Five Rules for the Good Life Podcast

Darin Bresnitz
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Food
  • Weekly

The best advice usually comes from someone who learned it by living it. On Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with my favorite people from the culinary community and ask them to share five rules on something they know inside and out. Each episode gets straight to the good stuff: the habits, opinions, and little revelations that come from years of doing the work. Short conversations with plenty to chew on, and something you can bring into your own life at the dinner table and beyond.  The Guests Chefs, restaurateurs, writers, bakers, artists, and the people who make food culture worth caring about. Some you already love; others you’ll be very happy to meet. All have a perspective worth learning from. fiverules.substack.com

  1. 1d ago

    Brian Bornemann's Five Rules for How to Break Out On Your Own

    “Success is just a series of failures. If you didn’t experience failure, you would actually know nothing." ~ Brian Bornemann This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I head to Santa Monica to sit down with Brian Bornemann, chef and owner of Crudo e Nudo and Bar Fortuna. A third-generation Angeleno, Brian shares his Five Rules for How to Break Out On Your Own. He talks about how growing up around his grandfather’s garden and the Pacific Ocean shaped his cooking, and how years of putting his head down and learning prepared him to recognize an opportunity when it arrived. It is a great conversation for anyone thinking about taking that first leap or finding the confidence to take another. One of the things I appreciate most about these conversations is when someone puts words to a feeling I have spent years trying to work through. Brian’s perspective on imposter syndrome- that everyone is living for the first time and bringing their own experiences to the table- was great to hear. Working across television, podcasts, writing, and now documentary film, there is always another room to walk into where I can convince myself that everyone else knows something I don’t. I love his willingness to put that feeling aside and get on with the work, along with his belief that every failure gives you something you can bring into your next attempt. There is a lot of freedom in allowing yourself to learn as you go, and a lot to admire in someone who keeps showing up with enthusiasm for whatever comes next. Photo by Catherine Dzilenski. Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I’m on the west side in Santa Monica, hanging out with Brian Bornemann, who is the owner and chef of Crudo e Nudo and Bar Fortuna. He’s here to share his five rules for how to break out on your own. He talks about the importance of staying ready so you don’t have to get ready, ignoring imposter syndrome, and how success is moving from one failure to another without losing enthusiasm. It’s a great conversation about Brian’s journey from growing up in Santa Monica to owning his own restaurant and bar, and fantastic inspiration for anyone who’s ever wanted to strike out on their own. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Growing Up and Finding His Own Path Brian, so good to see you again. Thank you for the incredible hospitality when we were in last time at Crudo e Nudo. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, man. Such a pleasure to feature you and chat. You are born and bred in Santa Monica. How much of the ethos of local cooking and ingredients inform your upbringing? I started cooking at a young age. I didn’t consider cooking to be a career until much later in life. Third-generation Angeleno here. So I had grandparents who grew up in the city. We were lucky to grow up on lots of land with abundant fruit trees and chickens, plenty of room to garden. Beautiful. My grandfather was an avid gardener and horticulturalist. He’s really the one who imbued in me from a very young age how to just enjoy things at their absolute peak and prime. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I mean, it was just normal to me eating figs or peaches or blackberries or sapotes or passion fruit or guavas the best day when they’re just shining. In learning how to tend to vines, how to grow the best tomatoes, tend the soil, etc. was something that was just part of how I spent my weekends and how I grew up. What I love doing with Crudo and my style of cooking in general is focusing on what is good here and what we are already good at doing. Bringing the food culture back to what we have around us. That really is what drives me and informs me. We grew up with this abundant huge ocean right in front of us and yet no seafood restaurants that would focus on local fish. We have such good ingredients. It’s insane that there isn’t more readily available resources for buying local fish or buying proper ingredients outside of a farmer’s market. That’s really what keeps me going. You cooked in some incredible local restaurants as well. The Tasting Kitchen and Michael’s. Did you always have it in the back of your mind that you wanted to open up your own space? When I started cooking, I really put my head down and intentionally didn’t set any goals. I just want to cook pasta. I just want to learn how to butcher. I did not go into it being, I want to own a restaurant. Sure. When you put your head down and just focus and just try to improve a little bit every day, every week, new opportunities get presented. If you say yes, keep applying yourself well. Eventually it gets to the point where it became obvious to me that there is a gap. If you don’t feel that way, you certainly shouldn’t open a restaurant. I see a different way to do things and I know that I can do them. Opening a restaurant was not a question of like, oh, do I want to do this or not? It was more like, oh, I have to do this. What eventually gave you that confidence, that catalyst to launch the Crudo e Nudo pop-up and eventually the brick-and-mortar? I have always described it as I played a lot of football and rugby growing up and as a running back, sometimes you’ll get the handoff and you’ll be met with a wall of bodies and you can just see this one step here, this hole opens up and then I can just run straight through it. That moment was the pandemic. If you had a lease, you were so focused on just trying to stay alive that nobody was thinking about, oh, let me open another location. I was lucky to not have a lease at that point and have the ability to see a hole of, oh, well, everybody’s doing this takeout food stuff in to-go containers. I was like, man, if I just sliced some fish and put it on the plate and made it beautiful, gave people something totally different from what they were having at the moment, they’ll be rejoiced. I was lucky enough to have a good amount of food media in my corner already from the crudo program that I’ve built at Viale dei Romani. Being aligned with my goals and being from here, if I took that technique that I was now associated with and known for and applied that to a sustainable local product and be like, hey, I’m from here, this is from our ocean, here’s something you already know, look at what we’re able to do in this way that doesn’t exist yet. Everybody was so focused on Japanese fish or the best stuff from New Zealand or bluefin from Spain. There was always this exoticism to fish culture. There was this feeling that fish was better if it came from somewhere else. It’s all kind of happened at the same time that the local Ikejime movement was really taking off. We got timing, we got everybody else tied up, we got this quality of local fish improving to a world-class level. All these things just line up, I get to run through this hole. Being able to identify that opportunity, also being a native son of Santa Monica, along with understanding what it takes to honor the local ingredients, is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for how to break out on your own. Rule One: When You See a Window, Sprint Through It A lot of the times, people are presented with an opportunity but are afraid or not confident enough to take it. Your first rule talks about what to do when that moment presents itself. What’s your rule number one? Rule number one is when you see a window, sprint through it. Windows don’t open up every day, sometimes it takes a major pandemic or something crazy to create that opportunity. What is unfortunate is when folks want to break out on their own or take the risk but aren’t actually willing to grab the ball and run full speed ahead, you’ve got to be able to sprint to the gap because otherwise you’re not going to make it. If you have hesitation, if you keep a foot in the door, if you’re like, well, I’m going to try this over here but I’m really going to keep a couple days a week over here as a backup plan, you’ve got to let go of the backup plan, let go of the safety net. Otherwise, energetically and emotionally, you’re not going to make it happen. Rule Two: Stay Ready So You Don’t Have to Get Ready Being in the restaurant industry for so long, you can probably count on one hand the amount of times that a real opportunity has come your way. Being in this mindset allows you to act when the right moment presents itself. What’s your rule number two? Rule number two is stay ready so you don’t have to get ready. Exactly. I just applied myself daily and weekly to being like, all right, what can I do to get better this week? What can I do better than last week? Not worrying about the people around me or the other cooks or chefs. I want to improve this because this is important to me, whether it was my butchery or my business acumen and understanding of P&Ls and food costing, etc. If you’re coasting, if you’re just, I’m comfortable here, I’m showing up, clocking in, clocking out, you’re not staying ready. No opportunity is going to come if you’re not pushing yourself and trying to improve. And that’s fine. It’s totally okay. It’s not how opportunity is going to strike you. Opportunity is going to strike if you are constantly working to be ready for the opportunity. Luck is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. I think that was Thomas Edison. You create your own luck by working to be ready. Rule Three: Don’t Give a Single Thought to Feelings of Imposter Syndrome Even though the opportunity might come your way, even though the moment is right, you might still feel like you’re not ready to take on that moment because you’re afraid of what other people think. Getting rid of this feeling makes up your rule number three. Rule number three is don’t give a single thought to feelings of imposter syndrome. Toss it. One bea

    Brian Bornemann's Five Rules for How to Break Out On Your Own

  2. Nov 2

    Tatiana Ettensberger's Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant with Your Best Friend

    “A partnership is also so much about having your own little parts of the restaurant that are actually just yours. Then we bring them together in a way that complements each other.” ~ Tatiana Ettensberger This week I sit down with Tatiana Ettensberger, co-founder of Wilde’s in Los Feliz, who shares her Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant with Your Best Friend. As Wilde’s celebrates its first anniversary, Tatiana shares what she and her lifelong BFF and business partner, Natasha Price, have learned about building a business while protecting the relationship that started it. From making time for each other outside of service to encouraging time off and knowing when a secret code word is necessary, her five rules offer a thoughtful, funny, and honest look at working with someone you love. I have always loved the idea of building something with your best friend. Taking all those conversations, shared meals, and late-night plans, then turning them into a place where other people can make their own memories is a pretty incredible thing. What I admire about Tatiana and Natasha is how much thought they have put into making that work, giving their friendship the same care and attention they give Wilde’s. Being able to tell each other where they need help, cheer each other on when they take a night off, and recognize that an equal partnership can look different on either side of the kitchen door takes real trust. Hearing Tatiana talk about how their first year has brought them closer makes me even more excited to see what they build together next. Photo by Kort Havens Introduction Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with Tatiana Ettensberger, who is one of the co-founders of Wilde’s, a Los Feliz restaurant that is celebrating its one-year anniversary. She’s here to share her five rules for opening a restaurant with your best friend. She talks about the importance of making time for each other outside of the restaurant to be each other’s biggest advocates and the outright necessity for having secret code words. It is a great conversation for anyone who is thinking about starting a business with a dear friend in their life or for anyone who’s already done so and is looking for a way to navigate their relationship. When you have a moment, please make sure to rate and subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Tatiana, so good to see you. Congratulations. One year of Wilde’s. Thanks for making time for the show. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited. Friendship, Hospitality, and Building Wilde’s For anyone who’s never worked in a restaurant, how would you describe those relationships that you form with the people you work with? There’s a couple ways that I could think about it. Anytime someone asks me how work is and how owning a restaurant is, the one thing that I’ll always say after a slew of negative things, I’ll try to turn it back around and be like, the best part of it and the reason why I entered it is you’re constantly having fun. That is so much to do with the camaraderie that happens when you work in restaurants together and it bonds everybody together. I think that’s what happens when you’re in any form of service industry. There is a bit of us versus them mentality that comes where you just have to be on the same team. Of course. Through that, you just end up truly becoming family. There’s a reason it’s called, as cheesy as it might be, family meal. Then you also end up spending pretty much all of your time with the same people every day. When you’re working dinner service, you’re spending time with people at the time when people are normally socializing with other friends. It just becomes your entire social life. I’m a huge Survivor fan. I feel like everyone who goes on Survivor, they all become obsessed with each other and are lifelong friends, even though they spend 28 days together. It’s because you’re going through intense adrenaline-filled nights, night after night. When you met your longtime friend first, business partner second, Natasha Price, did you immediately think we’re going to open up a restaurant together or did that come later? That is such a funny question because I was one and she was two. I don’t know if my brain even had real thoughts at that point. As we grew up, we spent every single day together. We came up with a lot of different things we were going to do with the rest of our lives. I love that. We were playing with Polly Pockets and every day they had a different story. I’m sure in there, they were owning restaurants for sure. Natasha was the one who knew from the jump that she was going to be a chef. We both found ourselves in New York a little bit later when we were in our early 20s. She was the CDC at Mina’s. I just started serving at these pop-ups that they were doing at MoMA PS1. That was our first time doing something together in service. It was just really fun. So cool. I was doing all sorts of other stuff and doing marketing. It wasn’t until I had this quarter-life crisis when we were both back in LA and she was also having a quarter-life crisis. She was private chefing and she missed the really wonderful creative elements that happen when you’re working in restaurants, also the camaraderie of working in restaurants. Of course. Mine was a bit of a bigger crisis because I was like, I don’t have a passion in this life and what am I going to do for the rest of my life? She was the one who was like, you are obsessed with natural wine and you host dinner parties every weekend. Maybe that’s your passion is hosting, eating good food and drinking good wine. I was like, oh, I guess I could do something with this. We started a supper club with two of our other friends, which was just out of her house in Highland Park. Even then it was still like, Natasha is going to open a restaurant one day. And I’m going to sit at the bar. I would ask questions. Am I going to get free stuff when I come to your restaurant? And then my career in wine and hospitality just started moving further and further along. Once I started managing at Cafe Triste, it became really clear that this was my life purpose too. Incredible. So then I was just lucky that there was a built-in best friend who was also this incredible chef. I love that. You’re celebrating one year of Wilde’s. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you so much. How has your working relationship with Natasha evolved? It’s not even like an evolution. It was a birth of it, which I think is something that we didn’t really think about going into this. So many people say, don’t enter a business with your partner. We’re like, oh, we’re not partners. We’re best friends. It’s fine. The reality is we had never really worked with one another. Interesting. It was a crash course in a lot of ways. Now I would say our relationship has never been closer. It’s incredible. And it feels more like a marriage than anything else. I was actually looking over my five rules earlier this morning and I was like, I feel like I just wrote how to be in a marriage. Not that I know what that’s like. She does, and it feels we’re closer to that than anything else. But that’s not to say there weren’t road bumps along the way, which I think is why I chose this to be the five rules. Because I think it is probably the growth of Wilde’s that I feel proudest of in a lot of ways. The fact that you’ve been able to have this lifelong friendship and then not just make both of your dreams come true, but to have them come true together is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for opening a restaurant with your best friend. Rule One: Schedule Monthly Dates That Have Nothing to Do with the Restaurant For anyone who’s ever worked with a close friend, seeing each other every day is not always the same as spending time with each other and makes up your rule number one. Rule number one is to schedule monthly dates that have absolutely nothing to do with the restaurant. That’s so cool. Disclaimer. I don’t know if we follow this rule perfectly every month. It’s an idealistic rule. It’s the goal. Maybe it’s not even a monthly date. Maybe it’s one cigarette break where we’re like, okay, this time we’re not talking about anything having to do with the restaurant. It’s about carving out that time we spend every second together. We spend more time with each other than we do with our families, with our partners. There was a time where we would look at each other and be like, I have no idea what’s going on in your life. Part of that was that there was nothing else going on in our lives. At the beginning when heads were so underwater and all we were doing was this restaurant, when we would try to carve out time, there was honestly nothing else to talk about because all we did was breathe and sleep Wilde’s. Which you have to do. Yeah, totally. It was a rule that we had from before we opened the restaurant. Obviously, you don’t want to lose yourself in your business, but we also really didn’t want to lose each other in our business. Rule Two: Be Each Other’s Biggest Advocate for Time Off and Time Away Making that space for each other, respecting each other is so important to your relationship. Protecting that relationship with other people outside of it is equally important and makes up your rule number two. Number two is to be the other’s biggest advocate for time off and time away. This one I really learned from Natasha and learned by her example. It took months before either of us were out of service. The stakes of what we can do that for were really high at the beginning. Now we’re starting to get a little calmer about it. I took a night off to go see Robin. That’s something I never would have thought about doing in a million years a yea

    Tatiana Ettensberger's Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant with Your Best Friend

  3. Oct 26

    Eric Bach's Five Rules for How to Build a World, Not Just a Product

    “Young people are drinking, but they’re being very particular about what they’re drinking.” ~ Eric Bach A Note About The Terroirist Before we get into this week’s episode, a big thank you to everyone who showed up for the Santa Cruz Film Festival and the Green Film Festival of San Francisco for the world premiere of our documentary, The Terroirist. We were absolutely honored to take home the Morton Marcus Award for Best Documentary Feature at the Santa Cruz Film Festival and are looking forward to taking the movie on the road to Austin, New York, LA, Minneapolis, and Fairhope, Alabama over the next few weeks. And if you can’t make it to any of the screenings, it will be available on streaming platforms on November 13th. What makes someone buy into a world instead of just buying a product? This week, I sit down with Eric Bach, co-founder of Good Boy Wine, to talk about his Five Rules for How to Build a World, Not Just a Product. Through their wines and annual Good Boy and Friends festival, Eric and his partners bring together food, music, art, and a community that shares their curiosity. We get into trusting your taste before everyone else agrees, knowing what to leave out, and creating experiences that give people a reason to show up. It’s a great conversation for anyone trying to turn their interests into something bigger—and figure out how to keep the magic intact as it grows. I’ve always been drawn to world-building. From making television to throwing events to putting together this show, I love finding ways to bring the people, food, music, and ideas I care about into the same space. That’s what I love about what Eric and his partners have built at Good Boy. You can feel their taste running through everything, and spending a day at Good Boy and Friends, I got to experience how all those pieces come together. There’s great wine in your glass, something you want to eat, music you want to hear, and people you’re happy to spend the afternoon with. It’s a world they clearly want to live in, and they’ve made it easy for the rest of us to want to join them. Introduction Now on to this week’s episode. Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with Eric Bach, the co-founder of Good Boy Wine, whose annual festival, Good Boy and Friends, is LA’s preeminent wine, music, and food gathering. He’s here to share his five rules for how to build a world, not just a product. He talks about the importance of trusting your taste for mainstream consensus, how to make curation a part of your daily routine, and that by creating participation, not just consumption, will lead to a larger world. It is a great conversation for anyone who’s ever wanted to build anything and for those who want people to buy in to what they’ve built. Please take a moment to subscribe and rate this podcast wherever you listen. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Young People, Wine, and Finding Community Eric, so good to see you. Thanks again for sorting me at the festival. I had an absolute blast. Five years, congratulations. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It’s good to be here. I hope you had a good time at the fest. There are endless articles about how young people are not drinking, but anyone who attended the latest iteration of your festival, Good Boy and Friends, saw that this is not the full story. What do you think the media is missing about young people in wine? That’s our whole mission, get young people drinking again. Someone needed to do it. Yeah. Young people are drinking, but they’re being very particular about what they’re drinking. They are wanting to do it in social settings. COVID really amplified, obviously, everyone working from home. People are looking for ways to participate and feel connected, feel part of the community. At the same time, they care about what they’re putting in their body. We take that into account as we’re putting this little festival together. Wine as a Vehicle for Culture That social aspect really came through. What I enjoyed about the event was how it blended all these different aspects of art, music, and food. Where do you see wine sitting within culture at large? I can’t really separate my passions from my work. They’re seamlessly integrated. I view wine, especially naturally produced wine, as part of everything you’re doing. Whether you’re going to an art show, you’re going to a concert, you have a glass in your hand. Wine is a vehicle for the things that we like to experience. For me, it’s an excuse to create more of this world around it. I love the fact that Good Boy is driven by great wine design and also community that seems to be at the center of everything you do. Why is that focus such an important North Star for you? It’s honestly building this world that I want to exist in. Take this in Los Angeles in little pockets. There’s these micro communities. I wanted to be able to create it at a larger scale and bring all of these things together. I’m an art collector, wine, food, music, dogs, all these things. I look at it as a direct expression of my interests. I feel like if it’s something that I’m interested in, there are other people out there that would also like to experience that. Rule Number One: Build a World That You Want to Exist In Having that vision, being able to stick to what you like as a guiding principle, while keeping in mind that you are creating something for a group of people at large is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for how to build a world, not just a product. Today, it’s so easy just to say, I’m selling you something. I just need you to buy it. But very little time do you get people to buy in to the larger idea of what you’re trying to create, which ties directly into your rule number one. The number one rule is build a world that you want to exist in. The things that I’m really obsessed with, wine, food, art, music, etc. It’s the things that make my work interesting. I can’t help but integrate them into what I do. I think a lot of people separate their work from their passion. It happens a lot. I can’t do that. It all is one thing. We only have one life to live. So why wouldn’t you express what you’re passionate about through what you’re working on? Rule Number Two: Trust Your Taste Before Consensus Being passionate about not just what you’re working on, but what you like, I think has gotten harder over the years. There’s so many different inputs of what people are into and what trends are going in which direction. It’s easy to get distracted from what you feel in your core is something that you really believe in. Your rule number two talks about following your own path before many others. What’s your second rule? The second rule is trust your taste for consensus. I love that. Everyone knows the general consensus out there. But I think if you’ve spent years really developing your taste and paying attention, you have to learn how to trust your own read before there’s proof that everyone else agrees. That comes with time. It comes with age. It comes with making mistakes. A lot of mistakes. Doing all of these things that eventually, hopefully you’ve had enough successes, even if they’re small, to where you’re like, okay, I can trust myself a little bit. Rule Number Three: Curate Relentlessly Being able to trust yourself really does mean not resting on your laurels. That can apply to business and growth. But I also think it applies to inspiration, getting out in the world and finding more stuff that you like, especially as what you like evolves with age. Your third rule talks about the idea of taking those inspirations and making them work for your world. What’s your rule number three? Rule number three is to curate relentlessly. I think it’s important to not only know what you like, but what you don’t like and what to say no to. I’ve had to do that my whole career through my agency at Space and Time. We know our values and if it doesn’t feel core to our values, then we say no to it. The same goes when we’re curating a festival, whether it’s a musician, a food vendor, wine vendor, et cetera. Your taste isn’t just what you like, but it’s also what you’re willing to leave out. Rule Number Four: Create Participation, Not Just Consumption Being able to say no to things is such a lost art. And in a world where people want you to always agree with them, where you feel the pressure to, it can be isolating at times. If you are pushing this idea that you want people to be a part of what you built, it creates a flow both ways, which makes up your rule number four. Create participation, not just consumption. I build a much stronger relationships when I am experiencing things and participating in things rather than simply buying. Thinking about, Good Boy, what you’re doing as far as an experience goes, when you have a glass of wine. What’s in the glass is important, but what you’re doing is equally as important. And I wanted to build a brand and a world around that, not just the wine. Rule Number Five: Protect the Magic With Structure Building the framework for this world is extremely important. That doesn’t mean that you’re being conservative or everything’s this binary choice. Once you know the boundaries of what you want to make, what you put inside of it becomes really freeing. Your fifth and final rule talks about protecting what’s inside this box. What’s your rule number five? Rule number five, and this can often be the hardest one for creatives, is protect the magic with structure. A lot of chaos, creative chaos can work when it’s really tiny, it’s small, it’s just getting going. Once it grows, if you still have a lack of systems, it can really start destroying the creativity. That’s something we’ve had to learn the hard way on many occ

    Eric Bach's Five Rules for How to Build a World, Not Just a Product

  4. Oct 19

    Jason Hall’s Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant Anywhere in the World

    “Experience the local hospitality scene. You’ve earned it. It’s one of the biggest privileges of international travel. It’s that thing that will get your light bulb to go off.” ~ Jason Hall Opening a restaurant is hard enough when you live around the corner. So what happens when it’s halfway around the world? This week, Jason Hall, Vice President of Culinary at Tao Group and Executive Chef of Cathédrale, joins me to share his Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant Anywhere in the World. We talk about building a team you can trust, doing the work before you board the plane, and understanding the neighborhood before you move into it. There’s also tennis, late-night marketing calls, and a dessert in Rome that found its way onto a menu in New York. A great conversation about what it takes to bring hospitality across borders without losing your footing along the way. Having spent plenty of time traveling for work in the culinary world, I know how quickly the excitement of a new city can turn into another airport, another meeting, and a very confused sleep schedule. What I love about Jason’s approach is that he makes room for the things that keep him feeling like himself, even when everything around him changes. Pack the tennis racket, find a yoga studio, and make time to sit down at someone else’s restaurant and let them take care of you. We’re lucky to work in a world that gives us so many opportunities to eat, explore, and meet people. Finding that balance helps you actually enjoy the life you’re working so hard to build. Photo by Justin Levy Introduction Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. This week, we grab our passports and travel the globe with Jason Hall, the Vice President of Culinary at the Tao Group and Executive Chef of Cathedral. He’s here to share his five rules for opening a restaurant anywhere in the world. He talks about the importance of making sure that your house is in order and that no matter where you are or what you’re doing, you need to maintain your routine. It is a great conversation for anyone who’s ever wanted to open a business or a restaurant not in their backyard and to understand what it takes to work with an international team of professionals. Please take a moment to rate and subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen. So let’s get into the rules here on HRN. Bringing Food and Entertainment Together Jason, so nice to meet you. Thank you for making the time, especially with your cross-globe travels. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Great to be here. So many people have tried to pair entertainment with food and usually fall short on elevating the cuisine. How are you within the Tao Group able to keep these two disciplines on the same level? One of the things at Tao Group, we have a very deep team in each department when it comes to design, when it comes to service, when it comes to culinary, when it comes to marketing. The secret sauce for us is making sure those elements are consistent across the board. When you have alignment through the vertical and you’re developing a concept, that’s how you can bring that energy to life. Being able to bring this to life has really been prevalent in America’s approach to using restaurants as a night out, not just as a stop on a way to a club, but really mixing the two together. Have you found this to be similar all over the world or is America just catching up? It depends on the place. I think in the major markets, you really have that connection of restaurant and nightlife. Of course, in New York, all roads are paved through Tao with that, right? They painted the picture of having a really high energy dinner, then leaving your table and walking through the door into the nightclub. That’s a very New York thing to do. In the smaller cities, they’re catching up. The Nashvilles, the Houstons, the Scottsdales, they haven’t quite got there. In the major cities, yes, that culture exists. Creating a Feeling Across Cultures Being able to visit and work across so many different cultures and cities, how many different parts of the globe are influencing each other or is they isolated and only swapping a few ideas? I’m pretty privileged with my position with the Tao Group, so I’ve been able to hit a lot of those markets. It really depends on the place and the people. If you’re entering that market or you’re going there to do a takeover and you’re very authentic and you deliver to those people to that place, then those things come together. Hospitality is all about for us is that we’re creating a feeling and the guests really remember that feeling. Sometimes, it’s not so much about who the DJ was, what was on the plate or what was in the glass. It’s the energy and the feeling and the emotion created in the night. Rule Number One: Make Sure Your House Is in Order Being able to tap into that energy, that emotion, really that feeling and keeping it consistent across all of the restaurants you work in across the globe makes me very excited for you to share your five rules for opening a restaurant anywhere in the world. I can only imagine what your calendar looks like with your travel and the details and the meetings and being on the line and being in the restaurant. Just the idea of trying to stay organized has got to be a full-time job and this makes up your rule number one. Rule number one, make sure your house is in order. There is no worse feeling than traveling across the globe and not having the businesses that you have open functioning at a really high level. That’s more important than the travel, just making sure my teams are very strong, making sure the guests have a great experience in the restaurants that we have open. That allows you to leave with confidence and focus on what you have to do. Having the team to carry the business forward while you’re away is the first rule. If it’s a mess, you can’t go. Rule Number Two: Do the Work Before You Travel Being able to have that trust, being able to know that you’re being supported in the different aspects of what it takes to oversee all these different properties before you hit the road and this makes up your rule number two. Number two is do the work before you travel. It’s kind of like a bop training for a big fight. The fight is won in the gym and that’s kind of our mentality. There is a tremendous amount of nitty-gritty stuff that people don’t see leading up to a big international opening. 100%. There’s organizing talent, there’s procurement, there’s recipes. One thing that we pride ourselves on is that we have the same systems in each of the restaurants anywhere in the globe. You could walk into Lavo Singapore and they’re expediting the same way as Tao Down Town, as Sakinohana, as Cathedral. Oh, that’s amazing. You can just jump in, you can see the timing on the tickets and you can know if they’re in the s***s or things are good and I can just observe. It’s really systems and organization heading into it. Rule Number Three: Do Your Research Being organized so that you can run the line is one thing. Being organized so that you can understand the local culture is quite another. People drop into different cities and parts of the globe and just say, I’m going to bring in what I know, I don’t need to learn anything about the city, which usually leads to their detriment and is a big part of your rule number three. Rule number three is do your research. 100%. It’s crazy to me that people travel without doing research. The goal isn’t for us to export a brand. It’s to create an experience that respects and celebrates the community we’re entering. Although we have strong points of view in a lot of our brands, we still take the approach that we’re moving in to their neighborhood. We spend a lot of time before an opening, there’s a lot of research of going there, exploring the neighborhoods, exploring the specialty shops and suppliers, finding little ways to incorporate authentic local ingredients and flavor and culture into the concept. And I think that’s really appreciated. Rule Number Four: Maintain Your Routine at All Costs Going to all these different local cities, going across the globe, changing time zones, being on planes, having done that type of work myself, I know how it can affect your health mentally, physically. You just feel like you’re never grounded. Your fourth rule talks about the importance of keeping this to keep you moving forward in the best way possible. What’s your rule number four? Maintain your routine at all costs. All costs. You have to do it. 100%. At all costs. Wear yourself first. Yeah. I always pack my tennis racket. Very easy to get into the suitcase. Let’s get on the court soon, bud. I start to make some calls to some local tennis clubs, and if I can’t make inroads, then the concierge starts to call for me. I love that. But I can usually find a tennis court with somebody to hit with far less money than you’d pay a coach in New York City, so it’s usually at a discount. I’ve been practicing Bikram yoga for over a decade. If I can get into a studio and sweat it out after a long haul trip, it sets the tone and resets your club. I would say as I’ve gotten older, it’s more of a necessity, less of a luxury. Getting your mind right through exercise, even having a coffee in the morning, just making sure that you know that you can put your mind and your body right before you’ve got to go out and face the team. Work doesn’t stop just because you’re away. No. We have a lot of calls and obligations that I’ll be 12 hours away in Singapore on the Ritz Carlton yacht in the Canary Islands, and I’m taking calls. As one does. I’m taking marketing phone calls at 12.30 in the morning to make sure I’m on it. You got to maintain your routine. Rule Number Five: Experience the Local Hospitality Scene Having t

    Jason Hall’s Five Rules for Opening a Restaurant Anywhere in the World

  5. Oct 12

    Josh Loeb's Five Rules for Longevity in Restaurants

    “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

    Josh Loeb's Five Rules for Longevity in Restaurants

  6. Oct 5

    Liz Alpern's Five Rules for Nourishing a Crowd with Soup

    “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

    Liz Alpern's Five Rules for Nourishing a Crowd with Soup

  7. Sep 28

    Julia Sherman's Five Rules for Making a Better Salad

    “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

    Julia Sherman's Five Rules for Making a Better Salad

  8. Sep 21

    Dale Talde's Five Rules for Staying in the Game

    “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

    Dale Talde's Five Rules for Staying in the Game
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About

The best advice usually comes from someone who learned it by living it. On Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with my favorite people from the culinary community and ask them to share five rules on something they know inside and out. Each episode gets straight to the good stuff: the habits, opinions, and little revelations that come from years of doing the work. Short conversations with plenty to chew on, and something you can bring into your own life at the dinner table and beyond.  The Guests Chefs, restaurateurs, writers, bakers, artists, and the people who make food culture worth caring about. Some you already love; others you’ll be very happy to meet. All have a perspective worth learning from. fiverules.substack.com

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