of why I love the city and the people of Montreal so much. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Montreal, Mon Lapin, and the People Behind It Vanya, Jessica, Marco, so good to see you. I miss all of you, and I miss one of my hometowns in Montreal. Thanks for making the time, and congratulations on the book. Thank you for having us. Yeah, thank you for having us. Montreal, as you know, is one of the all-time greatest culinary cities in the world. For anyone who’s never been, what makes it so special? Montreal has a vibe. Anyone who’s come to Montreal knows it’s a mix of bitter cold winters, French-English mashup, and beautiful people who just love to go a little overboard in eating, drinking, and being out, just consumption of culture in general. There’s the classic eponymous joie de vivre that really resonates, especially if you haven’t been before. I think it’s something that jumps out at you. We love Montreal. First & Foremost, Friends You’ve all worked in the city for years together and at separate restaurants, and have now been at Mon Lapin pretty much since the very first day. How have you inspired each other? What have you learned from each other? And how has the city inspired what you do? We all became really close friends. I mean, Vanya and I are married, but before we opened, we knew Jess for a long time, but not to a level that we do now. And same thing for Marc-Antoine and Alex. It’s been very important for us before everything, before the restaurant, before the food, the wine, to really focus on the people. It’s something that people don’t talk about enough. A happy partnership and a happy co-chefing that we have, Vanya, with Alex and the wine and Marc-Antoine. I find that everything stems from that. If we’re happy, we’re getting along. That trickles down on the whole restaurant, everybody working in it through the customers. That’s the thing that we try to maintain the most. It’s like being with somebody for a long time. Some weeks we have to do nothing and everything’s good. And some weeks we have to do better. It’s normal. We’re five people. The fact that we have this solid partnership, I really find that what makes Mon Lapin the most. The Mon Lapin Cookbook I love that. I love that these are the relationships that drive you, connect you with the customers and you with each other. In The Mon Lapin Cookbook: De Toute Beauté: From Montreal, with Love, this through line of all of you being connected with each other, the farmers, the customers, is this beautiful through line for the book. Why was this the driving narrative that you want to center everything around? I think we wanted people to really feel the energy of what we do here, whether that’s through partnerships or what small things that we do every day, even within the restaurants. Showing all those things just makes that energy shine through the pages. Sure. We didn’t want to make a cookbook cookbook, just like here are the recipes of the restaurant. Of course. Everything’s online. If you want the pétoncle recipe, it’s in the book. I’m sure if you really look online, you’ll find it somewhere. Yeah. We wanted to portray the restaurant as a whole, every little aspect from the art to the wine, to the food, to the service, to the people, to the customers. I feel like there’s a lot of restaurant cookbooks. There’s a lot of influencer cookbooks. There’s a lot of 110 recipes for sandwiches. I think we did a good job at portraying the restaurant, painting a good picture of what Mon Lapin is. I think all of you are aware of my deep love of Montreal, both as a city and then as a place going out to eat. I love the hospitality that the city represents and that I always feel when I dine with you at your restaurants, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for hosting like a Montrealer. Rule One: The More the Merrier Whenever I’ve gone to eat there, what I love is how packed every place is and how there’s always an open seat for anyone who wants to join, which makes up your rule number one. Rule number one is the more the merrier. And I’m so happy you feel it personally when you come because it really is the vibe. We have a partner, Alex. He is my wingman sommelier. He is a master of making the milk crate that’s hanging in the back store into a table of six. I love it. To walk down the street and see people eating on upside down boxes with a little tablecloth over top is a very Montreal thing. We love being able to say yes even when the answer should be no. When there isn’t room, we love making room. The energy that’s going to come from it is going to be greater than anything else. Rule Two: Embrace the Winter One of the best things about the restaurants in Montreal being so warm and so welcoming is that during the cold months, of which there are many, there’s always a place to come in, feel that love, get a good bite to eat, have something great to drink. The thing that I’ve always appreciated about those who run restaurants is they never run away from the frigid temperatures, which is a big part of your rule number two. Embrace the winter. This is half of what we are and what the city is. We’re always asked, it’s going to snow today, are you open? Yes, we are. We cook a bit differently in the winter. We love to embrace it as much as possible. In the front of the house aspect, packing people in, making it warm, having the music a bit up, serving different kinds of wines. And in the kitchen side, we serve a bit heartier dishes, some preserves, some pickles from the summer, maybe a bit more meat. We’re not going to shy from it. This is what Quebec is. The embracing of the winter makes the summer and the spring so much more enjoyable when it comes. And it makes the winter this very special moment at the restaurant. Those nights where there is an actual storm outside is the most magical nights that can happen in the restaurant. It’s the best. Everybody has rosy cheeks. Everybody’s just happy to be warm. And it’s just the magic. No one’s leaving. Nobody’s leaving, yeah. No one’s like, let me go walk into the storm again. You know, all the desserts and cheese and just see if it happens three times a year. Next time you hear snowstorm in Montreal, book a table. Rule Three: Never Underestimate the Wine I was there for my bachelor party for a blizzard of Montreal. We landed and went straight to Joe Beef. Vanya welcomed us with open arms and a couple of delicious bottles, which makes up your rule number three. Never underestimate the wine is rule number three. There’s a non-pretension, amazing appreciation and just sharing of the wine. We all have our little geeky, nerdy things that we love and we love to share and talk about, but it really is just about uncorking wine and getting everybody into it. We love to exaggerate. So we’ve completely exaggerated at Mon Lapin. We have like an extremely deep cellar. The wine list is like a Bible. Yeah, it makes us so happy to be able to show up to a table carrying a bunch of bottles and letting the magic happen. Rule Four: Love People More Than Perfection Being able to let the magic happen, trusting both yourselves and everyone working at the restaurant takes a lot of years of hard work to seem so effortless. But also understanding that sometimes not everything is gonna be exactly the way that you want it, which makes up your rule number four. Our fourth rule is love people more than perfection. If we look at it in more of a food way, produce can be perfect, imperfect, and we go with it however we feel in that moment. We’re never the type of place either that’s planning out what we’re going to be doing. There’s no lab testing of whatever dish we’re gonna be putting on the menu. Oh yeah, the lab. Yeah, the famous lab. That never

"All of it is inviting participation. Participation in the magic around us.” - Evan Marks If you haven’t already, please make sure to subscribe and give Five Rules for the Good Life on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. Evan Marks Evan Marks, founder and executive director of The Ecology Center, joins me to share his Five Rules for an Abundant Life. We talk about finding gratitude in the miraculous, growing your own food, taking nourishment seriously, making things with your hands, and sharing whatever you have in surplus. Together, his rules offer a thoughtful invitation to reconnect with nature, contribute to your community, and build a richer life by becoming an active participant in it. What Evan and his community have built in San Juan Capistrano is more than a regenerative organic farm. It is a living example of what becomes possible when people come together around food, nature, and a shared sense of purpose. The Ecology Center reminds us that life is not something we are meant to simply observe or consume. We have to participate—to plant something, make something, share something, and give a little of ourselves to the world around us. The more we take part in life, the more abundant it becomes. Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with Evan Marks, the founder and executive director of The Ecology Center, a truly awe-inspiring, regenerative, organic farm, cafe, and education center located in Southern California. He’s here to share his five rules for an abundant life. He talks about the importance of participating, that making something yourself leads to a much richer life, and that the more you share with others, the more the world shares with you. This conversation offers incredible insights on a different approach to living and how, by redefining your relationship with nature, you will be able to live a much richer life. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. The Ecology Center Evan, so nice to meet you. I’m so excited to be talking to you today about The Ecology Center. You’ve built such a beautiful space. Welcome to the show. Thank you, brother. Honored to be here. For those who might be unfamiliar with The Ecology Center, truly a unique place, can you explain its mission and its approach to food? Its mission is to shift culture. How we’ve done that so far is we’ve built an environment, an ecotopia. It’s a 28-acre ecosystem that inspires us to think and be in a different state, and that connects back to food, reminding people of the basic tenets of knowing where your food comes from and being deeply nourished, mind-body-spirit, in those endeavors of food or otherwise. As the founder, how did you take your life studies and adventures and turn it into something tangible? The Sum of a Life I like to say that we’re just all individually a sum of the parts that we’ve been paying attention to. I guess I was lucky to have good mentors, and I attuned my awareness to mostly traditional people, Indigenous cultures, and tropical environments. I just became fascinated with how humans have lived on this planet for centuries in harmony. That’s really been the design challenge: How do we take those pieces of civilization and culture and integrate them into the present and future tenets in a place unlikely like Orange County? The Principle of Participation There are a lot of tenets that make up what you’ve put together. One of the ones that really stuck out to me was this fundamental principle of participation. How do you weave this through the Center’s farm, garden, cafe, and all of its endeavors? We’re a village, so we’ve got a lot of different expressions. All of it is inviting participation. Participation in the magic around us. Participation in our food system. Participation in the joy of being on this beautiful planet. We do that through a whole myriad of programs, from farm dinners to music festivals, to yoga classes, to field trips, to cooking classes, to shopping at the cafe and eating in the farm stand. It’s a real wide aperture of offerings here, but all of it is an invitation to jump on board. I love that you’ve opened up your life in this space, showing people who are looking for a different type of living and being so generous with that, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules of an abundant life. Rule One: Find Gratitude in the Miraculous In setting the foundation for this approach to living, it really comes with finding this right mindset and searching for this one thing. What’s your rule number one? So much of the magic that we’re trying to inspire is the state of being. My first rule is in the context of peace and finding gratitude in the miraculous. I love that. There’s magic everywhere, and life is precious and planet Earth is sacred. The path that I’ve found is finding deep relationship and reverence to nature. When we can do that, we learn how to fill our tanks and inspire purpose, and that motivates us to be the best version of ourselves. Rule Two: Grow Your Own and Start Small As people have experienced life and lived in our current society, there has been a real separation from understanding where food or things that come from the Earth really come from. Your second rule talks about getting back to this practice and figuring out how to make something of your own. What’s your rule number two? Yeah, my rule number two is grow your own and start small. Small-scale solutions are the path forward. That means getting good at planting a container garden of herbs and tomatoes, having potted plants in your apartment, or a lemon tree out the back door of your kitchen. These are all just simple invitations to participate in adding that magic element to every meal. Moving out to California from New York, I remember the first time I picked a lime from the tree in my backyard and the absolute beauty and magic that came from putting it in my drink. Living here now for the last 10 years, I’ve really adjusted the way that I think about the food that I cook and what I put into my body, which makes up your rule number three. Rule Three: Health Is Wealth Health is wealth. Take nourishment seriously. The path to that is knowing your farmers and getting excited about making those meaningful investments in your health and the health of your ecosystem. Go to the source: the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. The farmer’s market is your number one stop. Rule Four: Do It Yourself Beyond just buying locally or growing your own food, there is a way that a lot of people consume now that is one and done. If it’s broke, just buy something new, or really be intimidated to practice this DIY lifestyle. Your rule number four talks about the importance of understanding how to make something for yourself. What’s your rule number four? Rule number four is do it yourself. Use your hands. Make something. That, in my context, could be making a worm bin, building raised beds in your backyard, or building a picnic table to celebrate the harvest with your children. The core of it is put your hands to work, get them away from any of the digital toxins, and move them back into planet Earth. Rule Five: Share the Surplus I know, as people look at the life in front of them, think about what they can make, what they can cook, what they can grow, and what money they have to spend, there is this concern about either not having enough or wasting things. Your fifth and final rule talks about planning for a life of abundance while considering what you can give to other people. What’s your rule number five? Rule number five is to share the surplus. That is really in the consciousness more than anything, which is the more you give, the more you get. We all want to line up to those age-old principles of leaving it better than we found it and giving more than we take. That can be volunteering a little bit of time to a meaningful cause. That could be sharing an extra lemon from your tree or donating some extra resources to an organization that you care about in your community. All of these are participatory ways of getting on board with the shift in the culture that is necessary for an abundant future for all of us. Closing Evan, congratulations on everything that you built. If people want to visit the farm, stop by the cafe, or check out the dinners you’re throwing, where can they go? How can they sign up to keep informed? Check us out online at theecologycenter.org. Most importantly, come on down. We’re in San Juan Capistrano. That’s between Los Angeles and San Diego. It’s a worthy field trip, and it’s a full day of fun here on the farm. That’s the best way to do it, is just to dive in. I can’t wait to swing down with my family someday soon. Evan, appreciate the time, and can’t wait to dine with you around your shared table. Thanks, brother. Appreciate the opportunity to share. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Justin Pichetrungsi, chef and owner of Anajak Thai Cuisine, joins me to share his Five (Easy) Rules for Taking Over Your Parents’ Restaurant. We talk about burning yourself out—and knowing when not to—along with the importance of arguing with your parents, listening to them, and recognizing that old things are often cooler than new ones. Justin reflects on taking over his family’s restaurant, preserving its history, and finding a way to move the business forward without losing what made it special. Together, his rules offer an honest and thoughtful guide to inheriting not only a restaurant, but all the memories, relationships, and responsibilities that come with it. The beauty of this episode is Justin’s openness about how complicated it can be to carry on a family tradition. He does not romanticize the work or pretend the transition happened without disagreements, exhaustion, or doubt. Instead, he shows how listening, arguing, preserving, and changing can all be expressions of the same love. There is something deeply moving about watching a new generation build upon what came before while making sure the people, stories, and traditions that created it are never forgotten. Introduction Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. I’m always excited when I get to spend time with today’s guest, Justin Pichetrungsi who is the chef and owner of Anajak Thai Cuisine. He’s here to share his five easy rules to taking over your parents’ restaurant. He talks about the duality of both burning yourself out and taking care of yourself, the importance of arguing with your parents, and how everything old is cooler than everything new. It is an extremely insightful conversation from someone who has successfully transitioned his family’s restaurant from one generation to another. For anyone who has found themselves in the same situation or for anyone who wants to hear the story of how it is done well, this is the episode for you. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Justin, always a pleasure to see you. Thank you again for splashing us out the last time we were in. Welcome to Five Rules. Thank you, I like this. Taking Over the Family Restaurant In many ways, the tradition of taking over a parent’s restaurant used to be common. Why do you think that went away and why do you think it’s back? Is it back? You tell me. Oh, why do I think it went away? I actually have thought about this quite a bit. You see this a lot in Europe. You see it a lot in Asia. You see a lot of the passing down of the torch to the next generation, whether or not it’s a restaurant. Why don’t we see it here in Los Angeles so much or in America rather? And I think it’s because we have this belief that we can become independently wealthy within one generation. So it’s not necessary to build upon the intergenerational wealth and knowledge that our parents passed down. I can charge ahead in my own career and live the fullest of my life in the way that I wanna do it. The second thing is that there’s a lot of parents of immigrants, a lot of parents of non-immigrants that are gonna say, no, I want you to live life better than I live. Don’t take over my shop. Pursue your dreams, pursue your life. I was always really afraid that I was gonna lose something if my parents closed the restaurant down. I was gonna lose a part of the family. I was gonna lose my living room where I’m sitting in right now. That fear of what was gonna happen to the recipes and to the memories was really what guided me into it. A Beautiful Renovation You’re celebrating your 45th restaurant birthday and you recently did a beautiful renovation of Anna Jack. What did you wanna preserve? What did you wanna overhaul? I love the atmosphere that the old place became. It was hard to be able to explain that to my general contractor. In fact, I moved on to different contractors until I found someone who understood this idea that it wasn’t gonna be a change. We’re gonna take the little needle and poke it into the thing, extract the DNA, and then the T-Rex, right? Dave Chang said to me, it was days right before we closed for the demolition, he said. There’s only three things you need to keep. One, the wine in the middle of the room, which makes no sense. One of one. Two, the Kobe jersey, and three, your grandfather’s art. And those were the things that stayed. Sometimes having those items that represent the lineage of the restaurant are so important to have and really help tell the story. Sharing with Your Parents It’s amazing because you’ve been able to do all this and share it with your parents. What’s been the most special part about that to you? They were leaving the restaurant at the end of their career in a state that was very challenged. If you remember the feelings that you were going through in 2007, 2008, 2009, the difficulties of what restaurants were going through during the recessionary time. Tough. It hit my parents so hard. They were working seven days a week. For the most part, just the two of them, plus a few other helpers. So for me, to be able to see them at a certain sense of peace, at least peace within the business. Life is as hectic as it always is. I’m the most proud of that, knowing that they can go into their retirement without worrying about that. This was my gift to him, truly. It’s such a beautiful gift. And as more people in America start to look to continue on traditions, especially in the hospitality space, being able to see what you’ve done and using it as a map is nothing short of amazing, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five easy steps to taking over your parents’ restaurant. Easy redacted, by the way. Easy redacted. Rule One: Burn Yourself Out You can look at social media, you can look at this a few years in and feel like everything’s gelled completely. There was a plan from the beginning that the success came effortlessly, which couldn’t be farther from the truth and ties directly into your rule number one. Rule number one is burn yourself out. It’s an interesting rule to give because we’re such in a mode of career wokeness that we have to protect ourselves, right? Which I respect, I really do. But also, in the food business, in the restaurant business, it’s a 24 hour business, more or less. By the time the cleaners leave, the AM teams come in. To dive so deep into every aspect of it, of course, it’s kind of hyperbole, burn yourself out. Of course. We’re all in this kind of cycle of burning ourselves out, finding inspiration. Rule Two: Do Not Burn Yourself Out It’s this constant molting of our outer shell and getting stronger as we do it that it really motivates you and it can motivate the team and motivate the diners as well to put everything into it. Putting everything into it does inspire the people who are following you and the diners at large, especially when you’re taking something that’s beloved and making a lot of big changes. The other side of the coin from your rule number one is this, what’s your rule number two? Conversely, my rule number two is to not burn yourself out, to be quite careful of it because the dichotomy of that delirium and the creativity that comes from the delirium of being up all night. Contrast that with the creativity that you get from being relaxed, being bored. Daniel Son from Sonagi said, I’m never as creative as I am as when I’m bored. Boredom is the birthplace of great creativity. The mind is able to wander and honestly, the pandemic or the pandy, as I’m trying to call it. The pandy taught us that we could use this downtime to interact with other people, interact with other industries, interact with other chefs. Interact with yourself. Interact with ourselves and the world and nature and all of these countries that have all these longstanding multi-generational family businesses. We have to learn from that. You touch on a good point. Rule Three: Argue With Your Parents These are multi-generational businesses, which means you’re not just taking the name, you’re taking everything that comes with a restaurant. That means you’re also taking your parents, which can sometimes lead to creative tension and ties directly into your rule number three. Rule number three is that you have to argue with your parents. On the record. On the record, I’m saying it’s absolutely crucial. You need to let them know with the full honesty and the full emotion, how you feel about things moving forward in the business. Ed Catmull from Pixar said that Steve Jobs fired a guy on the board of Pixar because he never argued with him. I respect that. He was trying to say, I wanna learn from someone else’s perspective. Why do I need someone who also has my perspective? I got that covered. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My folks and I learned how to argue with one another. We learned how to understand each other through this process. We were able to get our perspectives to co-exist in the same space. At Old Anajac, you felt the tension of those things. Rule Four: Listen to Your Parents It’s just like these magnets that almost could never touch. Just like your rule number one and number two, there is a dichotomy with your rule number three in working with your parents. What’s your rule number four? If rule number three is to argue with your parents, rule number four is to listen to your parents. On the record. On the record, kids. A lot of people will say this as they get older. Your parents were right much of the time. Fair. My parents are a little bit old school in the way that they think about business. I mean, the kind of small business, immigrant control formula is very different. I understand control to be, it’s not a zero sum game. I understand the role of creativity and the role of managing creatives as a part of the business. There may be some kind of loss when you go from one style to the ot

Restaurant photographer Carter Hiyama, whose book On Service, Volume One is out now, joins me to share his Five Rules for Restaurant Food Photography. We talk about why light is everything, the importance of removing distractions from the table, and why making sure your lens is clean is a must. He also explains how his background shooting skateboarding influenced the way he captures the kinetic energy of restaurant kitchens and the feeling of being in the dining room. Everyone wants to take better food photos, whether it is to show their love of food, support their local restaurant scene, or share something they are genuinely excited about. A great photograph can introduce people to a restaurant, celebrate the work happening in its kitchen, and help us feel more connected to the community around it. I love how Carter’s rules make that feel possible for everyone, regardless of the camera they use or how much experience they have. His inisghts give us the tools to take better pictures while reminding us that the real goal is to appreciate the food, the people who made it, and the experience of being there. Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m joined by my good bud, Carter Hiyama, who is a restaurant photographer based out of Portland, Oregon, whose new book, On Service, Volume 1, is out now. He’s here to share his five rules for restaurant photography. He talks about the importance of lighting, why you should remove any distractions when setting up your shot, and, most importantly, why you shouldn’t let taking photos interrupt your meal. It is a great conversation for anyone who is shooting professionally and wants to up their game, or anyone who is just snapping photos for their own social feed. So, let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Getting Started in Restaurant Photography Carter, always great to see you. It was such a pleasure to have dinner with you and Veronica Ahum up in Portland the other week. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Photography, especially food photography, has become so ubiquitous today. When did you realize that you wanted to move into doing it more professionally? I think it was probably right around 2019. I had just started to work with some restaurants, most notably Bell’s, but I was actually just doing video at the time. Shout out. That was when I got my first taste of doing restaurant work, and at the same time, I started to get really into food. So, I fell in love with the thought of being able to do it professionally. Luckily, since then, that’s what I’ve been doing. Finding a Personal Style Every photographer has their own unique style and approach. What are the stories and themes that influence your work? What are you trying to show through your work? I came from shooting skateboarding. I feel like I always tie things back to that. One of my favorite things to shoot is in the kitchen with a wide lens and just getting right up in there. It feels like I’m filming skating with a fisheye lens. Most of the time, when I’m shooting food photography or just restaurant photography in general, it’s more about trying to convey what it’s like to actually be at this restaurant. Not just showing what the food looks like, but what the surroundings look like, what the vibe of the restaurant is, and what it feels like to actually sit there and eat. Creating On Service, Volume 1 If you follow your work on Instagram or just know you personally, you’ve been to so many restaurants and have thousands of photos. How did you select the ones for your first book, On Service, Volume 1? First, I started with really wanting to feature Bell’s and Anajak. From there, I was trying to pick the photos that were the most influential or sentimental to me. Aside from that, it’s a combination of a lot of my favorite shots that I’ve taken over the last five years or so. What I love about your work is that it’s so personal, so accessible, and seems like anyone who wants to start taking their photos to another level can learn a lot from what you do. That is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for restaurant food photography. Rule One: Light Is Everything Many of us have run into this situation: A gorgeous plate hits the table, phones come out, and there are shadows, it’s dark, and there’s just no way you’re going to get a good shot of the food. This applies a lot of times even when you’re shooting during the day, before the restaurant opens for service, and is a big consideration for your rule number one. Rule number one is: Light is everything. It doesn’t matter what kind of camera you’re taking with. If your light is really bad, the photo is going to be bad. If your light is really good, you could be shooting on a professional camera or an iPhone, and it’ll look great. That’s really the determining factor in how well the dish looks and whether the textures and colors come out. The thing that I was thinking about with the light is that I always want it to come from one direction and kind of rake across the dish. That’s how you get a lot of texture to come out. If you think of something like bread that has a lot of little crevices, if you have light that’s coming across it, all those little crevices create tiny little shadows, which really makes the dish pop. The way you position the light is so important for pulling out all those minute details that really make your food pop. But where you’re taking the photo from also plays a big role and makes up your rule number two. Rule Two: Think About Your Angle Rule number two is: Think about your angle. A lot of it will depend on the dish that you’re shooting. For instance, a burger. Usually, you wouldn’t really want to shoot that from the top because it’ll just look like a brown circle of the bun. When you think about the dish that you’re shooting, what is the most important thing that you want to feature about it? With a burger, you really want to see the layers and the melty cheese coming off the side. Then you know you want to shoot it from a lower angle and show off that side profile, versus something like a pizza, which you would shoot from overhead. Shooting from overhead has become a pretty well-seen style because people want these natural, lived-in environments. But just because you’re shooting the entire table doesn’t mean that everything needs to stay on the table. Rule Three: Remove Distractions What’s your rule number three? Rule number three is: Remove distractions. Things like dirty napkins, empty glasses, and phones. That’s a common one—people’s phones on the tables. Maybe it’s just a pet peeve of mine, but I feel like I always try to move those out of the way. This is just for casually taking photos, not during a professional shoot. If you’re just out having dinner with friends and I’m trying to take a quick photo, usually less is more. If I’m just trying to feature one dish, I’ll try to make sure that’s the main focus. You can include other plates, cocktails, wine, or a menu—something creeping into the frame. I feel like that is always nice. Rule Four: Clean Your Lens Summertime is here, and there’s so much great food at restaurants and in the market. That also means people who are outside are usually lathered up in sunscreen. Your fourth rule talks about the importance of keeping this clean. What’s your rule number four? Rule number four is: Clean your lens. Yeah, I know it sounds basic, but it’s kind of surprising how often I’ll open up my camera and I can tell the lens is blurry or smeared. Or, if there’s some light hitting the lens, you can tell everything’s super washed out and you get a ton of glare. Basic camera tips: Wipe your lens, tap on the dish or whatever you’re trying to focus on, and make sure that’s in focus. If you’re shooting in sunlight, lower the exposure. A lot of the time, bright hot spots on the plate will be super blown out. For some reason, the phone is just okay with that. So, I always try to darken it, and that makes for a nicer picture. Rule Five: Don’t Let Taking Photos Interrupt Your Meal There are so many things to consider when you’re taking a nice photograph at a restaurant. Whether that’s a candid portrait of a chef while you’re in the kitchen or a dish that’s on your table, it can take a lot of time to get everything adjusted just the way you want. Your fifth and final rule talks about balancing the time it takes to take a photo with this consideration. What’s your rule number five? Rule number five is: Don’t let taking photos interrupt your meal. I’m guilty of it, but yes. When we had dinner, it was totally fine. We just took our phones out really quickly and snapped a couple of pictures. Yeah. I feel like that’s the perfect balance. Sometimes I’ll see people taking their phones out every time a dish hits the table, or they start recording videos and everyone has to stop what they’re doing to pause for this content moment. If that’s what you’re there to do and you’re being paid to be there and do that, that’s totally fine. I feel like, in a regular, casual dinner setting, it can be kind of disruptive. Yeah. So, I usually just try to get my couple of pictures, and that’s it. Closing Carter, congratulations on the book. If anyone wants to order one of the few remaining copies, because it’s almost sold out, or follow along with the work that you’re shooting on a day-to-day basis, where can they go? I have them for sale on my website at carterhiyama.com, and they’re also being sold at select stores across the U.S. Support your local independent bookshop. Shout out to Now Serving. I know that they have a few copies left here in L.A. I can’t wait to see you again, share another meal, and take some photos together when we’re in the same city. Definitely. Thanks for havin

Adam Weissblatt, co-founder of Last Word Hospitality and author of For the Love of Restaurants, joins me to share his Five Rules for Opening a Neighborhood Restaurant. We talk about trusting your gut, treating your landlord like a true business partner, and making sure you can deliver on what you promise. After opening seven restaurants of his own, Adam offers an honest and practical look at what it takes to turn the dream of a restaurant into a place that can become part of its community. What I find most inspiring about Adam is his willingness to openly share knowledge that took him years—and plenty of hard lessons—to earn. For more people to succeed in this industry, we need more people willing to follow his example and let go of the gatekeeping that has kept so much valuable information out of reach. Sharing what you know does not diminish your own accomplishments; it gives someone else a better chance to build something meaningful of their own Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m chatting with Adam Weissblatt, the co-founder of Last Word Hospitality and the author of For the Love of Restaurants, An Insider’s Guide from Daydreams to Opening Night, which comes out tomorrow on August 11th. He’s here to share his five rules for opening a neighborhood restaurant. He talks about the importance of trusting your gut, how by building the right team sets you up for the right success, and that by being honest with yourself and those you’re working with allows for a long existence in any community. It’s a great conversation for anyone who’s ever dreamed of opening up their own space from someone who has walked the walk and opened up seven of his own spaces. The Neighborhood Restaurant So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Adam, always great to see your smiling face. Thank you for taking a break from your restaurants and hospitality group and congrats on the book, The Love of Restaurants, which comes out tomorrow. Yes, sir. Tomorrow. It used to be that a neighborhood restaurant was a bit of a backhanded compliment. Rise of the Neighborhood Restaurant How has that perception and term shifted over the last few years? As the economy struggles, people are looking for familiarity and they’re looking for comfort. A restaurant is the ultimate form of being able to go out, have a big night out, but then maybe not spend as much, including just on the simple realities of getting to and from. What it costs to get in an Uber or gas or everything like that. It all factors into how people make decisions about where they’re going to eat. Now, maybe more than ever, people are looking for that neighborhood comforting place and want a place they can call their own. That’s really good. The Search Your group, Last Word Hospitality, has specialized in neighborhood restaurants and has seven different spots in your portfolio. What is the through line that ties them all together and makes them a part of their individual communities? We’re always just looking for beautiful spaces that represent a cool aesthetic of that neighborhood. When you take an old building that’s been there since the 20s or 30s and it’s been uncared for and you put love into it, that already starts to show people that you really genuinely have pride in what you’re doing and that matters. For us, we partner with people on each one of these projects. I love that. Every time you walk into the restaurant and you ask, who is the owner, the chef and the GM are going to be part of that team of owners. You’re going to have that constant connection through the people in the space to ownership. I think that really matters and draws a connection between community. Being able to be a authentic and literal part of the community from the space to the people in it has been something that’s defined your career and approach to building these different spaces. For the Love of Restaurants The book, The Love of Restaurants, I remember you telling me about it four or five years ago at a one-on-one event. Why was now the right moment to share it with the world? Three years ago, when I really started to take it seriously, I lost two of my best friends in the same year. One to cancer, one to unnatural causes, unfortunately. So sorry. Thank you. It motivated me to do something really difficult and to do it in their honor. I did always feel like there was a gap in the book market of just a book that you could pick up if you were waiting tables or cooking or managing or being a chef and find a path that shows you what it means to become an owner of a restaurant. You’re going to touch in real estate and you’re going to touch in permitting and you’re going to touch the city and all these things that you won’t necessarily learn in your day-to-day managing a restaurant even as a general manager. That’s the information I wanted to really share and I wanted to do it in a way that restaurant people could read and find enjoyable. Rule One: Trust Your Gut I’m so happy that the era of gatekeeping is done and I’m seeing it more and more across different creative industries, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for opening a neighborhood restaurant. Anyone’s ever walked into a hot restaurant on a Friday night, you immediately feel the energy the second you walk through the door. What’s harder than that is walking into that same space months, if not years, before a big night can happen, but it ties directly into your rule number one. Rule number one is you do have to have this feeling in your gut. There has to be a natural attraction to what it is you’re going to do. Considering you’re committing years of your life to this, and I always think work in years and live in the present, try to enjoy every moment, but know that if you’re going to do big things, it’s going to take amounts of time and so be patient with yourself. The first feeling is do you truly love it? When you look at that space, do you envision a restaurant there and can you play in your mind how people are going to interact with it? You need to be able to fully visualize whatever restaurant in your head is there in that physical space and how people will truly react to it and be as honest with yourself as one can be when talking about your own emotions. That honesty and having that trust with your own emotions is key because at some point you are the one who knows what you’re really going to like, but to build any business in anything, especially a restaurant, you do need to have good partnerships and having a good relationship with this person is your rule number two. Landlord is your first business partner in these deals a lot of the time. Rule Two: Your Landlord Is Your First Business Partner Big time. In order to raise money, Holly, my partner since 2014, we had to put in money at least to get the lease assigned. Then we could prove to people that we were serious and that we could then go out and raise capital against it. First person to convince that you’re serious is a landlord. In our experience, you really want to like that person as much as you can. That is a real relationship that will be ongoing. It will be a very serious relationship. If you’re going through things like the fires or COVID or all the stuff we’ve done for years, that’s the person you’re going to be turning to and working with, but no guests can show up. The only person you can really try to figure shit out with is your landlord. Rule Three: Choose the Right Partners You being on the front lines with your landlord and being able to take on the outwardly problems for your team is really important, but to run the restaurant day to day, you got to look inside the four walls and put together these types of people, which are rule number three. Partners, I don’t think I would ever do a restaurant without knowing that there was going to be a number of extra people there to partner with me and to help carry that person. People say it’s like a marathon, but marathons have a start and finish and restaurants don’t end, especially if you’re doing well. I won’t even consider a project unless we can really visualize who those people are going to be. It’s at least a chef and at least a general manager and not only them running that place and being part of that community, but also working with each other. A lot of our partners who’ve now developed into great friends didn’t necessarily know each other before. Some of the magic of what I think we’ve been able to do over the years is find like-minded people who often have really different backgrounds, but you just think will be great together. And if it turns out to be true, Mike and Melissa from Barra Santos didn’t know each other. That’s crazy. Their friendship is so real and genuine. It’s the reason why that restaurant feels the way it does. You make friends fast when you’re working in the trenches to say. When you’re cramming in 10, 12, 14 hour days, those friendships and those relationships really develop. Even when you have great relationships, even if you have a good landlord, even if you have a space you love, you still need runway. And without this resource, that’s not going to happen. Rule Four: You Need Enough Money What’s your rule number four? You need enough money. The M word. Restaurants are very expensive. Every locale is different. And so I was very careful in the book to never name dollar amounts. Doing a restaurant in all different municipalities across the country is going to cost very different amounts. But that doesn’t mean that that amount isn’t a lot of money in each one of those municipalities. I don’t think they’re ever really affordable. It’s going to be expensive to whomever’s doing it in whatever community they’re doing it from. There is a reality to this where some restaurants don

Mackenzie Hoffman, co-owner and operator of Stir Crazy, joins me to share her Five Rules for Creating a Restaurant that Feels Timeless. We talk about welcoming solo diners, staying earnest, and maintaining your principles without compromise. She explains why restaurants should avoid chasing trends, remain grounded in their values, and become genuine friends to the people and businesses around them. It is a conversation about creating a sense of place—one that feels deeply connected to its neighborhood while offering guests an escape from the world outside. Together, her rules offer a thoughtful blueprint for building a restaurant that does more than serve great food—it creates a feeling people want to return to again and again. After nearly twenty-five years of covering and working with restaurants, I have seen that the places that last—both by keeping their doors open and finding a permanent place in people’s hearts—are the ones that embrace their communities. They know their neighbors, welcome regulars and first-timers with the same generosity, and become part of the rhythm of local life. A truly timeless restaurant does not impose itself on a neighborhood or chase whatever is popular in the moment. It listens, contributes, and slowly becomes a place people cannot imagine the neighborhood without. Photo by Shelby Moore INTRODUCTION Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with Mackenzie Hoffman, co-owner and operator of Stir Crazy and a fixture in the LA food scene. She is here to share her five rules for creating a restaurant that feels timeless. She talks about the importance of tailoring each guest’s experience, especially when it comes to solo diners, the tips and tricks of staying earnest, and how to maintain your principles without compromise. It’s a great conversation for anyone who’s looking to open a place that can embed itself into the community or for anyone who’s been open for a few years and is looking to become an even bigger part of the neighborhood. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. BACKGROUND Mackenzie, always a pleasure to see you. Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day at Stir Crazy to sit down for the show. Incredibly honored to be here, Darin. Thank you so much for having me. My absolute pleasure. You literally went to school for food studies and nutrition, something that is rare in the restaurant world. What unique perspective do you feel it gave you in regards to hospitality? BY THE BOOKS The best way to describe the program was comprehensive. There was a culinary portion to it, there was a microbiology portion to it, food in the arts, food writing, a little business piece, accounting and whatnot. So it really gave me a comprehensive view of food, food systems, restaurants. And then being in New York City was incredible because just the access to being able to study something during the day and then go to my job or go out to eat, grab lunch somewhere. It was awesome. You were in New York at an incredible inflection point in the restaurant scene and you got to work with some of the great names of that time, Four Horsemen, Union Square Hospitality, Major Food Group. What did you learn from working in New York and Brooklyn restaurants that you still practice today? IN NEW YORK I get goosebumps thinking about it because 10, 15 years ago, we were trying to get this craft to catch on. Now, it’s just porn. People can’t get enough of it. Within the past 15 years of seeing restaurants grow and evolve, not just in our industry, but how they affect the world at large. It’s a global industry. The diaspora of all these other ideas and flavors, I feel like we won despite all the adversity, not just happening in localized from city to city and city, but also in the industry at large. I do think that this is a long game and I think that we’re going to win. You’ve been in the industry through incredible adversity like COVID, which affected the restaurant that you moved out to LA for, Onda, but you managed to stay in the game and eventually open up Stir Crazy. How did you take everything that you’d learned and put it into your own place? MAKING IT MY OWN I was fortunate enough to be part of restaurants in multiple different cities and seeing some really, really incredible people, professionals with their own long histories. It was almost like an anthropological view of a lot of different ways to do stuff, not just the how to do it and the what to do, but also why it was being done. I really got to see all the options in front of me and then take a look at my internal world and what my values were to shape that into a very personal perspective. RULE ONE: WELCOME SOLO GUESTS I love how you’ve taken your experiences, your studies, what you’ve learned from other people and put it into this unique restaurant, especially for LA, which is why I’m so excited for you to be sharing your five rules for creating a restaurant that feels timeless. For all the restaurants that I love, you can easily feel that hospitality is at the center of what they do. It’s not just about the big groups that come there for the special moments like birthdays and anniversaries. It’s for the people who just want to be out in the world, have a dinner, enjoy themselves, and this makes up your rule number one. My rule number one is welcome solo guests. Yes. To me, it’s a no-brainer and it also speaks about how creating a restaurant that feels timeless honors your neighborhood too. I always try to find ways to welcome and treasure guest experiences that are varied. Looking for those solo guests, such a great flag when they bring a book and feel comfortable to just linger and read. Number one. Yeah. The varied turn times also include bookending other experiences, dropping in for a pre-dinner bottle of wine before you have omakase or even finishing your night with us with a nightcap or even dessert after you went somewhere else. Not every experience that we offer is replicatable. Everyone is unique. The fact that guests can feel comfortable walking in is incredible. We have a 33% return guest rate. That’s amazing. Which in LA is mind-boggling. Month after month after month, I’m like, did I refresh the page? The number is the same. RULE TWO: STAY EARNEST When you are that welcoming to guests, when people keep returning, a lot of it radiates from staying sincere, having this open arms policy, and really catering to what people want, which now that you’ve been over three years is not the easiest thing to do. But your rule number two talks about the importance of this in creating a restaurant that feels timeless. Number two, stay earnest. So hard. There’s a couple of different tongs in my fork of earnesty. Sure. It’s a good reminder that to both your guests and yourself and your staff that food, wine, service, hospitality, they’re crafts. You’re allowed to be a nerd. You’re allowed to make this your career. You’re allowed to invest in yourself. That pride and that joy and that confidence is going to be contagious. And then ultimately, if you continue that with the way that you teach and the way that you serve and the way that you host and have gratitude while doing it, it’s a really, really great feedback loop. That is the importance of earnesty. RULE THREE: AVOID TRENDS. KEEP THINGS ANALOG. Being earnest from the start and knowing who you are allows you to put your best foot forward when And when Stir Crazy opened, I can say it. It was one of the most talked about and hottest restaurants for all of the right reasons. By not chasing this, it has allowed you to stay consistently well-respected and busy as your doors have been opened. What’s your rule number three? Rule number three is avoid trends. Keep things analog. This is my rule for the non-capitalist capitalist in me. You have to have a North Star. The big word here is intention. Yes, we were hot and cool and vibey when we opened, but I would say that the way that I approach growth, it’s a slow burn. It’s like embers in the fire. It’s really making sure that you’re stoking your heat and making sure that you’re giving yourself grace to fail sometimes and make wrong decisions and then always learn from them. Restaurants should always be a feeling. They should not be any bigger than one person inside them. You’re always going to harness something timeless if you’re reaching towards a feeling. Then the keeping things analog, this is just to not so much think forward in time, but also backwards in time. At Stir Crazy, we don’t have a lot of screens. We don’t have a phone. We don’t have a website. It’s almost as if time collapses on itself. Yes, we’ve been around for three years, but I hope that someone can enter our doors like a threshold to a portal and be transported. The transportative nature of Stir Crazy is what I find to feel timeless as well. RULE FOUR: BEFRIEND YOUR NEIGHBORS This ability to feel timeless, welcoming the community really is a key to keeping your doors open. By ingratiating yourself to these people, it’ll allow you to do so for years to come. What’s your rule number four? Rule number four, befriend your neighbors. So important. Restaurants need to understand that they have a sense of place. We have terroir. We don’t have to impose ourselves on the neighborhood and scream louder. We can just be more intentional in the things that we say and the things that we do. Don’t operate on an island. Get to know the people on either sides of you, your businesses. They probably have something to teach you, whether it be something about that crack in the sidewalk, something about that crosswalk. A timeless restaurant is not an imposition on the neighborhood. It is a seamless character that befriends a whole cast of people. RULE FIVE: MAINTAIN YOUR PRINCIPLES WITHOUT COMPROMISE Being able to truly

Greg Baxtrom is the chef and owner of 5 Acres in Rockefeller Center and the author of Nothing Matters but Delicious: A Radically Honest Cookbook about food, alcoholism, recovery, and rebuilding a life. In this deeply personal conversation, Greg shares his Five Rules for Getting Your Life Back on Track. Together, we talk about the long road to sobriety, the daily work of becoming reliable again, and how cooking helped him begin accumulating the days that eventually became a new life. These conversations are important because no one should have to struggle alone. Hearing Greg speak so openly about his lowest moments, the people who helped him, and the work he continues to do offers more than hope—it reveals a path forward. Recovery does not happen all at once, and it does not always move in a straight line. Sometimes it begins with telling the truth, asking for help, or simply doing the one thing you said you would do that day. Wherever you are in that process, be patient and kind to yourself. You are not alone, and change is possible. Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m chatting with Greg Baxtrom, the chef and owner at Five Acres in Rockefeller Center, and the author of Nothing Matters but Delicious, a radically honest cookbook, out now on 10 Speed Press. He’s here to share his five rules for getting your life back on track. He talks about the importance of telling the truth, the necessity of building a routine you can actually keep, and that by being patient and kind to yourself is the key to real change. This conversation, along with his cookbook, are deep explorations of Greg’s struggle with alcoholism, his journey through recovery, and how he’s put his life back together. It is a great conversation for anyone who is going through similar struggles or for anyone looking for a insight to understand those who are. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Greg, so good to see you. Opening Congratulations on the book and Five Acres. Thanks for making time for the show. Yeah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. I love the book and it starts off with a very powerful introduction where you talk about living your life in two unequal parts. How much has the concept of balance played a part in your life? I mean, there was none until recently. Sure. Even now, I’m not that great at it. I mean, I’m pretty great at being sober. I don’t have near misses and stuff, but I’m probably on day 55 straight of no days off. Right. Still a work in progress. I take things like going to bed at a specific time. I try to be in bed by 10 o’clock every day. It’s pretty good. I try to wake up and have a coffee. I still have some non-negotiables, but there are ones that get tossed out the window still. I’ll go through a phase of like, now I’m vegan and I’m starting off with a five-day fast and I’m signing up for my trainer. Yeah. So that lasts like four days. And right now I haven’t really been going to the gym because I’ve been coming here every day to just kind of make this new thing land well and represent what we try to do. Yeah. You know, I prioritize my family more. I also just go to Chicago more. I wouldn’t even consider going for a holiday in the past. And now I try to go home for birthdays. I prioritize that a little bit more. A cookbook like yours, nothing matters but delicious, usually comes out as a celebratory, usually four or five-year mark of a restaurant, which was Olmstead. You closed the restaurant last year. The book just came out and a lot of what delayed the book was life happening around it. How do you feel about its release now? It was hard for me to even write the book in the first place. I eventually became acquainted and friendly with Joshua David Stein. And I had other avenues to go down. There were big publishers that wanted a great big Olmstead book. They would make it as beautiful as I wanted and as cheffy as I wanted. Yeah. I was basically told it wouldn’t sell but it would look pretty. Sure. As vain and egotistical as I am to have a nice pretty book, I really didn’t want to do something that from the get-go wouldn’t be even attempt to be successful. I’m dyslexic and I have ADHD. It took Josh to literally lay on my couch while I just talked and cooked and would just type as I was doing stuff. Yeah. I wanted it to be accessible. Yes, there’s some Olmstead stuff in there. A lot of the recipes are when I went to rehab the second time because the first time it didn’t really take. There was no getting another shot. I woke up at eight. I walked my dog, got my juice. Right. I made my coffee and I went to the farmer’s market as often as I could to make just enough food for myself that night. I was just accumulating days. So a lot of the recipes in the book are just what I cooked to get to 90 days. Many people would not open a cookbook so honestly with tales of their own addictions and their lows battling alcoholism, let alone shape the recipes and stories within these pages. Why did you want this to be a fundamental of the book which you call a radically honest cookbook? I don’t want bipolar sober chef on my tombstone. I don’t want to be remembered for that. I dedicated 20-25 years to doing this thing. I still love it, but I unraveled. I wanted to be on solid ground again through instructions from my doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists. I had been documenting my time in rehab the first time and then the second time. I have a first-hand 20-30 page document of basically what it was like getting sober that I’ve never really done anything with and I just took a chunk of it out and I decided to put that into the book. I wanted to move on. I’m not afraid of doing the work of getting sober, becoming reliable again. I’m all for that. I just want to set the tone again. Hopefully, I can get back to, okay, Greg’s back to being reliable and talented. The fact that you are willing to put in the work, the fact that you have the opportunity to do so, the fact that you’ve been so honest about it makes me so excited for you to share your five rules for getting your life back on track. Rule One: Tell the Truth In the introduction, you lean into what it was like to go home into Chicago, to having to start lying about what you were doing with your life and how you’re spending your time. Yeah. Your first rule talks about the importance of moving in the other direction. What’s your rule number one? You gotta just tell the truth. At that point, I knew I was a mess and I knew I was a drunk and I was miserable and lonely and sad and suicidal, but no one really knew that. People just saw that I was drinking more. Yeah. I would hide in the employee bathroom and drink. I felt like I was still involved in there and around the people that I liked and admired and so when I went to Chicago, I think my parents just sort of and my family assumed I was stressed and drinking. Eventually, I got a DUI and my father came and picked me up. I jumped out of the moving car. Wow. I’m named after my dad’s brother who got hit by a drunk driver. Yeah. I was so uncomfortable and miserable. Sure. The next day, my sister finds me and she’s like, look, I don’t think this is just run-of-the-mill hereditary alcoholism. I think there’s something else there. I think you should go to the hospital, not just straight to rehab again. That was the first time that I felt hope. I was miserable. I didn’t want to be this way. I knew there was a problem from the get-go and I didn’t want it. That doctor and a team of people were like, you’re on all the wrong medication. Basically, we believe you’re bipolar and we need to put you on all new medication. Yeah. From there, once I was on all the new medication, then I was transferred to a different type of rehab. The property was so big, they didn’t even care if you left to go camping for a couple of days because you weren’t going to go anywhere. There was just thousands of acres. I got to be out in nature while accumulating those first couple of days being sober. With that opening up, there was a woman in my life who really took care of me, who happened to be a nurse. Then, there was also my sister who’s a doctor. Without them, for sure, I would not be here right now. Rule Two: Accept That You Don’t Have All the Answers Going through all of that, having to look inwards sometimes can be a very hard awakening, but it does lead you to accept that you don’t have this, which is your rule number two. My rule number two is to accept that you don’t have all the answers. I am a reliable person when I’m not a drunk. My intentions are good. In the very beginning, you’re like, you just need to be 30 days sober, and then you’ll be able to recalibrate and go back to a beer a day. Eventually, you break down. You go, okay, it’s three months, and then it’s six months, and then it’s a year. It’s a long time before you go, okay, fine. I get it. I won’t be able to drink again. I went to Smart Recovery, Wellbriety, NA, AA. I just wanted to be fixed, and I was willing to do it. Rule Three: Get Professional Help The more you can be honest and open up, some people, how they’re communicating to you is going to click. Once you’ve accepted that you don’t have all the answers and you start listening to other people in your life and build a support system, that’s really important on a personal level. At the end of the day, your rule number three talks about looking to these other types of people for guidance. What’s your third rule? Getting professional help. The people in my life tried their best. Everybody was for me going to AA meetings, for me getting a psychiatrist, but the sadness in me was not going away, though. I didn’t want to exist anymore. It required consistent medical observation. Even when you’re opening up about having a drinking problem o

For many home cooks, Korean food is something they love to eat but feel intimidated to make. In this episode, Ji Hye Kim, the chef, owner, and managing partner of Miss Kim and Little Kim in Ann Arbor, shares her Five Rules How to Make a Delicious Korean Meal at Home. She talks about making the cooking feel approachable without stripping away what makes it special. From building a thoughtful pantry to understanding the role of banchan, the stories behind iconic dishes, and ultimately finding the confidence to make them your own, Ji Hye offers a roadmap that is as practical as it is inspiring. Whether you’re making your first batch of tteokbokki or simply looking to bring new flavors into your kitchen, these are lessons that will stay with you long after dinner is over. I love this episode because it reminds me that learning something new almost always begins with a little uncertainty. Picking up an unfamiliar cuisine asks you to invest your time, your curiosity, and yes, a little money as you stock a new pantry or hunt down ingredients you’ve never used before. But the return on that investment lasts a lifetime. Once you understand the flavors, the techniques, and the stories behind a cuisine, they become part of the way you cook, the way you think, and the way you see the world. Every new dish becomes another connection to another culture, and every meal you make afterward is a little richer because you were willing to take that first step. Five Rules for the Good Life with Ji Hye Kim How to Make a Delicious Korean Meal at Home Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m in Ann Arbor, Michigan, chatting with Ji Hye Kim, who is the chef, owner, and managing partner of Miss Kim and Little Kim. She’s here to share her five rules for how to make a delicious Korean meal at home. She talks about the importance of putting together an essential Korean ingredient pantry, that understanding the essence of a dish elevates what you want to make, and with enough practice, you can make any Korean dish your own. It is a great conversation for anyone who’s wanted to cook more Korean food at home or has been enticed to introduce new flavors to their cooking at large. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Growing Up in Seoul Ji Hye, so nice to meet you all the way from Ann Arbor. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me for the show. I am so excited to be here. Thanks for having me. You were born and raised in Seoul. What are some of the dishes from your childhood that still ground you today? Oh my god, so many because my mom was the best cook in the family and that reputation has not changed even now. Even with your own restaurant? No, absolutely not. I cannot take the title from her. She is still the absolutely the best and she cooked everything from scratch. But what I remember is tteokbokki. It’s the quintessential Korean street food. My mom forbade me from eating it because she called it a delinquent food which made me want it more. Of course. I remember sneaking out milk boxes and trading it with the street vendor and eating it behind my mom’s back and then coming home for a full Korean meal. That really stayed with me because it was the first independent decision I made about the food. I now have three or four different kinds of tteokbokki on rotation at my restaurant at Miss Kim at any given moment. Those original food memories and adventures always stick with you. Yeah. You wound up leaving Seoul and eventually landing in Ann Arbor, getting into the food world through Zingerman’s. Correct. What surprised you the most about the culinary offerings of the Midwest? The amazing array of vegetables. It’s not necessarily the same vegetables that I would have used if I lived in There are enough similarities and it actually pushes you to be more creative. Taking what my mother and my ancestors gave me and adapt that with my neighbor farmer’s beets or Jerusalem artichoke or lots of corn. And that’s actually been really fun marrying that together. You opened up your first restaurant Miss Kim in 2016 in partnership with Zingerman’s. How did you want to bring your two worlds together from what you grew up eating with in Seoul and what you discovered in the farms of the Midwest? I had an office job after graduating. I just found it incredibly not inspiring. Sure. I took a huge pay cut on nothing but a gut feeling. I started working for Zingerman’s and it’s known for Jewish Reuben sandwiches. Yes. What I loved was the cheese I told everybody I got cheese for a living. It really stayed with me because I would meet a Basque cheese maker who had me taste their one cheese that’s made in different season or age different month. Really learn about traditional food making and it started having me really wonder what it would be like if I dug in the same way with Korean food. Really connected with artisans or gave that much thought to the dishes origin story. That’s how I started looking at Korean food more professionally than just a casual eater. From what my parents gave me. From there it slowly morphed into a desire to bring my Korean upbringing and putting roots in Midwestern soil and bring my Korean food to Ann Arbor. There were Korean food in Ann Arbor before. I love that you wanted to bring your approach to Korean food to Ann Arbor both in the restaurant and educating people about their favorite dishes and what goes into it which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules on how to make a delicious Korean meal at home. Yeah. Rule #1: Build a Great Korean Pantry A lot of the times when you get into a new cultures culinary practices you start by trying to substitute what you already have at home with the ingredients that are listed in the recipe. Absolutely. And while you might not want to go out and replace everything it is important that you do get a good foundation which ties directly into your rule number one. You have to rely on a great basic pantry items for Korean food. Those are soy sauces, doenjang which is soy paste, gochujang which is chili paste. Those three sauces are often known as Korean mother sauces. Gochugaru which is chili flakes, sesame seed, and sesame oil. Those are the must-haves that’s difficult to substitute. Once you get kind of used to you can level up and bring in Korean fish sauces or fermented shrimp or fermented plum syrup, perilla oil, perilla seeds. But you need to at least have the basic pantries that will get you through majority of dishes that you want to try if you’re a first-time Korean food maker. Rule #2: Find the Korean Equivalent If you are making Korean food for the first time you could get very intimidated by looking at all these dishes and thinking that you have no reference point. But when you dig down you start to see that many dishes from Korea have similar counterparts in America. Understanding that relationship makes up your rule number two. It’s the details that makes us different but we eat really similarly if you look at the bigger picture. Korean food have kalguksu which means knife cut noodles. Italians have tali-tali which is cut noodles. If you’re really comfortable grilling start with Korean barbecue. If you are comfortable with braising there is galbijjim or whole array of Korean stews that you can go with. Don’t start with 50 heads of napa cabbage and into a gigantic batch of napa kimchi because even if you succeed you still cannot make a whole meal out of just kimchi anyway. Rule #3: Understand the Korean Table When cooking Korean food there are some fundamentals to each of the dish when it comes to flavor and how you approach them. Every culture has this. Korean food has its own unique approach as well which is your rule number three. You have to understand how Korean table works. A typical Korean table would include rice. Some main dishes like galbi which would be a meat-based dish or soups and stews. The most important thing that rounds everything out is an array of banchan. Banchan is often translated as side dish but it’s so much more. So much more. It’s the best. I can just make a meal out of banchan and rice even. Same. Those are oftentimes many different kind of kimchi, many kind of pickle, fried egg or a little fried fish or many different kinds. You cannot just have rice and beef because that’s off balance for a Korean table. You need to have some sort of acidity. Because Korean table is almost set up like choose your own adventure with banchan and has so much faith in the eater. The eater decides I’m going to eat a little rice with the lettuce wrap and the sauce then I’m definitely going to have kimchi because kimchi is a must-have. If you don’t want to make 12 different kind of banchan and a gigantic Korean You just need to remember not to skip acidity and not to skip some fresh crunch. Rule #4: Understand the Dish Knowing the rules of the flavor is one thing but all these dishes take on a deeper meaning when you understand their origins which makes up your rule number four. You have to understand the dish. You have to understand the story behind the dish and how it has evolved. Yeah. That will actually make things more tasty. Yeah. It would make it more tasty for you to understand that K-pop demon hunters didn’t create tteokbokki. Tteokbokki was an existing dish that has a long history but it became a quintessential street food only in the 60s. If you know that there’s more intrigue to the dish and you will understand the soul of the dish better. More practical advice. You have the recipe. It’s not something you cooked before. Read it from top to bottom at least once. You follow the recipe just as it’s written at least once before you start going off of fusioning and I think that would be a good starting point. Rule #5: Put Your Own Stamp on It Once you follow the recipe a couple of times, really following it to a T

This week I’m joined by Breanne Kostyk, the co-owner and head baker of Flour Moon Bagels in New Orleans, to talk about her Five Rules for Making Sandwiches. From choosing great bread and never settling for a dry sandwich to building texture, height, and balance into every bite, Breanne breaks down what separates a forgettable lunch from one you’ll think about for the rest of the day. Whether you’re packing a picnic, heading to the beach, or just making lunch at home, this conversation is a reminder that even the simplest foods deserve care and attention. I’ve always believed there’s an art to making a great sandwich. It isn’t just about stacking ingredients between two slices of bread—it’s about creating something that feels complete. Every choice matters: the bread, the crunch, the sauce, the balance of salt, acid, fat, and freshness. A great sandwich can be comforting, nostalgic, and deeply satisfying all at once. Breanne approaches sandwiches with the same level of craft that a chef brings to a composed plate, and I love that philosophy. It reminds us that everyday cooking is full of opportunities to make something thoughtful, generous, and memorable. Introduction Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m down in the Big Easy talking shop with Breanne Kostyk, the co-owner and head baker of Flour Moon Bagels. She shares her five rules for making sandwiches. She talks about the importance of choosing good quality bread, how there is nothing worse than a dry sandwich, and that by building for height and balancing flavors, you’ll be able to craft the perfect sandwich anytime you step into the kitchen. It’s a great conversation for the summertime. If you’re packing a picnic or out on the road and you want to bring your own food, there is nothing better than a homemade sandwich. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Breanne, it is so nice to meet you. Thank you for taking some time out of your busy baking schedule. Welcome to Five Rules. Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Darin. I’m really excited to be here with you. There is something so personal about a sandwich. Why does almost everyone have such a deep relationship with them? Sandwiches are so nostalgic. They’re the first thing your mom packs in your lunchbox going to school, your summer vacations on the beach, and just having a sandwich packed in the cooler for you after a day of swimming. What I love about sandwiches is it’s everything within the bread. It’s the whole meal in one handheld bite. New York is arguably America’s launching point for bagels and the bagel sandwich. What makes this form of bread such a perfect delivery system for a sando? A bagel has that crunchy exterior and the chewiness is really something you can sink your teeth into, which is really satisfying. You can fill it with anything. Any possibilities—not just cream cheese and salmon—but we really take it to that lunch sandwich that you would like. When you started Flour Moon Bagels in New Orleans, why did you want to bring the New York-inspired style to the city? I grew up in Connecticut, I went to school in New York, and I ended up moving south after the recession. I’ve been there. I ended up in the South, so I really missed that bagel that I used to get right down the street from my campus. I had been a fine dining pastry chef for ten years prior to starting Flour Moon Bagels. I worked for the Ace Hotel in New Orleans. There, I started experimenting with bagel recipes. Over the years, that recipe evolved. I just wanted to keep on improving it. We had so many visitors from out of town, specifically New York, and they were just surprised that this hotel bagel was actually really good. The fact that you have been able to develop a New York-style bagel that impresses New Yorkers is nothing short of incredible, which makes me so excited for you. That dedication to perfecting that bagel style really shows your dedication to the craft and ties directly into your first rule. Rule #1: Choose Good Quality Bread What’s your rule number one? Rule number one: choose good quality bread. Pick something up from your local bakery. You want something super, super fresh. If you get something just at the grocery store, you don’t know how long ago that was made or how long it’s been sitting on the shelves. I really love nice focaccia, something really hearty, rustic sourdough, bagels, or baguettes. Something that, when you bite into it, bounces back in your mouth. Something also with a nice crumb to it because then it’ll soak up everything—all that flavor in your sandwich. Having great bread is the foundation of a great sandwich, but I can sometimes forgive bad bread and sometimes I can ignore less-than-quality turkey. What I can’t excuse is a dry sandwich, which is a big part of your rule number two. Rule #2: A Sauce Is Mandatory Rule number two: a sauce is mandatory. Full stop. Nobody likes a dry sandwich. Mayonnaise, aioli, mustards, olive oil—there are just so many possibilities that you can add to your sandwich to give it flavor and make it not dry. You can get creative. You can do salsa verdes. I really like jams or mostardas, especially with really salty Italian meat. I think that’s one of my favorite go-to combos. Love it. That’s one of my formulas if I’m running specials: salty meat and something sweet and acidic. I just love that. I would say one to two sauces are great, but once you hit three, your sandwich might get a little too wet. Dry is a shonda. Soggy is a crime because that could have been prevented. You talk about flavors that play off each other—salty and sweet—and this idea of mixing different types of elements in a sandwich is a great way to make a successful one. That brings us to your third rule. Rule #3: Add Texture Rule number three: add textures to your sandwich. You want crunchy, hearty greens. If you’re putting veggies on that sandwich, I recommend slicing them thick so they have a little bit of crunch. I love anything pickled. Just your standard pickle. Pickled hot peppers are really delicious. Then you can also get crunch with bacon. We all are familiar with adding potato chips to a sandwich, which is pretty classic, but you can even think beyond the chips. Maybe it’s crispy shallots. We recently ran a special that was a pork roulade, and we put crunchy chicharrones all crushed up on there. It just adds a little bit extra. Once you’ve landed on the elements you want for your sandwich, understanding how to physically lay everything out is quite the art, which ties directly into your rule number four. Rule #4: Add Height Rule number four: add height to your sandwich. Make it visually appealing. I have this theory that if I’ve eaten too much and I need to digest my food, I scroll Instagram and I look at pictures of food. It makes me think that I’m hungry. You want to fold your meat and stack it so that visually it’s layered higher. Then stack it with some colorful items too. You don’t want just beige on beige. You don’t want just turkey and white cheese. Add vegetables that have color to them. Color and height—you look at that, and that’s really appetizing to me. Once you understand all the fundamentals—the bread, the sauces, the contrasting textures, the layering of the sandwich—you’ve really started to master everything that goes into making the perfect sandwich. Your fifth and final rule deals with something that people actually forget, but this core fundamental is something you should never ignore when making the perfect sandwich. Rule #5: Create a Balance of Flavors What’s your rule number five? Rule number five: create a balance of your flavors. Yes—salt, fat, acid, umami, sometimes heat or sweet, maybe combining the heat and the sweet. A sandwich should really be a vessel to hit all of those notes that you crave and leave you wanting nothing more after you’ve eaten that sandwich. Closing Breanne, thank you so much for sharing your five rules for making sandwiches. If people want to visit Flour Moon Bagels, learn more about what you’re making, or check out what I assume are daily sandwich specials posted to Instagram, where can they go? How can they see what you’re up to? Yeah, you can visit us at @fllourmoonbagels on Instagram. If you’re in New Orleans—I know it’s not a po’boy, it’s not a beignet—but we’ve got some great bagels in New Orleans. If you’re down here, please stop and visit us. Amazing. Well, I can’t wait to swing through New Orleans and grab a bagel the next time I’m in town. All right, thank you. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week I’m joined by Trinity Mouzon Wofford, the co-founder and CEO of Golde and author of Eating at Home: The Nourishing Practice of Everyday Cooking. Trinity shares her Five Rules for Eating Well on a Budget, from rethinking the farmer’s market and building a produce pantry at home, to embracing the bulk aisle, and making meals something to share. It’s a conversation that reminds us that cooking well isn’t about spending more, it’s about paying attention, building habits, and finding joy in the everyday rituals that nourish both ourselves and the people around us. I’ve believed for a long time that money isn’t the best measure of abundance in the kitchen. Some of the most memorable meals I’ve ever shared were built from simple ingredients, thoughtful planning, and the desire to make sure everyone left the table feeling cared for. Trinity’s rules reinforce something I’ve come to appreciate over years of cooking and hosting: generosity isn’t about extravagance. It’s about effort, about taking the time to cook for someone else, pulling up another chair, stretching what’s in the pot just a little farther, and discovering that the richest meals are often the ones made with the greatest intention. Introduction Hello and welcome to five rules for the good life I’m your host Darin Bresnitz today I’m joined by Trinity Mouzon Wofford who is the co-founder and CEO of Golde and whose new cookbook eating at home the nourishing practice of everyday cooking is one of my favorite cookbooks of the season she’s here to share her five rules for eating well on a budget she talks about the importance of not side eyeing the farmers market that by building your own produce pantry will allow you to put affordable recipes and that by joining together around the table is not only a way to save money but will enrich your life overall it’s a fantastic conversation for anyone who’s looking to get more out of their dollars at the markets and to also support the local community at the same time so let’s get into the rules here on HRN Trinity it is so nice to meet you thank you for coming to us all the way from hudson valley appreciate you making the time to be on the show thanks darren I’m excited to talk some rules yes you have had a long career as a writer what drew you into the food world specifically I think I’ve always identified romantically as being a writer but the core of a lot of my work has been on the entrepreneurial side building a brand sure the book came about I mean I’ve always been involved in this health and wellness world through Golde and so that edible side of it was there I was pregnant with my first kid I was in the depths of running my business and I wasn’t a professional chef but why did any of that stop you from running your first cookbook it almost did the woman who ended up being my agent I think that I came to her and said I really don’t think it’s a good time but funnily enough I trusted her faith in my vision rather than saying no or diving all the way in I kind of just kept taking the next step and the next step and I wouldn’t say it was a before you know it because the whole thing took four years of course before I knew it there was a book writing your first cookbook Starting your own business getting started as a writer all of the early points of any of those endeavors notoriously do not pay well but that doesn’t mean you have to eat poorly right what do you remember of those early days and those early dishes that you cooked at home from that scrappy time in your life I was in my early 20s when I started my business I co-founded it with my now husband shout out we’re high school sweethearts so it’s been codependent for a really long time we didn’t have a lot of funds to go around I was at this time pulling out forty dollars a week in grocery budget sure I actually found that my dollars went a lot further when I skipped the supermarket and went straight to the union square farm where I could go direct to farmers that also helped to inform a more seasonal way of eating most of the time lunch was rice with a pickled red cabbage on top over and over again like it’s spring so there’s turnips a lot of it was this very simple food that was also deeply comforting deeply nourishing and pretty friendly to a tight budget Just because you’re on a budget doesn’t mean you don’t have to eat well and that you don’t have stories to tell and that is very true in your first book eating at home the nourishing practice of everyday cooking given that it was a multi-year journey to write this and you had your business and your baby there was so much life to fit into this book how did you narrow down the stories and recipes you wanted to share the recipes are all mine and my husband issei’s home recipes beautiful so a lot of it was really issei and I writing down and collecting what our meals were on any given week the sunday pancakes or the lunches which are still usually rice with vegetables the first idea for the book was okay well we’re going to talk about how to eat well according to trinity founder of Golde right the first things that I was coming up with were eat more locally make a ritual of visiting your farmers markets etc and the response that I would get as I started to put those ideas together was this is very nice it’s a process it’s about chiseling the thing out of the stone right yes the response tended to be people are busy yep what can they do that’s a little bit more realistic I knew we were all busy and yet I think that’s really the reason why we need more home cooking than ever yes we are simultaneously living at a time where we’re so aware of meditation and exercise and all of these practices to be more we know that we’re stressed we’re going to therapy yes one of the things that has helped me the most in feeling more grounded in the moment is cooking sitting down to a meal is even grocery shopping with my family in a way that isn’t like let me get this over with Seeing how you practice what you preach when it comes to cooking and living that life I am so excited for you to be sharing your five rules for eating well on a budget just because you don’t have a lot of money to spend doesn’t mean you can’t spend it smartly and support your local community Rule #1: Don’t Side-Eye the Farmer’s Market Which ties into your rule number one rule number one is don’t side eye the farmer’s market I have been on a tear with this when I was talking about the book I would say oh the farmer’s market and it was like oh the farmer’s market your basket your tote bag the farmer’s market trips people up because for the most part they get stuck on the strawberries yes they’re like oh my god 14 a pint I can’t afford to eat here this is ridiculous you’re missing the hard-working produce you’re messing the turnips you’re mixing the rutabagas you’re missing the kale the potatoes that stuff is not on average any more expensive than you’ll find at the supermarket so often we feel like the sky is falling and there’s nothing we can do except vote and pray but like one other thing that you could do hear me out on this is you can find small opportunities to funnel your dollars into more direct localized economies that does not have to mean all of a sudden going full barter it could just mean getting your potatoes from once you start buying this produce you will understand how much you can physically get for the money that you spend so much so that you might get overwhelmed by how much you’re bringing home but having Rule #2: Build a Produce Pantry of Always-There Staples Rule number two is build a produce pantry of always their staples one of the things that freaks people out the most about cooking from scratch is they buy some vegetables and then they open up their fridge and it’s 5 30 pm and everyone’s already hungry and they have no idea what to do with a cauliflower or how to combine it with whatever they’ve got sure you get better at that the more you cook but the secret to accelerating the pace is to just buy the yes there’s a lot of produce whether it’s leafy greens or it’s just things that store really well that are going to be available nearly year-round you can build out a habit of buying them again and again so you can sprinkle in the fun little seasonal things try something new but ideally when you’re opening up the fridge and trying to figure out what to cook you’re not staring down a whole bunch of stuff that you’ve never cooked before this idea of creating a familiar supermarket or pantry within your house does come with practice both in figuring out your preferences in what you eat and what you like to cook once you’ve discovered what works for you heading through this Rule #3: Venture Into the Bulk Aisle Section of any supermarket makes up your rule number three rule number three venture into the bulk aisle this took me a really long time interesting I am a fairly new convert to the bulk aisle most of what you’re paying for and I can say this with confidence because as an entrepreneur in the consumer product space it really is this way most of what you’re paying for when you buy a food product is packaging if you can bypass the cost of somebody siphoning off your almonds into a nice little packet and the cost of the packaging itself you can save a whole lot of money on your grocery bill so what I buy in bulk right now now are popping corn kernels and I make popcorn myself right there with you oh my god you don’t have to spend seven dollars on chips anymore cooking oils vinegars that great machine where they grind the peanut butter for you when you press the button that’s joyful instant whimsy you also organize things into your own jars etc and it makes it a lot neater and easier to have all of your stuff in the cabinet all these separate branded boxes and bag