Five rules for the good life and other tips for living well as told by those who made it their business to do so. <br><br><a href="https://fiverules.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast" target="_blank">fiverules.substack.com</a>
Five Rules for the Good Life Podcast
Claim This Podcastby Darin Bresnitz
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Five rules for the good life and other tips for living well as told by those who made it their business to do so. <br><br><a href="https://fiverules.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast" target="_blank">fiverules.substack.com</a>
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Recent Episodes
July 27, 2026
Greg Baxtrom
Greg's Five Rules for Getting Your Life Back on TrackGreg 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.IntroductionHello 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.OpeningCongratulations 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 TruthIn 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 AnswersGoing 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 HelpThe 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 or being a little depressed, I don’t want my parents to know that. Sure. But once there was a medical team, many doctors and psychiatrists and therapy, those feelings go away. What sucks is that even after being sober for three years and medicated, I don’t really keep track of that.I think it’s going on six years now. Not that long ago, I had to go back to the hospital for having some pretty dark thoughts, and I was in the hospital for two weeks. I’m sorry.Rule Four: Build a RoutineThere’s a little bit of rolling with the punches even when you get the professional help. A lot of the times when you’re staring down big life changes, knowing that everything is going to be different, it can be overwhelming, but your rule number four talks about how gradual steps make the biggest changes. What’s your fourth rule? Building a routine. One is just waking up around the same time, having good hygiene, brushing your teeth, taking a shower, making a coffee. For me, I would go to the farmer’s market or go to the grocery store, and I would buy enough just for the day so that way I had something to do the next day. I signed back up for guitar lessons. I could still only play like two songs. Really tried to invest in myself. After I had accumulated 90 days of sobriety, then it was about building a routine so that way the people in my life saw that I wasn’t fragile because everybody is thinking you’re very fragile.Sure. Half the people in my life are like, you’re going to need to change careers. How will you go into a restaurant that you own or that you work at that has liquor on a shelf? New approaches, new routines. You’re just talking to the wrong person if you’re saying just change professions. It is a non-negotiable. I remember I did a commercial with Gordon Ramsay, and it was nine o’clock in the morning, and I was drinking cooking brandy in the basement to take the edge off. The routine part of it at the restaurant was that if I was in the basement, in that area where the brandy was, that people didn’t need to start looking at the cameras or send somebody over there. Of course. I just needed to be present.Maybe I didn’t need to do 14-hour days right away, just being reliable for four hours or five hours. I do have the benefit of I own the restaurant. Plus, we were in COVID, so we were selling barbecue in the backyard while running a soup kitchen on one side, while running a high-end bakery on the other side, while doing a pop-up for black chefs across the street. When I was a drunk, I liked duck, and I would butcher the duck. I started to become the guy where I would tell the team, I got the duck today, and I would take it out. Then I would just vanish, or I’d be in the bathroom, and then they would have to butcher it, or they would go put it away or something.The routine was just if I said I was going to do something, I did it. Even if it was one thing, if it was mop the floor or clean up the garden or something, if I said I was going to do something, I had to do it. You’ve been so honest about your journey, the time it’s taken, 30 days, 90 days, years.Rule Five: Be Patient With YourselfYour fifth and final rule really does talk about being kind to yourself and allowing for this. What’s your rule number five? You got to be patient with yourself, with how people act around you. Fortunately, people gave me a lot of grace. Beautiful. My staff didn’t really leave. I had one guy that worked for me for six years. He had to help carry me out of the office and sneak me out the back door. He didn’t move on until everything was set, and I was good. Wow. I owe that guy everything, and he just helped consult with some drinks we were doing here. There are definitely some bridges burned, and I’ve tried to make attempts at rectifying the ones that I’m aware about, or the ones I have access to. Some people are there for it, and some people could care less. Yeah. I remember I was over a year sober, and I was on Channel 9 News for the Super Bowl. I posted that I was on it.You know, the first comment is like, oh, this guy’s still slurring his words. He must still be a drunk. Huh. That sucked. I can only imagine. Maybe that guy moved to New York to work for me, and when I got there, I was a drunk. He didn’t like his experience. I was a disappointment. Right. What’s important to me is that I’m dependable and reliable. I try to be a nice guy. I’m not always. In my position, I would rather be dependable for everybody that they can rely on me, and that’s what I work on. Greg, deeply appreciate you sharing so much about your life. The book, Nothing Matters But Delicious, is out now.ClosingIf people want to get it, if people want to check out Five Acres, if people want to see what you have going on, where can they go? If you come to Five Acres, and you buy the book, it comes with a little spice jar, so that’s fancy. You can order it through Kitchen Arts and Letters or Amazon or a bunch of publishers. I know Barnes and Nobles is carrying it. It’s on our website. There’s links there if that helps. Thanks so much for taking the time. Thanks so much for sharing so much. I can’t wait to swing back into New York and pop up to Rockefeller Center. Let me know. Give me a heads up. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
July 20, 2026
Ji Hye Kim
Ji Hye's Five Rules for How to Make a Delicious Korean Meal at HomeFor 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 KimHow to Make a Delicious Korean Meal at HomeHello 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 SeoulJi 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 PantryA 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 EquivalentIf 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 TableWhen 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 DishKnowing 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 ItOnce you follow the recipe a couple of times, really following it to a T, you can really start to see how you can add variations and how to make it your own.Your fifth and final rule talks about how getting to know a dish really well allows you to adjust for your personal preferences.What’s your rule number five?My rule number five is that once you understood the essence of the dish and you know what the current state of the dish is or how it’s traditionally done, put your own stamp on it.That’s how it has been in Korea by my ancestors too.I use the example of tteokbokki over and over.It used to be a soy sauce based dish with lots of different ingredients.It was a fancy dish from 18th century and then it evolves to become the cheapest and most quintessential street food with gochujang and sweet and spicy flavor only after 1960s.Food in Korea doesn’t stay static so you don’t have to feel obligated to keep it static.What’s more important is that you embrace the recipes, really love it, and then put it in your daily rotation and actually cook and enjoy it.It’s not supposed to be dissertation on history.Food should be enjoyed.There’s over 200 types of documented kimchi in Korea.Incredible.We don’t know what aunties are doing in the countryside.There have been said there are as many types of kimchi as there are mothers in Korea, right?It’s because those mothers are using what’s available in season, what’s available locally, and making that into kimchi.The bibimbap that you get in a seaside town will be different than the bibimbap you get in a mountainside town.So whether you’re in Michigan or Minnesota or California, you are doing what my ancestors have done.If you go to a local farmer’s market, use vegetables in season, then put in your own refund.You have earned it because you’ve understood the essence of dish from point number four.ClosingJi Hye, congratulations on everything.If people want to visit Miss Kim or follow along with what you’re cooking, where can they go?You can find us on Instagram, MissKimAnnArbor, or on the website, MissKimAnnArbor.com.Come on by in Kerrytown area in Ann Arbor if you’re here for U of M football or just to visit Ann Arbor.I would love to feed you.I can’t think of a better fall than some football and some snacks from you.Swing by, say hello, we’ll eat some Korean fried chicken and drink some soju. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
July 13, 2026
Breanne Kostyk
Breanne's Five Rules for Making SandwichesThis 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.IntroductionHello, 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 BreadWhat’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 MandatoryRule 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 TextureRule 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 HeightRule 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 FlavorsWhat’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.ClosingBreanne, 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.
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