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 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 Important

Getting 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 Backs

Having 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 Essential

Having 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 Restaurants

Josh, 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.

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