Five Rules for the Good Life Podcast

About Five Rules for the Good Life Podcast

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 (https://fiverules.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Darin Bresnitz

Category

arts · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

28 Apr 2025

Latest episode

12 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

75 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   12 Oct 2026

   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 LoebTwenty 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 NoteBefore 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.IntroductionHello 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 CanyonIt 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 QualityFor 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 FunKnowing 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 in cooking.It’s just a place that you want to be. Yes. It’s a fine line.You want it to be fun, but you don’t want it to be exclusive. Sometimes you’ll walk into a place and they’re having fun, but they’re kind of annoyed to see you, or it’s an inside joke. You want it to be genuine.We are here for these five hours. We’re all about this experience, the ecosystem of the guests and each other. We’re enjoying working with each other.And we’re also enjoying sharing that joy with you. Keeping it fun is a really important part of it.Rule Three: Craft Is Really ImportantGetting people to go out these days when they think about, is it worth it, is a big part of what it means to be running a restaurant and to keeping the doors open.Your third rule talks about what you’re offering the guests, even though they might be able to cook a chicken at home, they can’t do it at this level. What’s your rule number three?My rule number three is craft is really important. A lot of our places, you want people to come in and be like, I can do this at home, but why is it so good? What are you doing to this burger? That comes through craft. Yeah.One of the most amazing things that Jeremy did early in his tenure at Rustic for a couple of weeks, they’re like, let’s not change the menu. Yeah.Let’s go to all of our core components. Our aioli, our stocks, the basis for everything. Let’s make sure everything is the best version of itself.Then that’s going to go build on itself. You can taste it. Yes.The reason you can’t do it at home often is because you’re using a mayo and we made an aioli. It’s the best aioli ever. The stock that we’re simmering this in was cooked over 20 hours. Yeah.So it still feels like a simple dish. I have respect for people who cook complicated food. I’m not interested in eating it on a regular basis. Same. I want a great roast chicken.I want a beautiful steak. I want awesome braised greens or amazing seafood stew where each component is thought about and craft is the difference between a restaurant that’s just phoning it in or doesn’t have the layer of training skill in it. And one that has a kitchen full of cooks who are really learning and are led by somebody who’s a master in their own craft.Rule Four: Have Each Others BacksHaving that trust, having that ability to say, I want to make this stock 1% better, being able to communicate each other and know that everyone’s working toward the same goal is what allows you to keep pushing. To have that trust makes it be rule number four.My rule number four is to have each other’s backs.One of the core components of restaurants is that it’s hard. It’s a daily thing. Yeah.In my own career chain, I still have my hands in the restaurants, but I made my first film.Oh, congratulations.Thank you. Thank you.Making a film, there’s so much parallel. The way that crews work together, a lot of the skill sets and the type of people that work in film and the type of people that work in restaurants, there’s a lot of parallel.The difference is once you make your film, it’s done. Yes.Then it can live on and doesn’t have to be redone on a daily basis.In a restaurant, you redo everything on a daily basis. Yeah. So it doesn’t really matter if for 20 years you’ve been doing it well.If we start cutting corners tomorrow at Rustic, within two weeks, we’re going to have upset enough diners that they’re going to start talking about it to everyone else. We are going to have lost all the credibility and the goodwill that we’ve had.You’ve got to have each other’s backs as a combination of be there for each other because it’s an emotionally draining and challenging environment to work in.But also the best kind of restaurants and the best kind of kitchens are where people also hold each other accountable. Because we all have our days, right? Where you’re like, I’m just going to do this. Nobody’s going to notice. I can’t do this.But if everybody is looking after each other and be like, no, that’s not actually how we do this here. You know that.I know it sucks, but let’s do it again. Yes.Zoe was really great with that in the beginning of Huckleberry.Her bakers were awesome and they knew she had their backs. But when a tray of scones came out and they weren’t right, she would literally just take them and throw them in the trash can. Yeah.Sometimes people would get mad, but then they knew, hey, we just don’t serve that.Rule Five: Change Is EssentialHaving those standards, being able to respect each other, the quality of the fun, these are all constants. And being locked into doing things a certain way can be both reassuring, but it could also stunt your growth.Your fifth and final rule talks about the importance of evolution. What’s your rule number five?My rule number five is that change is essential. A restaurant that’s doing the same menu for 20 or 30 years, I got to imagine that there’s a new life that goes into it because otherwise you would feel like getting stale.Yeah, I get it. I love this Bob Dylan quote from a song. You’re either busy being born or you’re busy dying. Yeah.I’ve used that a lot when we’ve talked about planning, talking with managers. Every day, doesn’t matter how great we were yesterday.Every day we have to come in and go, what can we do different today? What can we do better today? Yeah.It might be the way you fold a napkin.It might be the way you change a sauce.The music. There’s something you can do to grow every single day. There’s something you can do to get better every day, to change every day. Yeah.It’s hard for us as human beings, myself at the top of that list. I want to have everything set and then just be like, it’s going to stay the same, right? But the truth is we have to get better.We have to work on that every day. That’s a real big, important part of how we do things.Visit the RestaurantsJosh, congratulations to you, Zoe, the whole team, everyone who’s passed through the front of the house, the back of the house.If people want to visit Rustic or any of the other restaurants, where can they go? How can they see what you’re up to?As far as our physical restaurants, we have Rustic Canyon. We have Huckleberry. We have Milo and Olive and Sweet Rose.Those are all in Santa Monica. And then we have the Dutchess that’s up in Ojai.I can’t wait to come back in. It’s always a special time when I go east side to west side and get to stop in Rustic Canyon.That’s a big journey. It’s almost easier to get up to Ojai sometimes than it is to get here.It is 100% actually easier to go to Ojai, but you make it worth going across town. Thank you again and can’t wait to dine with you one more time.Thanks so much for your time, Darin.I appreciate it. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

2. 

   5 Oct 2026

   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 AlpernLiz 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.IntroductionHello, 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 ActivismThere 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 EatingFor 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 FlairWhen 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 PercentWhen 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 okay if one customer walked away unhappy, as long as you did what you could.Rule Four: Channel Your Inner Virgo and Make Your ListsWhen you’re cooking for others, you have to also take care of yourself. Part of that is being okay with someone not liking your soup, but also it’s taking care of yourself when you’re making the soup, which makes up your rule number four.Rule number four, channel your inner Virgo. That’s me. I’m a Virgo. And make your lists.Love it.If you’re a person who cooks professionally, if you’re a person who produces events professionally, you are already making lists. You know this.100%.In my world, there’s a lot of people who really want to gather people, and it’s not necessarily as natural to them as they wish it was. I know. These rules build. They don’t live in isolation. If you’re keeping it pretty simple, you know you’re going to have a couple of people that aren’t that happy. You can do this.Yes.As much as we talk about soup in theory and say, a little bit of this, a little bit of that, not everybody can cook that way. When you’re cooking for 300 people, you got to make a list. I’m doing an event on Monday. I just made my prep list, my shopping list. I’m ready to go. That comes pretty naturally to me.Anybody who wants to host and bring people together, it’s good to get practice in that list making planning mindset because it really can prevent you from being overwhelmed later.Rule Five: Stick With What You KnowBeing overwhelmed can happen when you’re cooking for people, especially if you’re out in the world feeding them because they’re protesting. It can really mean a lot to people when you nourish them.Yeah.Your fifth and final rule talks about when you’re bringing people soup on the front lines, it’s okay not to try something new. What’s your rule number five?Rule number five is stick with what you know. I started Queer Soup Night because the things I knew how to do were make a lot of food and throw a party.Hell yeah.Those are the things I knew how to do.Let’s go.They’re kind of still the things that I know how to do.You know how to write a book now.I do. I know how to write a book. It’s my second book, actually. I got a few other skills. That’s how I found myself in the world of Queer Soup Night. The reason it’s been successful is because it was something that I knew how to do.So it was easy for me to ask for help. It was easy for me to grow it, to change it. And I’m not saying it was easy every minute. When you’re starting something new, sticking with something you know allows you to grow that thing that you’re doing further than you thought.Yes.A lot of people love it when they’re having people over for the first time. They’re like, let’s try a new recipe. And I say, if you’re a confident cook, that’s fine. But if you’re not a confident cook, maybe stick with what you know. Same thing with activism.Yeah.If you’re going to make a move, if you’re going to get involved, if you’re going to try and make change, start with what you know.The Book and What’s NextLiz, I love all of this. The book is beautiful. The soup is delicious.Thank you.If people want to pre-order the book and check out your next event, where can they go?You can pre-order our book. It’s very easy to find the link at our Instagram, Queer Soup Night, or on our website, queersoupnight.com. We are also being published by Combo’s Press, an amazing independent press in upstate New York.So Combo’s Press has a website, and that’s where you actually will go and pre-order the book. It comes out in January of 2027, which is our exact 10-year anniversary.Amazing.So our next event is going to be in Brooklyn on Tuesday, October 13th. That’s the day after Indigenous Peoples Day. So come back. You don’t have anything in your house from your long weekend. We will feed you that night at Eddie’s Grocer in Greenpoint, and you can pick up some amazing stuff at Eddie’s while you’re there.Congratulations on everything. I’m hoping to share a bowl of soup with you next time you make it out to LA.Definitely. We’re definitely going to be promoting the book in LA in January, so we’ll definitely be in touch.Amazing. Thank you so much.Thanks. It’s such a pleasure. Bye. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

3. 

   28 Sept 2026

   Julia Sherman

   “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 ShermanJulia 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.IntroductionHello 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 SaladI 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 TrendsI 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 YouYou’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 ProcessAll 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 fucking 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 SensesWhat’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 EgoWhat’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 an artist, I can always make that one-to-one connection to the art that I love is always seemingly stupidly simple. So when a salad’s just too try-hard or too eager to impress, it doesn’t land.I could eat a Greek salad for the rest of my life and I could make 100 versions of a Greek salad. And I can think about how I treat each of those ingredients.Yes.It’s OK to just make something that’s good. You don’t have to have authored every inch of it. If you want to counter just going for the simplistic approach, you can embrace going crazy at the market and raiding your pantry, which makes up your rule number four.Rule 4: Tap Into Your Inner ShopaholicTap into your inner shopaholic.Salad fatigue is real.Yeah.When people eat the same salad every day, they lose their joy. In L.A., I spend a lot of time going to all the different markets. The farmer’s market for my produce, that’s just one piece of the puzzle.The Thai market, the Indian markets are just a library of crunchy things. It’s so great.All the things that go into chaat, the crispy fried mung beans.All of those things are just salad gold. Don’t feel bad about spending money on really good produce. That’s one thing that I have absolved myself of.Still cheaper than eating out. It’s still really good for you. Think about the produce.It is the most important piece. But then you can have an arsenal of texture, crunch and flavor that’s coming from so many other directions. It pays to go fresh every time with the produce and what’s making up the main elements of your salad.The other element that people really get stuck on is the dressing. Your fifth and final rule talks about a way that you can help people get around a dressing debacle.Rule 5: There’s No Shade in Lemon and Olive OilWhat’s your rule number five?There’s no shade in lemon and olive oil, especially if you’re using good olive oil.No.There’s no shade in vinegar and olive oil. And there’s so many fun vinegars out there to play with.If you’ve been using balsamic all your life, which I love, you should take a walk down your specialty food market. The vinegar and oil section. Really look at the Banuel’s vinegar, sherry vinegars.They all have different acidities and it’s really fun to taste and figure that out.Yes.With the salad dressing mixes that we just launched.This is a push for those of you who are two ingredient dressing people, but aspire to be more. Our little powdered packets, they’re made of powdered miso, powdered Worcestershire sauce, powdered soy sauce, powdered mushroom. All you have to do is add lemon and olive oil.But also you can mix it up. Try rice wine vinegar instead. Try sesame oil.It’s not cheating. It’s OK to get a boost. We’re busy.We’re busy. I make salad all day so that you don’t have to worry about it.I love that.Julia, congratulations on everything. If people want to get the salad dressing packets, if people want to get the books, if people just want to see what you’re making, where can they go?Always go to my two Instagram accounts now for dressing content. It’s at Salad for President.And my personal account, which is a lot of cooking videos, is at Julia Sherman for President. And then if you want to buy the dressings, you can buy them on SaladforPresident.com.I’m looking forward to trying them. I’m finally home.I can get back into the kitchen during the summer salad season here in L.A. And I hope to see you around a salad bowl very soon.Thank you, Darin. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Who has been a guest on Five Rules for the Good Life Podcast

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• Danny Freeman
• André Hueston Mack
• Katherine Lewin
• Brittney Valles
• Jeff Gordinier

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