Five Rules for the Good Life Podcast

On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Kyle Knall, the Chef and Co-Owner of Birch and Culinary Director at Stone Bank Farm in Milwaukee, to talk about what it really means to work with farmers. From hugs at the market to crafting a menu around whatever’s thriving in the fields, Kyle lays out his Five Rules for Chefs who Work with Farmers. It’s about building trust, bringing hospitality to the fields, and treating farm-grown ingredients with the same care you’d give your guests. This isn’t a farm-to-table slogan; it’s a lived philosophy of sourcing, respect, and showing up for the people who feed us.This one hit home. Supporting farmers isn’t just a nice gesture—it’s critical if you care about where your food comes from and who’s growing it. The local food economy depends on us showing up: asking questions, buying what’s in season, and cooking with intention. For me, the farmers market is one of the most inspiring places to start a recipe—it’s where the menu begins, not ends. Whether you’re a pro in the kitchen or just picking up some radishes for the weekend, connecting with your local growers helps you cook better and eat with purpose.Photo Provided by BirchFive Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I chat with Kyle Knall, the chef and co-owner of Birch and the culinary director at Stone Bank Farm in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He shares his five rules for chefs who work with farmers. He talks about the importance of knowing your farmer and their story, to let what’s at the farm dictate what you cook, and how hospitality at the restaurant should be extended to those who grow out in the fields. It is a fantastic conversation about the reciprocal relationship between those who grow and those who cook. So let’s get into the rules.Kyle, so good to meet you. Thank you for taking the time out of your day, the restaurant and the farm, and sitting down with me for the show.Excited to be here. Thanks for having me.I know it’s a really tenuous time for farmers. What have you heard and experienced being on the ground in the Midwest?First off, there’s always—this can sound negative, but it’s not—there’s always something. I don’t know if people actually realize that. We see farmers we work with three days a week, and it’s a rare thing for it to be just a perfect day for them because they have to deal with so many different variables—obviously rain, no rain, freezes, the crops getting eaten by deer. It’s just really tough every day, but especially now. I was actually in Washington DC two weeks ago talking about immigration and workforce. The people that were with me going to our representatives were dairy farmers. What they’re dealing with is just really insane. I’m worried about their workforce. It’s just a lot. Those things that are out of their control are really hurting them right now.Being on both sides of that relationship—being a farm owner and a restaurant owner—what unique perspective do you have with the relationship between restaurants and farms?To me, it’s hard to clarify what’s unique because I feel like it’s so normal for us. Stone Bank is the farm that we’re affiliated with. I am at the West Dallas Farmers Market three days a week. I hug these farmers three days a week. They come eat at the restaurant. They love my kids. It dictates what we do. I moved here from New York in 2020. For a long time, people were like, “Oh, how’s cooking in Milwaukee?” And the answer is it’s amazing because the agriculture is so incredible. We’re in vegetable and dairy heaven all the time. Being in this area of the country, getting to know these farmers really has dictated and helped us really do what we want in the restaurant and cook what we want.It sounds like even with all the hardships, there is some hope. What’s a real bright spot for you right now in a farm-driven restaurant?There’s always hardships. There’s always tough things. And I hate talking about tough things because there is so much great stuff. For us, we don’t have to worry about gas prices. We don’t have to worry about fees attached to big deliveries. We don’t have to worry about cooking things that don’t taste good. Being so connected to the farmers, seeing them throughout the week, knowing what’s coming, talking about what’s going to happen in the spring, what can be grown for us—those little things really are the huge pluses for us. Being a restaurant that uses so much farm-driven ingredients is really special because you’re not just financially supporting them, but you’re also supporting the community of people who make it up, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for chefs who work with farmers.Anyone who’s gone to a farmer’s market for the first time can feel overwhelmed. You see these people, you don’t know who they are, you don’t know anything about them. Your first rule talks about the importance of getting to know who’s selling you different produce a little bit better to help you cook a little bit better. What’s your rule number one?Rule #1: Know your farmer and their story.At the market we go to, we’ve found ingredients through the seasons now for four seasons that are delicious from certain farmers. Let’s just say like Jerry has the best garlic. First off, he trusts us. He started growing us avocado squash in Milwaukee, Wisconsin three years ago. Now he sells hundreds of pounds of it to people that aren’t professional—go to the market, that’s just another item that is producing more money for him. That trust really goes both ways. When you say to Jerry, “You don’t grow Sun Gold tomatoes or corn? Who should I buy it from?” I love that. That’s like the inside line. Making conversation with farmers or people in markets is a very important part. It’s starting those conversations and then building that trust. And like I said, the trust goes both ways. They start to trust you, then they’re really going to tell you their secrets.I have to imagine that trust is even more important when you’re a chef and a restaurant owner—when you have an idea for a menu and you go to the market and either it’s sold out or not available. And you have to listen to the farmer and to the merchant selling what they got, which is a big part of your rule number two.Rule #2: Cook what the farm gives you, not what you wish it would give you.I think most chefs need parameters. I can open up a cookbook tonight at home and say, “I want to make this tomorrow.” Sure, but are those ingredients there? We can cook whatever we want, so I think we need guidance and parameters to really follow. And that helps narrow down a clear vision and an identity. A chef’s job is to make sure food is delicious. So why would you not use the most delicious thing available to you? That’s the number two rule that we’re talking about. But in terms of who I am and what I do, that’s probably the number one. Going to the market and you’re looking for taste good. It’s just so many options. I know that I’ve been there and gone in with an idea of what I want to cook, but then I see that one parsnip or that one apple that goes, “I’m throwing everything out.”Which is a core tenet of your rule number three.Rule #3: Buy what looks good.100%. Delicious food. I know. You come back, it’s like, “I thought we were doing eggplant parm.” It’s like, “No, we’re not. I saw something else.” Our goal at Birch, what we talk about—we’re privileged to be able to go to these beautiful markets and walk up and see this amazing looking produce on the table, taken care of by who grew it. Of course, we’re going to have to manipulate it a little bit. Our goal is to show that beauty off. Let that shine. If you’re going to buy something and man, the Swiss chard is super wilted—should I really be getting this? If the kale looks really crisp and nice—yeah, get the one that looks good because it’s going to taste better. The mentality as you’re touching it, cooking it, looking at it—you’re just going to feel better about what you’re making. Things that look good, they’re going to cook good.When you go to the market, you’re buying things that are maybe sometimes in bulk and you want to be cognizant of not throwing any of it out. What is your rule number four?Rule #4: Reduce waste of intentionally grown items.Consider how to repurpose and find more of what you have. I have two kids. We cook at home. We definitely buy things that are in an abundance. Take what you need so you’re not having to waste anything—a whole head of cauliflower or two extra bunches of romaine or whatnot. But if you do, to me honestly, those second and third meals off ingredients—the better meals. Turning something that you’ve cooked into a soup. You buy a head of fennel and you just need to use a little bit for a salad. When you use the rest of that fennel for your next meal, I bet it’s going to be more delicious. It’s going to be something that you open the fridge and you’re like, “How can I use this?” To me, those things end up being more thoughtful and more delicious.That respect, that understanding of the hard work that goes into growing all of this is really important. Because if you know how much sweat and labor goes into just a pea, a cherry tomato—something that you might just toss in the trash or take for granted—you lose a little bit of the perspective of what it means to be working at a farm. Your fifth and final rule talks about giving that respect and that acknowledgement of that hard work to the people who grow the food that we eat.Rule #5: Hospitality should extend to farmers.I love that. I worked for Danny Meyer for a long time. We always talked about your employees, your team members. The phrase to me has morphed. Your employees and your purveyors and farmers are one thing. Lynn from SynthGraph Farm, Michelle from Stone Ba

In this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Aishwarya Iyer, founder of Brightland, to talk about how to find fresh ideas when the creative well runs dry. She shares her Five Rules for Finding Inspiration—ranging from the power of putting your phone down to digging back into past launches, and even borrowing inspiration from perfume bottles for food packaging. It’s a grounded, generous conversation that’s equal parts brand building and soul searching, perfect for anyone trying to make something new in a noisy world.I love this episode because it’s a reminder that inspiration isn’t just waiting for you in obvious places—it’s hiding in your pantry, your community, even in your closet. Aishwarya’s approach to creativity is about looking sideways, not just forward. Whether it’s revisiting an old family recipe or walking a new aisle at a bookstore, finding new paths to creativity is how we keep growing, making, and evolving. This one gave me a few ideas of my own—and if you’ve been feeling stuck, it just might do the same for you.My friend TEED has a new album out now, and it’s a perfect soundtrack for a dreamy winter wonderland. Stream or buy Always With Me wherever you listen to or purchase music. Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.Today, I sit down with Aishwarya Iyer, CEO and founder of Brightland, which is some of mine and my family’s favorite olive oil. She’s here today to share her five rules for finding inspiration. She talks about the importance of putting your phone down, keeping your head up and looking out in the world for new inspiration, how her previous products guide future endeavors, and the importance of embracing unconventional sources to find new ideas. It’s a deliciously fun and inspiring conversation with a lot of great takeaways for anyone who is stuck creatively or wants to expand their creative horizons.So let’s get into the rules.Aishwarya, welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I feel like I see you every day because we always have a bottle of your olive oil in our pantry and on my counter at all times.That is music to my ears and I am thrilled to be here.I love that you started your career at L’Oreal in the luxury products division because where you’ve wound up now is this high-end luxury part of the CPG market. How much parallel do you see from your work with both high-end makeup brands and high-end olive oils, honeys, and vinegars?When I got into it, I didn’t see any parallel, but I created the parallel. If we can talk about blush and serum 500 different ways... then we can talk about these products that come straight from the earth that have so much provenance and terroir and story and history and taste and flavor. We can showcase them in interesting ways. We can photograph them in interesting ways. We can package them in interesting ways. And so I created it.I’ve always felt that when I’ve traveled or gone to high-end specialty shops for food and pantry items, I’ve always known that there’s the top shelf stuff. And it’s the same way with fashion. And I know that you have looked at designers and different fashion brands for inspiration. What is it about their work in that field that inspires you?They are looking at emotion first. How do we make people feel? They’re not trying to talk to themselves. CPG and food especially has a funny way of wanting to talk to ourselves a lot. Right, right. Here are all our value propositions. Are you creating an emotional connection with anybody out there? Are you making people feel something? And I think that fashion, when done well, they’re able to do it really masterfully. And it doesn’t have to be luxury. I see Gap doing it right now beautifully. That to me was this driving force of, oh my gosh, we’re not just in the business of food. We’re not just in the business of olive oil. We’re not just in the business of marketing. We’re in the business of emotions. Why not spend time there? Spend time thinking about how we want people to feel.Tapping into those deep emotions, knowing that something is going to have that connection over a long time is so tricky these days because there’s so many trends. How do you understand something that is going to be worthwhile investing in, making it a product, something that you’re really going to build a whole story and brand around?It comes back to having two dualities at once inside of you. There are two olive oils inside of you at all times. Yeah, exactly. Like ruthless impatience coupled with remembering that time is always on your side. I’m able to take that duality and reality and be able to say, okay, there is a trend. We think this trend is really interesting because it’s going to make our customer feel XYZ. We’re going to hop on or lean into that trend. And at the same time, we’re going to say no to these 500 other trends. Of course. Because they’re not the right thing for us.I would not say that we are experts or we’ve really mastered that at all, to be totally honest with you. 2025 was a good example of a year where if I look back, I’m like, hmm, I think we could have actually been a little more trend driven. We weren’t. We were very, let’s really focus on what the consumer is asking for and let’s focus on certain occasions that were showing up for her. And that was kind of it.Being a founder and the CEO or a leader of any company does require you to make those decisions about creating stability when you could feel pressured to grow. It’s a hard balance to find. What I love about your approach is no matter what phase of the business you’re in, you are always looking for what comes next, which is why I’m so excited for you to talk about your five rules for finding inspiration. And your first rule talks about looking inward in your own life for finding something to inspire you. What’s your rule number one?Rule number one is getting offline and looking inward is absolutely the best place to find inspiration.Why?You just said there are so many trends out there. We are constantly looking at that brick. And what that means is we’re not just consuming, we’re absorbing other people’s energies, other people’s inspiration, other people’s goals and dreams, other people’s lives and content. I really like to shut off social media. And I think that it then creates more space. You’re looking around you. You’re looking around your house. You’re looking around when you’re waiting for an elevator instead of looking down at your phone. And you might see something. You might see a color. You might see a piece of artwork on the wall that you never noticed before. I hate saying that because it sounds so obvious and maybe 25 years ago, this wouldn’t have been one of my five rules.I see it with a lot of my friends who are business owners being zapped of creative inspiration, frankly, being zapped of energy to propel them forward in their businesses because they’re way too online.I totally agree. I start each day walking the dogs around the block with no phone.That’s amazing.Not taking every moment of your life to look at a phone or to get caught up in someone else’s energy is a really good way to think about your own experiences and to think about what’s going on in your life, either past or present, which is really a good spot to find inspiration and ties directly into your rule number two.Rule number two is transforming the obstacles that are in your life into creative fuel.That could be in the rudimentary, I’ll show you, I’ll show them, I’ll show myself, right? Which everyone kind of has that fire within them. Of course. That is something one can do rather than saying, I’m going to give up or I don’t believe I can. But instead saying, okay, this happened for me. How can I transform it? So that’s one way to do it. And then the other way is to also take a look more deeply and say, whether it’s grief or loss, how can I take memories and incorporate it into whatever I’m doing that’s artful, whether it’s into my writing or my poetry or into the work that I do, into the art that I create. I firmly believe it’s possible, but it requires you to go inward in the first place and create space to move through the emotions of heartbreak and sadness and grief and despair and disappointment to then come out on the other side.I’m not discounting heartbreak or sadness or any personal crisis because as we all know, that’s made a ton of great art. In fact, some of my favorite.Once you get past or maybe go through some of your inner crisis or emotions or maybe more of the standard spots for inspiration, finding new wells to tap is a big part of your rule number three.Embracing unconventional sources.Anytime that I’ve been seeing where people get inspiration lately, they say Pinterest. They say museums. Sure. There’s a lot of the usual suspects. Of course. But coming back to the unconventional sources, why don’t we open up some old magazines that we haven’t looked at? Open up a book in your shelf that you haven’t looked at in a while. I was doing this exercise where I was grabbing books and then opening to a random page and finding a word that I was really delighted by and then writing down that word and thinking about what that word meant in my life and then writing a little thing and then that turned into something. And so you can really start pulling threads.The more we are leaning into human-made inspiration, I do think Mother Earth can be an incredible source. Just go and look at the tree across from you. Give it a hug. Look at its details. Look up. Look around. You just don’t know what might find you.Rule number four is to revisit the past.And it’s something that I don’t think we do enough of. We’re always moving forward. We live in a capitalist society that constantly has us looking ahead. I do this thing where I look at all the old launches that we’ve had, whether it’s an olive oil or a vinegar, and I say, what did we do well here? What did I like? What didn’t I like? W

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Bill Addison to break down the art of reading restaurant lists to celebrate their annual 101 Best Restaurants in LA list. We talk through his Five Rules for Navigating a Restaurant List, what makes a place worth your time, how to spot the real gems, and why great dining recs go way beyond buzzy names with tasting menus. From affordable neighborhood spots to splurge-worthy tables, Bill shares how he evaluates restaurants and what it takes to make a place unforgettable. If you’ve ever planned a trip around where to eat (or wanted to), this one’s for you.This episode hits home, especially for someone who travels with their stomach leading the way. Bill gives a masterclass in parsing the hidden signals in a restaurant list—what’s missing, what’s included, and what it says about the person writing it. He also reminds us that real culinary culture lives not just in the fancy spots, but in the mom-and-pop joints and immigrant-run kitchens that define a city’s soul. Whether you’re planning your next big trip, trying to eat better in your own backyard, or just want to level up your restaurant intel, this is required listening.It’s the holiday season!The good people of Now Serving have all of your holiday bases covered with a bounty of beautifully signed books for all of your gift-giving needs. Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.Today, I sit down with my friend and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times, Bill Addison, who shares his five rules for navigating a restaurant list to celebrate the newspaper’s annual release of their 101 Best Restaurant List.He talks about the importance of trusting the experts, understanding the context of any list you delve into, and how by financially supporting newspapers and newsletters, you’ll get the most out of any research you read.It is an insightful conversation from one of the people behind one of the most influential lists in all of America.One technical note: there was a little bit of distortion during our recording, so please ignore any pops you might hear.So let’s get into the rules.Bill, so good to see you. Always a pleasure. Thank you for making time before the LA Times 101 Best Restaurant list drops. I know you’re a busy man, so I appreciate it.Great to see you there, and thank you for having me.We’ve talked a lot about finding and searching for new restaurants in your own city or abroad. Can you describe that feeling when you find a new place and it actually hits?Yeah, I’m thinking of a restaurant in Paris called Datil that I went to this summer that just blew me away. I mean, I almost wanted to cry through the meal. It was mostly vegetarian cooking, but it was done with such finesse. And it was something that I feel like we’re missing in California with all our crazy, beautiful bounty here. I just felt emotional through it.When something really hits, it hits more than the palate. It hits more than the senses. Yeah, it makes you think. It makes you feel. It just brings you back to your own humanity.I’ve found that when I find these places, it feels like I found another home. And I know that when people find those places, you are in the envious position of people wanting to share them with you. Especially in Los Angeles, as people go, like, I found this gem, I found the spot, is it on your radar?But I have to imagine it’s overwhelming. How do you handle so many recommendations coming to you all the time?I’m looking more than ever in my 20-plus years of reviewing restaurants for a narrative that grabs me. If someone kindly emails me and tells me about a wonderful Italian restaurant in their neighborhood, I will certainly go to the website and scan the menu. But what gets representative of that cuisine, which is really many regional cuisines, on restaurant menus in America is often quite repetitive.I’m always excited when somebody thinks outside the box, cooks from their own perspective, cooks from an intense curiosity that led them to some sort of contextual expertise. That just doesn’t apply to Italian food. That applies to every cuisine on the globe.The known beauty of Los Angeles is that so many of them are here or so many of them will show up because our immigrant communities are what give the city meaning.That’s one of the things a lot of people have come to love and respect about your own list, the 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles, is that it is diverse. It does represent a lot of the city.How do you marry an editorial approach with utility when putting the list together?I am thinking about excellence and narrative or representation in equal amounts. Excellence is so subjective, but it’s very easy—or has been easy—in considering restaurant culture to just default to the fanciest, most ambitious restaurants.I love that this decade, this moment in restaurant culture, for people who really care about dining, care about this subject, we all know that excellence comes in many, many forms.It is amazing. My job, our job, is to think about that as broadly and as deeply as possible, which includes an awful lot of research and eating and following up and asking myself where a specific restaurant fits within the fabric of the community.I think it’s really interesting to look at the community on both sides of the list—both those who are being put on it and those who are using it—either those who are locals or those who are coming to a city, whether it’s LA, Florence, Tokyo.Because a lot of times you can look at these lists, especially when the numbers are in the 10, 20, 30, 40 recommendations and not sure how to use it, not sure how to read it. Which is why I’m so excited to have you here to share your five rules for navigating a restaurant list.All right. Before we get into the rules, though, you mentioned you wanted to set up a little bit of framing, which I think is great because sometimes people just open a list and they haven’t even asked themselves, what am I looking for?So let’s set the personal parameters of how you’re setting up your five rules before we get into the rules themselves.I would say I present these rules, these thoughts, with the hypothesis that the listener knows, first of all, what they’re looking for or what interests them in a restaurant list at any given moment.Are you looking for fresh inspiration? Are you looking for the worthiest splurge to celebrate a special occasion? Does the guide double for you as a cultural read?The best lists probably address more than one of these needs. That’s the context when I thought through these five rules.There’s a lot of thought that went into these rules. There’s a lot of research that goes into these lists.I think it’s fair to say that not all lists are created equal. Some are written from one point of view, and some are crowdsourced.Your first rule focuses on picking the list by someone who’s done all of the research. What’s your rule number one?Rule number one is: Believe in expertise.We do live in an age of all-around distrust. Media more than ever seems to bring out the negativity bias baked into our human survival mechanisms.The number two and number three top ranked restaurants in Los Angeles on TripAdvisor—no shade, no judgment. Number two is Bubba Gump Shrimp Company. And number three is a Denny’s.I want people to believe in those of us who are paid to eat, even if you don’t wholeheartedly agree with opinions of specific writers, because we really do have your interests at heart when we write a big list. We’re thinking within the context of a citywide dining scene.And I think all good lists have a specificity to them, right? They nod to the obvious but also hope to encourage you in new directions, to point out people and cuisines that bring novel or specific perspectives.That context and specificity can be easily missed if you just skip the opening, go straight to the spots listed, and say, “I don’t understand this perspective that’s being shared.”Your second rule says, “Hold on, before you scroll down, read first.” What’s your second rule?Rule number two: Give the introduction a chance.Now listen, a lot of us are scarred from internet recipes that have nine paragraphs. Rarely do the introductions to restaurant lists have nine paragraphs because we know no one is going to read nine thick paragraphs.That opening crunch of words that most people scroll by as fast as possible to just get to the names of restaurants—it’s totally understandable. But taking the 90 seconds to breeze through the introduction might ultimately save you time.It’s where the writer is telling you a little bit more about what they’re up to beyond the clickbait headline and what that reveals.When I’m researching a trip, for example, and I’m sifting through lists and I see, let’s say, a writer prominently mentions Michelin-starred restaurants in a given city, that might tell me that this writer is almost in a dialogue about whether she agrees with inspector ratings or not. So that’s a choice.And maybe that’s what I want in Tokyo, but not what I want in Philadelphia.Lists that focus only on the high ends of dining miss a huge part of any culinary scene—from food options to storytelling. Your third rule talks about scanning the list for these types of restaurants. What’s your rule number three?Rule number three, scan for the more affordable restaurants. Their inclusion speaks volumes. Yes. It’s important when writing a great restaurant list to plant a flag on your opinions of the greatest tasting menu restaurants, the places worth fighting for reservations. That’s important. But I’m always super interested in what a writer chooses for the more affordable neighborhood restaurants and why. They say so much about the research that went into the article. I’m looking for some engaging choices specifically that illuminate the immigrant communities in any given city. You get to know a neighborhood by

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Ron Silver and Liz Clarke of Bubby’s in New York—two seasoned pie‑makers sharing the love, technique, and legacy behind their famous slices. From why the harvest of apples and pumpkins gave rise to the American fruit pie, to the very technical details of dough temperature, cutting butter to the right size, and letting the crust rest properly, they walk us through Bubby’s Five Rules for How to Bake Pie at Home. Whether you’re a complete beginner or a pro pie maker, you’ll walk away from the episode with actionable tips that actually make a difference. If you’re ready to level up your holiday baking game, their cookbook Homemade Pies is the perfect companion.I’ve always believed that baking is part science, part story, especially when it’s something as comforting as homemade pie. What I love about this episode is how Ron and Liz blend both so seamlessly, the precision of insider knowledge, with the warmth of tradition. As someone trying to bake more intentionally (and maybe a little less messily), hearing these masters break it down with clarity and passion is pure gold. If you know me, you know I love my turkey necks, a long-standing family tradition that we observe when celebrating Thanksgiving. For everyone who’s ever asked, here is my Mom’s recipe. You can make them any time you want, just make sure you make enough. TranscriptHello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. To kick off the holiday season, I’m sitting down with Ron Silver, the chef and owner of Bubby’s in New York City, and Bubby’s executive chef, Liz Clarke.Today, we’re chatting everything pie as they share Bubby’s five rules for how to bake pie at home. They talk about how temperature is the key to everything, how shaping your dough will lead to a less leaky slice, and how resting your pie at the right time will create the perfect slice every time. It’s a great mini masterclass for anyone who’s ever wanted to start baking at home—and some real insider tips for anyone who considers themselves a professional baker.So let’s get into the rules.Ron and Liz, so nice to meet you. The holiday season is upon us, and I couldn’t think of two better people to kick it off with than you two.Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.Thanksgiving is right around the corner. Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa—everything’s coming up. The holiday season. Why does this time of year and pies work so well together?That is a deep, deep question, really. America really invented pie—the pie as we know it, like fruit pies. Before that, the Romans would have some sort of cooked meat wrapped in dough. And then the English developed these meat pies. But before America was really rolling, they didn’t have these fruit pies the way that we have them. A lot of that is because of the abundance of American agriculture and orchards. And this is harvest season for pumpkins and apples. Once you start harvesting, you’ve got to find something to do with them.Longtime fan of Bubby’s. And it was fun to learn that you started it as a pop-up for Thanksgiving with pies 35 years ago. What inspired you to start the restaurant there?What inspired me is my status of being unemployable. It’s always a good place to start. I’m an artist and… my choices were really to either start a restaurant—because that was my skill as a chef—or just because I really had developed a not-the-best attitude working with other chefs in the food of the eighties. I suppose that my attitude towards that food made it impossible for me to cook it. So I was either going to be a dishwasher or my own chef. That’s really how this—“pop-up” is generous—how Bubby’s got started, because we just opened up with no permission whatsoever.What a good time to be doing restaurants in New York. A lot less red tape during that time. I feel like New York City was really grateful to just have people trying to give it a go. Especially in that part of town.It really was quiet. There weren’t even traffic lights down here and it was kind of a no man’s land in a way. Although there were a lot of celebrities living down here because of the large loft spaces. They were really off the beaten path, you’d say.You guys literally wrote the book on homemade pies, which is for anyone who wants to start baking any time of the year—but especially for the holiday season—is a great tome to have in your kitchen. Why should people learn how to cook pies at home?It’s really a beautiful thing to do where you offset yourself and be relaxed and enjoy the steps to do it. There’s a connection of home and your family with pie. It’s not rushed. You take the steps to do it, and it comes out really well. So it’s sort of also an all-encompassing warmth in the house, because there’s nothing more all-encompassing than a baking pie coming out of the oven and getting ready to cut and all of that stuff. It’s an experience.There’s something about the phrase of a loved one saying, “I’m going to bake a pie,” especially for the holidays, that really warms the soul—which is why I’m excited for you to be sharing your five rules for how to bake a pie at home. I love the way you organize this because this really is a great chronological order of how to best prepare yourself and get ready if you’re either a well-seasoned pie maker or attempting it for the first time.What’s your rule number one?The number one rule that we have written down is always preheat your oven and make sure that your oven is really hot. But I think all the temperatures matter, and it’s good to be preparing dough in the coolest possible place in the house.Which leads us into rule number two: keeping the fat that you’re going to make the pastry with—and your hands—cool.The reality is, you usually will make your dough before you have to turn on the oven. We make the dough, keep everything as cool as possible, you put it into the refrigerator just to let the dough rest a little bit, and then you can preheat your oven before you bake. You really want to make sure it’s super hot.A lot of the times when people are working that dough, there is a bit of a mystery of how much to form it, how much to work it. And your rule number three talks about the right amount of work that goes into making the perfect dough.One of the things is really to cut the butter in small enough pieces and the fat—we use lard and butter. Having pieces that are pea-sized, that allows you to start working that fat into the dough quickly. And then adding the ice water, you really want to just scoop it together. Lift it and bind it, but not manhandle it. Go lightly and it will form itself into a ball. As you’re lifting up, you can feel the water, because it’s a very small amount of water moistening the flour. And then you just push it together into a ball as lightly as possible.That really creates space between the very simple ingredients, which is fat and water, and it allows for the steam pockets to form when it’s baking—and that’s what makes a flaky crust.Once you have that perfectly made dough, shaping it is the next point of artistry, which is a big part of your rule number four.Rule number four is to crimp and trim carefully. After you’ve formed a dough ball and rolled it out to less than an eighth of an inch, you never want to be pushing this dough around in any kind of rough way. You lay the bottom crust into the pan and then pour the filling in. And with the filling, we also don’t push that down. Everything is very much just sort of laid in there, because that allows for a crust surface that we find to be nice.The most important thing in this rule four is trimming the dough around the pie dish and then rolling it and crimping it properly. Otherwise, you get a lot of juice leaking out into the pan as opposed to staying in the pie.We’ve all experienced leaky pies, which can ruin all of the effort and all of the work that you put into rolling the dough and shaping it correctly.Your fifth and final rule deals again with temperature both before and after the bake. The after I knew, the before is new to me. What is your fifth and final rule?The fifth and final rule is cool your pie before you bake it and make sure you allow it to cool down properly after you’ve baked it. Before you’ve baked it is after you roll out the dough and crimp it, you want to give it a half hour to rest in the refrigerator so that the gluten has a chance to relax to make the flakiest possible crust.Just to get back to rule four, when you’re rolling and crimping, you want to make sure that it’s not overly thick. When you bake that, you end up with a raw part in the middle.And the other thing that I just want to say to go back to rule number one—the very hot part of the oven and the bake is only the first 10 or 11 minutes. The goal is to set that crust with a high temperature so that you basically started to bake the crust first, and then you turn the oven down—from say 425 to 350. You’re baking two things at the same time: you start the crust first, and then you focus on the filling next.Most people probably just leave it at one temp the whole time and let it ride.That’s a mistake, I would say.And then the final part before you slice and the presentation—it’s like anything that’s coming out of the oven, patience is key. How long would you recommend letting it wait before you slice and serve?Four hours. If I can hold my wrist on it—I have lots of children, so I’ve squirted a lot of milk onto my wrist—you want it to be a little bit cooler than body temperature to be able to hold the form of the fruit. Pumpkin pie really needs to set for about four hours before it’s ready to cut.I know you’re going to be busy for the holiday season serving up a ton of pies, and I appreciate you taking the time to tell the people at home the best tips and rules of how to bake pies for themselves. If people want to get the book, order pies from you, swing into the restaurant—where can they go?Bubbys

On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with India Doris, the co-owner and executive chef of Markette and The Argyle in Manhattan, whose journey from 15-year-old line cook to celebrated NYC chef is nothing short of extraordinary. From the competitive kitchens of Europe to the high-wire hustle of New York, India shares her Five Rules for Working in a Kitchen—lessons forged in long hours, sharp knives, and a relentless drive to stay humble, stay learning, and cook food you actually believe in. These are service-tested rules from someone who’s earned every stripe and every scar. If you’ve ever stepped onto the line, led a team under pressure, or just wondered what it takes to survive and thrive in the culinary world, this episode’s for you.But let’s be real—these rules aren’t just for chefs. Anyone working in a fast-paced, high-skill environment will find India’s advice spot on. Whether you’re pulling shots in a coffee shop, producing live TV, managing a startup team, or running a construction crew, the fundamentals are the same: show up prepared, focus on small daily wins, listen, and respect the people around you. Staying humble, staying kind, and staying curious is how you build trust, earn opportunities, and keep leveling up. This episode serves as a blueprint for growing without burning out, and for leading without losing sight of the goal.Photo by Natalie BlackFive Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptINTRODUCTIONHello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.Today, I sit down with India Doris, the co-owner and executive chef at Markette and the Argyle in Manhattan.As a longtime journey chef, she started cooking in kitchens at the age of 15, working her way across the UK, Europe, and eventually winding up in New York City. She shares her five rules for working in a kitchen. It talks about the importance of having manageable daily goals, how to stay humble, and that by cooking your own food, you will eventually find success.So let’s get into the rules.EARLY JOURNEY & TRAININGIndia, so nice to meet you. Thank you for making the time, especially with the Argyle being open only a few weeks. I appreciate you sitting down for the show.Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. There’s always stuff to do. It’s nice to take a second actually to just talk about it.So you’re originally from the UK and you wound up cooking through some legendary kitchens across Europe, which really harkens back to an older type of culinary training. How much of that old school mentality did you experience and what did you love about that time in your life?I feel like I experienced a lot of it. The first 10 years I experienced a lot. It was 17 hour shifts, 18 hour shifts, no breaks, not eating the amount I should be running around. But then it was very, it still is very competitive. But I think back then, because of the hours, because of the stress, because of all the pressure that gets put on an individual, you’re left with a really intense group of people.Yes. We’ve gotten better. We’re not working as many hours. It’s a lot more welcoming. But because of the hours and because of the demand, it definitely left a really intense group of people that you had to work against—or work with, sorry, not against.Wow.Depending on what kitchen you’re in and who’s leading it.It felt like that sometimes, yes. Sometimes it’s against on purpose.Yeah.MOVING TO NEW YORKYou cook across Europe. You meet this incredible group of people. You could have planted a flag anywhere. What drew you to the kitchens of New York?New York is a special place.Yeah, you can say that again.I’m from London. I’m a city girl, born and bred in the city. Love it. I know what it’s like to run around in the city causing trouble and doing dumb teenage stuff. At a young age, I became a little bit of a nomad. I moved all over the place. I moved to France and Spain, and I came here. I was only supposed to be here for a year. I was going to go to Australia after. I was like, all right, let me start my visa for Australia while I was here, because I stayed here for a year. I was like, I want to stay longer, but it wasn’t working out that way. Let me go home first.I miss New York so much. I was like, wow, I haven’t had this feeling before because as a good nomad does, they travel all over the place. They want to see new places. But I was really drawn by it because I was getting a little bit older. To find a city that felt similar but different was something that drew me back.So I ended up coming back and I’ve been here for nine years now.New York just gets in your blood. Once you’ve experienced the kitchens of New York and the food and the community here, it’s hard to walk away from it.DECIDING TO OPEN HER OWN PLACEWhat was the moment you realized that you wanted to open up your own spot and you were ready to run your own kitchen in New York City?After a couple of decades of working under people, seeing different parts of the world, the way they work, how they work for extensive amount of time. Then coming to New York, when I first came here, I worked under James Kent. I was with him for eight years. We opened up Crown Shy, we got one star in 10 months. We opened up Saga, we got two stars in six months.Incredible.All of the information that I gathered from traveling, from seeing different places, from meeting all these people. When you’re a really young chef, you cook people’s food, and I think it’s an important thing to cook people’s food because you really start to learn what your food is. When I was a young cook, I would go and work in these incredible Michelin-style places, and I learned how to be an adult in these kitchens. You know? I worked in kitchens from 15 years old. I know how to be an adult. That’s a bad thing and a good thing. I was living on my own at 16 paying rent. I was taught by these crazy people how to be, how to run my life.After working with James, he was probably the nicest, most calm, productive chef I’ve ever worked for. And after a few years of working with him, I’m like, yeah, I really just don’t want to work with anyone else.Totally.I did learn so much from that. I learned how to refine my own food. But however many years later, I’ve realized that I’ve got a good understanding of what my own food is. And I’ve only been able to do that from cooking from other people and learning from other people and doing all this. I was like, well, I got to do this on my own now.RULE 1: KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN AND YOUR KNIFE SHARPBeing able to work in all these kitchens at such a relatively young age, it’s really amazing for you to be able to have distilled all that knowledge, which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for working in a kitchen.Your first rule deals with something that I learned with working on the other side, which was when I had to shoot with chefs and come into their kitchen, being prepared both mentally and physically. What’s your rule number one?Rule number one, and this is something that I learned from when I was very, very young. I was working in kitchens full time from 15. I was doing a ridiculous amount of hours. You know, the road is very long. You have a long way to go and you have a lot of people to learn from to get to the goal that you want to get to.Someone said to me one day, keep your head down and your knife sharp.They said it in a lot of different ways than I’m saying it now.It was not as kind.You need to learn from as many people as possible. And to be honest, you need to want people to want to teach you how to do stuff. If you’re running around blabbing your mouth and doing all this and that, no one’s going to want to teach you. The one thing that you need to do as a young cook who doesn’t know anything is keep your head down and your knife sharp and just watch what everyone else is doing.RULE 2: HAVE DAILY MANAGEABLE GOALSThat dovetails really nicely into your second rule because it’s easy to be in a kitchen, to be talking about all these big plans and these big pictures and what you’re going to do, but that’s not the task at hand of how to survive and succeed working in a kitchen. What’s your second rule?My second rule is have daily manageable goals. That’s important. We all have these goals. I had this dream when I was 15. I’m going to do this and I’m going to do that. That’s all great. I think that’s an important thing to have. But you need to have daily manageable goals in order to get to this bigger beyond.If you cut chives by 2:40 today, then by 2:35 tomorrow, you’re going to cut the chives. They’re going to be done. They’re going to be put away.I love that.And then the next day it’s going to be 2:32 and 2:30. And then you slowly start pulling back and pulling back and you hone in the area that you’re at, the things that you’re doing. They’re getting better. They’re getting stronger. You’re getting stronger. And this is how you get to that bigger goal.RULE 3: STAY HUMBLE, STAY LEARNINGI also love that your third rule touches on something that is important in kitchens but often forgotten—humility. What’s your third rule?Stay humble, stay learning. You have to stay humble. You always need to be learning. That’s something that I’ve realized has helped me develop so much as a chef. I’ve worked with all these people and I’ve seen all these places, and I know what’s good and I know what’s bad, but I’m not done yet. I want to learn more. I want to see more. And I think the more you stay humble, the more you stay learning. The moment you think you know everything, you’re going to fall. You’re going to fall hard. You’re going to fall real hard.It’s the truth.So just keep your ears open. And you might learn from a 15-year-old line cook. You might learn from a server who’s just joined. You might learn from a dishwasher who’s been doing this longer t

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with chef, restaurateur, and author Arnold Myint, whose new cookbook Family Thai: Bringing the Flavors of Thailand Home is a love letter to legacy, flavor, and family. We talk about the roots of his family’s Nashville restaurant, International Market, the stories behind his mom’s recipes, and the responsibility of passing culinary traditions down. Arnold shares his Five rules for Mastering a Family Recipe, everything from staying true to the original version and then knowing when it’s time to make it your own. It’s heartfelt, emotional, and packed with wisdom for anyone who’s ever cooked with a recipe card stained in sauce and memories.This one got me in my feelings. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to preserve my own family’s food history, how my grandmother’s cauliflower soup can still stop me in my tracks with just one spoonful, or how my mom’s turkey necks have quietly become my comfort food of choice. These are the recipes that shaped me. They live in my hands, my head, and hopefully soon, in my kids’ memories too. Arnold’s story is a beautiful reminder that it’s not just about what’s on the plate, it’s about who taught you to make it, who you share it with, and how those flavors get passed down like heirlooms. I’m looking forward to the day when my kids ask to learn how to make those dishes, and I’ll be ready, recipe card in hand.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptHello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with my dear friend, Arnold Myint, whose new book, Family Thai: Bringing the Flavors of Thailand Home, is out now on Abrams Books. He shares his five rules for mastering a family recipe. He talks about the importance of cooking the original dish without adding any of your deviations, that listening to your ancestor’s voice is a great way to guide your hand in the kitchen, and that sharing the story behind any recipe is a great way to honor its legacy. It’s a fantastic conversation with great insights for anyone who owns a restaurant and wants to continue the tradition of their family cooking or anyone who wants to honor their own family legacy in their kitchen at home. So let’s get into the rules.Arnold, it’s so good to see you. It’s been too long. Thank you so much for making time during your crazy book schedule and sit down for the show. What an honor and a pleasure.Hey Darin, it’s good to see you too. You’re right. It has been way too long, but you know what? Full circle moment. It’s great to be here.What I love about your life and your background is that food has always been a huge part of your upbringing and your life. What are the dishes that you remember from your childhood that still inspire you or still speak to you today?Oh, it’s funny because I work in food and some people might think it’s fancy food. But for me, what turns me on are the things that are so comfortable and more like a timestamp of memories. My mom was always the spokesperson of the restaurant. I wasn’t really raised by the food that we served. I was raised by the food at home. And my dad was a professor and we had the same schedule because he had to get up to go to school and I had to get up. Something that just really puts a smile on my face is he made really great breakfasts for me. The best part of waking up is hearing sauteed onions going into German potato hash browns and a hint of lime lemon juice on some just smashed charred potatoes in a skillet with caramelized onions. And then I would get an egg choice. I would either get a soft boiled egg or I would get a scrambled egg sandwich or a soft fried egg Asian style white Wonder Bread toast still spongy enough to soak up and get mushy in the egg yolk. For me to this day whenever I’m with a group on a vacation rental or I have guests home I’ll just fry an onion just to turn everybody on. I don’t even plan on making food but just start with that and it puts everybody in a good mood.I love that your dad cooked at home and your parents had this incredible restaurant, International Market, that’s been in Nashville since 1975. You and your sister took it over in 2021. Why was it so important for you and your family to share Thai food with the community?Well, I had no choice because I was born into it. I think there was a bassinet that said, I know I’m cute, but please don’t touch. Wow. The original hostess of the restaurant. And then I started to create a dinner theater because I was roller skating, giving shows to the guests while they were eating when I was a kid.Incredible.Amazing.It was meant to be, right?For my mother, it was a means of survival. She was in Nashville in the 70s with my dad trying to acclimate to a culture and society she didn’t know nothing about. She needed some sort of comfort. And I don’t think a ham and biscuit was what her vision of comfort was.Of course.Luckily, my dad went to school in upstate New York and had resources and connections in larger cities. So they discovered there were accessible things in larger cities that they had to bring down if they wanted to have the flavors that reminded them of home. Buying in bulk is cheaper.Sure.So she needed a way to afford it to where she could eat, but she had a surplus of ingredients. So it was just almost by necessity that she started selling it so she could have free food.I got it.So she would buy in bulk and she’s like, well, what do I do? I’m going to open a market. Well, nobody’s buying from the market. They don’t know what to do with it. Well, I’m going to open up a steam table and display the food so people can get samples of it so I can sell it. It was a means of satisfying some homesickness through food unknowingly molding a culture and society of Asian food in the South.It was pretty special.It is really special. And you’ve captured their story and the story of the restaurant in your first cookbook, Family Thai: Bringing the Flavors of Thailand Home, which came out October 7th, which is technically your second baby because you have your beautiful daughter, Henley.Yes.What of these recipes did you want to pass on from your parents to her?We’ve known each other for a little bit. And you knew when I was kind of toying with the wanting the child, you just had your baby when we were hanging out. I’m in LA. She was born when my deadline for my book was due. She came about a week and a half early, which wasn’t too dramatic, but just dramatic enough. I was holding her in one hand with a pillow with my computer in my other hand, trying to type my deadline at three in the morning.I love it.In terms of the recipes in the book, that was really easy. It really comes from when my mom passed away and we started getting overflow of messages from loyal customers that just loved my mom for 40 plus years. I just knew I had to archive her stuff for everyone.Of course.The story was either your mom would bring us in the kitchen and she would teach us, or she came to our house and showed us, or I’m so sad I never got to finish her promise of learning how to make this.Right.Being that my sister was in fashion and I was the one in food, it’s my responsibility almost to continue this legacy and archive these recipes for everyone. And in the same breath, I also know my mother would not want me to be stagnant in my career. I needed to cook how I cook with the foundational outline of what this food should be in her mind. Basically, I felt like I was given the green light to elevate what she had laid out for me to begin with.Sure.In the book, it’s mom’s version, not the Thai way, but mom’s Thai way, plus my Thai way on top of that.Which is amazing.Yeah.Preserving that legacy of recipes, especially when your family is centered around food is really important. Even having the courage and the conviction to start cooking your family’s recipes takes a lot, which I learned from cooking from my grandmother’s and my own mother’s recipes.Yeah.Which is why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules for mastering your family recipe. And the very first rule is probably the hardest one because it really is about getting started and sticking with it. What is your first rule?Rule number one is to commit to the original recipe and not deviate from it for a while.Mm-hmm.It’s tough.Yes.Baby bird is taught and encouraged to fly out of the nest and move on.With its own style of flying.With its own flight.Yeah.When I was thinking about writing a cookbook, long before I actually got the cookbook deal, I was starting to archive recipes, not knowing where it would go.Of course.So I remember this one day, I called my mother and I was like, I need Yaya’s shumai recipe. Yaya is Chinese for grandma. We’ve served this recipe for four decades at the restaurant. My mom was on the phone and she was going through it and I was trying to dissect it because she doesn’t have chef’s language, right?Of course.A little this, but a little that. And I’m trying to understand and transcribe it. And right before we hung up, she goes, hey, hey, hey. And I could hear her calling me back to the phone. She goes, please, whatever you do, do not change this recipe. For many reasons, it’s perfect. Be good. I love you. Three days later, she passes away unexpectedly.I’m so sorry.That was our last conversation was that recipe.So not to go there.No, of course.So for me, it’s very special. And for me, the aunties in the kitchen at the restaurant that have been making this dumpling since before I was born and have the ritual on every Monday as we make 2,000 dumplings, we’re not deviating from this recipe ever. And when I make it, I know that’s the reason why.Mm.And people can taste it. The generations of people that come into the restaurant to eat it, they have shared this with their children who now have children. It’s become a stap

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Josh Donald and Kelly Kozak, the duo behind Bernal Cutlery in San Francisco. For twenty years, they’ve built a world-class knife shop rooted in craftsmanship, curiosity, and community. What started with a few sharpening stones has evolved into a creative hub for makers, master craftsmen, and cooks alike. In our conversation, they share their Five Rules for Staying Teachable, which include staying humble, opening yourself to new ideas, and moving forward even when you think you’ve mastered your craft. It’s a reminder that no matter how far you’ve come, there’s always room to grow if you stay curious.There’s something about hearing Josh and Kelly talk about staying open—after two decades in the game, that reminded me why I still love doing what I do. I’ve built shows, books, podcasts, and brands, but I’m still learning every day. I still want to get better. Still want to be pushed. Whether it’s cooking, writing, or parenting, I’m always searching for that edge, that feeling that there’s more out there to master if I lean in and stay teachable. Their story isn’t just inspiring, it’s grounding. A reminder that growth isn’t a milestone, it’s a mindset.Photo by Molly DeCoudreauxFive Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Hello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with two icons from the world of knife making, Josh Donald and Kelly Kozak, who are co-founders and co-owners of Bernal Cutlery, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. They join me today to share their five rules for staying teachable. They talk about their continued practice of sharing knowledge, how they keep their original intent in their daily mindset, and that the only way to grow is to keep pushing yourself into uncomfortable territory. This is a great conversation for anyone who is interested in learning a skill, running a small business, or anyone who is looking for inspiration to keep learning new things every day. So let’s get into the rules. Josh and Kelly, so great to see you two again. Congratulations, 20 years of vernal cutlery. Always a pleasure to sit down and chat with you too. Thanks for having us. Thank you so much for having us. You started the business two decades ago, sharpening knives, which is an artistic skill unto itself. When you got started, how did you learn those initial skills? What was your mindset back then?There was making ends meet and there was having fun and they were kind of both interplaying with each other. Initially it was, hey we have 40 bucks let’s get this business going a little bit, bought a second stone to sharpen with. And then it was, hey it sucks only sharpening with two stones, let’s try and find a little machine that will work with this. And then it was, hey we’ve got 80 bucks that we could bring down to the flea market and see about buying some knives to resell.I just remember it so much differently because he was really frustrated with that learning process. And I remember him staying up all night, sharpening a pair of pruners and a lot of, how are we going to ever make money at this? I remember you telling me to stop going to the flea market at one point too. You’re like, can you just skip it? Why don’t you go later in the morning? But it was like, no, man, you got to get there at 5am. You don’t find the good s**t if you get there at 10. Yeah. That frustration, especially early on, could keep you from going forward.But you go from sharpening knives and refurbishing knives to getting the idea to make your own. What was that deciding factor to start making your own knives? What were some of your earlier mistakes that you had to push through? Oh. We’re still pushing through them. Yeah. The thing with pushing and with doing new stuff is that you have to get really comfortable with doing things badly. Especially if you’ve gotten used to doing something well. If you’re doing new stuff, if you’re trying to push it, you will find yourself doing something you don’t know how to do. None of this is anything that we’ve done 100% by ourselves either. Whether that’s having people on our crew that we’ve done this with, whether that’s reaching out to outside help in one way or another. Being stubborn and not being too stubborn, it’s a funny formula.What I love about how much you guys have done is that you continue to teach and give back to those who want to learn. Why is it so important to you to pass along what you’ve learned and to teach the next generation of knife makers? For me, I have a real general mantra is that I can’t keep what I have unless I give it away. There’s this sense of generosity, kind of all the senses of the word generosity, right? Generosity with allowing people to change and grow. Generosity with maybe not knowing a full story or a full aspect of a process. Or generosity with, I see that you’re a budding line cook. Let me try to hook up a nice deal with these three things for you so that you can get started at your job. All the senses of generosity.I really enjoy teaching because I didn’t have anybody to teach me when I was learning how to sharpen. And there were certain things that took me a really long time to figure out that I’m able to share with people in my classes that makes me happy to be like, hey, just so you know, if you do this, you’re going to skip over two years of trial and error. Right. And then there’s just the sharing of knowledge with our customers about just dorky stuff if they’re interested. Then I think then people can kind of get another sense of appreciation for old stuff and they’ll be excited to see what I found. Or they might think that you’re being too generous. Usually I can tell when they’re trying to inch away.For those who haven’t been lucky enough to be in the store or learn directly from you, I’m really excited for you to share your five rules for staying teachable, which can be applied to either knife making, knife sharpening, or just life in general. You have picked such an elevated craft. Your first rule gives you this mental approach to let you really have fun with it. What’s your rule number one? Rule number one is don’t take yourself too damn seriously. And it’s actually rule number 62 in the recovery community. It’s a very well-known rule. Having the option to be wrong is always really important with learning. You kind of stop learning if you stop questioning things a bit.Outside of the main categories of what we do here, we also run a store. Yes. We are a small business. Of course. This rule is really important to me just in the context of working in a community with people and trying to do our best work, to be our best selves when we show up at the door. And what this rule means for me is to like, don’t forget the joy. Don’t forget these are the things that really matter: creating a great place to work, creating good products that we’re putting out there in the world, good experiences, and that we’re able to maintain good relationships with each other.As you have grown and you have the store, you have a reputation, you’ve become a leader in the industry, it’s sometimes easy to forget where it all started. But remembering your origins is a guiding principle of your rule number two. That’s right. Shorthand in Japanese is Shoshin, beginner’s mind. Remembering what it was like to learn the stuff in the first place, bringing yourself back to your original intention, remembering the learning process and that you are still part of it. And then also folding in the perspective of having succeeded at something when I’m trying something that is potentially not going to be easy and that I will have missteps. It allows me to be a little bit kinder to myself if I don’t get it 100% right the first time or the second. Even if it seems like, oh, 20 years is a long time, it’s like, nah, 20 years really isn’t. A lot of these things people have been working on for hundreds and hundreds of years, and it’s all an ongoing process, right?Being in any profession for 20 years, someone might immediately write off people just getting started or those younger than them as not knowing anything and not listening to them. But I’ve always felt that fresh perspectives keep you learning and keep pushing your own ideas forward, which ties directly into rule number three. Learning from young people and people who are beginners when you are not is f*****g bomb. I wrote that rule and I wrote it thinking about the teenagers that I’m currently living with. But specifically to our industry, sometimes we have people that come through and do a stage with us and then they go off and open up their own operation. You’ll see them get something or get good at something and then it’s contagious. The joy and the confidence boost that they get is contagious.Being able to appreciate what people are good at and not feel threatened by it is really important to you as a business person, as a craftsperson. Being able to be stoked by people getting something right and seeing somebody do well brings to mind that we each have different things that we’re good at. Maybe if I don’t hate somebody that’s doing that kind of work, I can watch them work and learn something from them. That openness to learning, having that flexibility is a great way to keep moving your own skills forward, which is a big part of your rule number four, which also does dovetail with rule number three.What’s your fourth rule? Teach to be teachable. For me, when I’m teaching people how to sharpen, I have to put myself in their shoes and I have to think about what would it sound like for them to hear what I’m saying? So how do I better say what I want them to do? It helps me to stay in that mind frame of somebody learning. That resonates with me with teaching people how to sell at the counter. Whenever we hire

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with San Diego chef Tara Monsod to talk about one of our shared favorite topics: how to travel the world with food as the focus. Fresh off a trip to Japan and the Philippines, Tara shares her Five Rules for How to Travel & Eat Like a Chef on Vacation, covering everything from researching spots that locals love, to trusting a side-street ramen line, to balancing Michelin meals with late-night street carts. Whether you’re a chef planning your first real vacation or someone just trying to make their next trip tastier, this chat is a good guide for how to turn every bite into a deeper connection with the place you’re in.Food is always the anchor for how I travel. It’s not just where I eat, it’s how I learn about the people, the rhythm of the city, the culture. I love the chase: the deep dives into local blogs, DM threads with chefs and friends, the obsessive spreadsheet with an itinerary built around breakfast, lunch, snacks, and dinner. When you take the time to really dig in, you’re rewarded with more than just good meals. You get stories, context, and flavors that stick with you long after the trip ends. Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptionHello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with one of my favorite people in the culinary scene, Tara Monsod, who’s the executive chef at Animae and Le Coq, both in San Diego. She recently returned from her adventures in the Philippines and Japan, and she shares her five rules for how to travel and eat like a chef on vacation. She talks about the importance of doing one’s research, how to strike up a conversation with someone who works at a restaurant that you love, and how keeping your eyes open while walking the streets of a new city might just land you the best meal on your trip. It is a great guide for anybody who wants to make food the focal point of their next adventure in the world. So let’s get into the rules.Tara, so great to see you again. Always a pleasure to sit down and chat. How’s everything been? Everything is great. Sandy was perfect weather right now. Yeah, everything’s good. Just busy in the labs. Just finished one with Cato not that long ago. Yes. Yes, it was honestly a great day. What I like about your approach to living is that you work really hard and then you also travel. And when you travel, food is the main driver of how you approach your adventures. Why does a city’s culinary landscape dictate your decisions?Who doesn’t travel for food? I mean, I don’t know, but sure. Yes, there are people out there. I’m just kidding. It’s just a good reflection of the people in the city. If there’s a lot of diversity in food and a lot of options for food, it’s the best way to experience the culture. Other people who may be transplant in those cultures. So when you go to other cities, it’s nice to just engulf yourself in all of those flavors as a chef and just kind of see what people are doing in the culinary world.You recently got back from the Philippines and Japan, which are two of the biggest culinary worlds out there. What were some of the highlights? How did you even begin to get into what you wanted to do and where you wanted to eat in the city? Oh, my gosh. I mean, it’s really overwhelming when you’re going into a city, especially so compact like Manila and Japan. One of the first things I really do is see what people are talking about. Michelin guides are a good way to start what local bloggers are saying and then kind of go through a black hole of seeing where people are eating and what people are talking about and what’s exciting.In Japan, the standards of what is good. Imagine the best restaurants, some of the best Japanese restaurants here. And then that is the starting level of every other Japanese restaurant in Japan. I was geeking out, man. There’s food everywhere. And not only that, it’s just executed the best way they can with a lot of respect. People are generally sitting and enjoying their meal. And it’s just such a great experience. It could be it’s from a 7-Eleven or a bento box place in the subway to a Michelin dinner or a sushi omakase. No matter what I had, it was delicious. Maybe I’m like a little... high off of just being in Japan, but I generally enjoyed just the attention to detail. For me as a chef, it’s just so appreciated.I remember the first time I went to Tokyo, it was with my wife for a honeymoon and I got so overwhelmed with just how many options there were. My buddy who spent a long time there said, you have to treat it like you’re going back just so you can enjoy where you eat and where you go. How do you not get overwhelmed, especially when you’re mixing personal eating, but also professional research?It’s very easy to get overwhelmed because you only have so much room in your stomach. You just have to know that whatever meal you’re going to pick, it’s going to be good. And it’s worth it. Sometimes when I think I have it figured out of where I’m going to eat, I’ll pass by a place, see a long line. And I’ll be like, what is it? There’s a bunch of locals standing in line. I’m going to stand in line. Whatever it is, please give it to me. Two ramen meals, actually, I had were the best ramen that I had in the city. That rule always works for me.A lot of people can follow someone like you on Instagram and think that, oh, well, you’re a chef. There’s just an automatic list that gets handed to you when you go to a new country. I know from experience, it’s a lot of work, which is why I’m so excited that you’re here today to share your five rules for how to travel and eat like a chef on vacation. And your first rule is all about research. Yes. What’s your rule number one?Look at what the locals are saying, whether it’s local papers, local magazines, credible foodie. You can kind of filter out some people who do it for the aesthetics and some people do it for the food. If you’re somebody who dines out a lot like I do, you can tell from pictures and their lists, whether it relates to you as what you’re looking for is dining. The power of social media is great. You can literally go through different lists and then go through a black hole that’ll link you from one place to the other. If somebody is eating somewhere and is public and you see their trend of where they eat, then you can go through their list and it’s from people who actually ate there. Then you can actually see what they ordered, maybe have an idea of which direction that you want to go, whether it’s all hype or whether it’s really legit food.I was just having that conversation the other day trying to explain to people the difference between food influencers and people who I trust who have good taste in food. What you find those people, that’s who you follow and that’s who you get your recommendations from. Right. But sometimes it’s just about literally being on the street and seeing where the locals are hanging out, which ties directly into your rule number two. If you see a room full of locals in there and not a bunch of transplants or tourists, that means it’s a great place. Yes. That means if the locals are eating, it’s usually a good sign that that place is pretty legitimate.For me, in multiple cities like Mexico City, Philippines, Manila, a lot of those places ended up giving me some of the best meals I’ve had. We had a long day. We went to Tokyo Disney because I wanted to experience Disney again for the first time. Of course. Wow. Yeah. Sure enough, duck ramen, solid freaking bowl, man. What they do is it was a ramen that’s only made from duck, green onions, and water. They simmer it for hours. I kid you not, one of the cleanest bowls of ramen I’ve ever had. Two pieces of duck, really solid noodles, clear broth. And then they had extra duck on the side. It was just very, very satisfying. That and a beer. I’m chilling.Sometimes those side streets offer the most surprising meal. What I’ve also found in my travels is that while the big cities are great and those always have well-researched lists and you can always get recommendations there, traveling to the outskirts can get you some of the best food on the road, which aligns with your rule number three. Well, number three is exploring smaller neighborhoods off the beaten path. A lot of people might stick to the major cities or where the tourists at, which is fine. There’s some things that are popular as they should be because they’re awesome. But the locals, usually they aren’t in the middle of the city. Maybe they might be outside of the city. It’s like New York to Brooklyn. Every city has that. Tokyo is great and concentrated, but there’s a lot of great things in Osaka. There’s a lot of great things in Kyoto. Same thing with Manila. Manila is so concentrated that it’s hard to get anywhere. But when you start to go on the outskirts of the Philippines where it’s a little more rural, a little more quiet, you experience the city and the food in a different way.Once you get a chance to experience good food in a city, you start to trust the people who are eating there and the people who work there. Your rule number four encourages people looking for their next good meal to do this. If you’re at a restaurant that you’re really excited about and you’re just sitting there at the end of meals and you’re like, wow, that was a solid meal. I start to talk to staff. Yeah. I talk to servers, the chef. I love sitting at a counter bar, just chopping it up with the people who are cooking in front of me and be like, where do you eat? Where do you go after work? Where’s the industry spot? Where do you go have a beer? What’s a good deal? Especially when it comes to late night, they are really great at giving you great recommendations because I can tell you that I’m definitely one of those people will ask me.

If you’ve ever stared at the butcher counter like it was a final exam you didn’t study for, this one’s for you. In this episode, I sit down with Mark and Brian Lobel, legendary New York butchers, father and son, and sixth-generation meat experts. They’ve turned their family craft into a masterclass on meat and share their Five Rules for how to Never Be Afraid of Cooking Meat Again. From doling out advice at their iconic Lobel’s butcher shop on Madison Avenue to teaching people how to pick the right cut, the Lobels don’t just sell meat, they teach you how to respect it. Learning how to pick and prepare meat is one of those quiet turning points in your cooking life. It’s where confidence meets instinct. You start to understand what you’re buying, how it feels, how it cooks, and what happens when you give it time and care. Even after years in the kitchen, there’s always something new to learn, some little tip or trick that changes everything. That’s what I love about talking with Mark and Brian Lobel. When you get advice from a family that’s been butchering for six generations, it’s not just about meat, it’s about tradition, patience, and craft. Listening to them feels like being invited behind the counter, shown the ropes, and reminded that great cooking starts with curiosity and respect for what’s in front of you.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.Today, I am joined by Mark and Brian Lobel, father and son, legendary butchers in New York City whose family has been serving and selling meat to the public for over six generations.They share their five rules for how to never be afraid of cooking meat again. They talk about how setting yourself up for success starts with selecting the right cut of meat, that when you’re using high quality beef, simplicity is key, and how to ensure the perfect cook every time by taking out the guesswork.It is a real masterclass from a family who’s made it their life mission and business to know everything there is about meat. So let’s get into the rules.Mark and Brian, it’s so nice to meet you. Been a longtime fan of your butcher shop. Thanks for sitting down with me, especially right after Labor Day. I’m glad you had time to catch your breath.Thanks. It’s a pleasure to meet you and a pleasure to be with you.When I think about family businesses, being a butcher or owning a butcher shop always comes to top of mind. Why is butchering the type of profession that gets passed down from generation to generation?That’s exactly true. It does get passed down. And that’s because when your father is a butcher at the age of eight or nine or 10, you grow up in the butcher shop and you grow up taking care of customers and get a real education on how to cut meat and how to prepare meat. The whole retail mentality behind being in the butcher shop and selling. You generally become a butcher because your father was a butcher. Your uncle was a butcher. Somebody in your family was a butcher. There’s a lineage there.There’s also a lot of passion behind it. It was really all I knew growing up. Even from a young age, it was like, okay, my dad went to work, and when my dad went to work, he was also there with my uncle. And then he was there with my grandpa. He was there with my cousin. So there was that camaraderie and family bond that was always instilled in us at a young age. We’re such a close family. We’re always all together. So business is always being discussed. And when you’re young, it’s so cool to think about, wow, one day I’m going to be a part of this and then I’ll be a part of that conversation. That also adds an element to it as well.Having a great butcher is one of those things in life that people often brag about. Why is it such a special relationship to have? What makes it so important to living the good life?You really develop a bond with your customers because food is so important. We’re there for recipe questions. We’re there for, “I want to create this dish—so what kind of meat should we use?” I think it’s the wealth of information that butchers have. We’re in a unique situation being where we’ve been for so many years as well. A lot of our customers have become really like family. They’re there because their parents shopped there, and they’re there because their grandparents shopped there. It’s such a personalized relationship between customers and us, and even our other butchers, that just makes it so unique and so special.I’m not sure there’s another business out there where you have the relationships with the customers the way we do. Those relationships are so important. They just feel like extended family.And I know that your family started raising beef in Austria in the 1840s and then made its way to America in the 1910s. And you’ve been selling ever since. Is there anything you practice or share with your customers that you’ve been doing since day one?It’s sharing the information that we have and the knowledge base that we have to be able to educate our customers on how to cook. I mean, if you call the Madison Avenue store, you get that customer service. People are really looking for customer service.Just to piggyback off on what my dad was saying, to explain the difference in quality—what you’re getting here versus what you’re getting somewhere else—how important the quality of the beef is to your eating experience is something that we provide to them as well.Being able to take generations of knowledge and distill it to share it with your customers is such a beautiful thing. And it’s why I’m so excited to have you both on to share your five rules for how to never be afraid of cooking meat again.Now, it’s very easy to see the end result of a dish—a beautiful roast comes out, steak, a whole chicken—and be intimidated about how someone got that perfectly cooked piece of meat on the plate. But as you both know, the entire process starts with selecting the right cut. What is your rule number one?The first rule would be pick out the best possible piece of meat that you can at the grocery store or the butcher shop. There’s a method to this madness. There are three main grades of beef: prime, select, and choice. Wherever possible, you want to be able to get a USDA prime piece of meat. So important. Not every place will be able to sell prime. Lobel’s, we have only prime. Then you go for choice. And then if you can’t find choice, you go for select.When you go over to the counter, when you go over to the case, the average person’s in the supermarket and they’re not sure what to look for. First, you want to look at the marbling—and those are the fine streaks of fat that run throughout the meat. You also want to look at the fat on the meat. So if you’re looking at the outside fat on the steak, you want it to be milky white. You don’t want the fat to be grayish in color. Also, the color of the meat should be red. Sometimes you’ll see a grayish tone and that could indicate that the meat is a little older than you want it to be. It won’t be bad for you, but it’s not going to be as fresh.If you’re going to be looking for lamb or veal, and you look for a little red on the back of the bone, that determines youth in the animal. Younger animals will eat a little bit better. If you’re looking for some lamb chops, looking for some veal chops, if you look hard enough, you can find some marbling. Go for that. Go for the marbling. It’ll help. It’ll make a better eating experience.Sometimes it can be a very intimidating experience. You see people, they’re pacing back and forth. They’re on their phone. They don’t know what to do. Don’t be afraid to ask the butcher at the butcher shop. Don’t be afraid to ask somebody at the supermarket for help. Don’t be afraid to ask somebody next to you who’s also buying something for help.Good point. I’ve seen my dad helping people in public before when he’s just looking.I’ve been guilty of that also. Never be afraid to ask your butcher: “This is what I like. This is what my wife and I would like to have for dinner tonight. Can you pick out a great steak for us?” People really need to just be more comfortable asking for help. That’s what we’re here for.Most people can agree on selecting the best quality of meat to set yourself up for success. But once you get that cut home, then it comes down to personal preference when you’re preparing to cook. What’s your rule number two?When you have such a high-end steak that’s going to provide so much flavor naturally, less is more. Keep it simple. Easy. Olive oil. Black pepper. Kosher salt. Over-seasoning and getting too excited is very, very easy. And we’re all guilty of it—including me, including my dad. We’ve all gotten lost in the moment.Lost in the sauce.When I get my meat home, I like to pat it dry before I season it or marinate it. I won’t wrap it. I’ll actually leave it open in the refrigerator. That whole process of leaving it open and that drying process, putting it in the refrigerator after you season it, will help you get a better crust after you cook it.Marinating also—a lot of fun. Whether it’s chicken, whether you use a barbecue sauce, whether you use a salad dressing. We have a blast marinating our beef kebab, our chicken kebabs. My dad is a wizard behind the grill, so he’s always coming up with new ways.Nobody goes near the grill in my house except…That’s a lot of fun.No one could ever ask me where I learned to grill because if I’m not getting a chance to do it…Oh, please.When I first started cooking meat, there was this method about touching different parts of your hand to understand the doneness of what you were cooking. But what I found is that it was a lot of guesswork and I ruined a lot of good cuts of meat. Your third rule talks about using this instrument to ensure cooking perfection every time.You should never gue

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I’m joined by photographer, content creator, and newly minted cookbook author, Lindsey Baruch. Her debut book Something Delicious is a love letter to everyday cooking, filled with flavor-forward recipes and the kind of real-life strategies that make dinner actually doable. We dive into her Five Rules for Grocery Shopping that Make Dinners Easy: From Post-it notes on the fridge to forgiving your fishmonger, her approach is equal parts practical, personal, and built on a deep love of food, farmers’ markets, & feeding yourself well.I still remember my mom walking me through the grocery store the day before I left for college, showing me how to pick a ripe melon and avoid the sad lettuce in the back of the case. It wasn’t formal, but it stuck with me, and it’s probably why I still love the ritual of shopping for food. These days, it’s the LA farmers’ market that lights me up. There’s nothing better than being surrounded by peak-season produce and letting the ingredients tell you what to cook. Whether it’s radicchio or fresh figs or some unique squash I’ve never seen before, that moment of inspiration, that little spark at the stand is where the meal starts.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptHello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with content creator and photographer, Lindsey Baruch, whose new book Something Delicious: 100 Recipes for Everyday Cooking is out now. She shares her five rules for grocery shopping that makes dinner easy. We chat about how to organize your fridge through personal notes to yourself, how having a plan is important, but how being open to pivoting can make a meal magic, and that shopping for yourself doesn’t start in the grocery store—it actually starts at home. It is a great way to set yourself up for success, whether it’s for dinner or any meal that you cook at home. So let’s get into the rules.Lindsey, it’s so nice to meet you. Congratulations on your beautiful first cookbook, Something Delicious. It is an incredible tribute to learning how to cook. Thank you. From your family, starting with your grandmother, what is a fundamental that she shared with you that still guides you today?A fundamental that she taught me is to just stay present and to have a good time. She taught me how to enjoy our time together in the kitchen, cooking together. We would always bake cakes together when I was sick from school. She lived next door to me, by the way—amazing—so I would just hop right next door. We would make tea and pound cakes. She had those indented molds, you know what I’m talking about? We would cook those together. So I feel like that’s something that she really just taught me—to be present and enjoy cooking by myself and enjoy cooking with other people.It’s such an incredible way to learn how to cook and have it be such a natural part of your life from childhood. As you get older and cooking goes from a fun activity with Grandma to something that you have to do every day, it can get a little stressful. Oh yes. You kick your cookbook off with that question, “What are we going to eat?”—which has got to be one of the most vexing questions of anyone who’s got to feed themselves or their family. I know.What is your advice for flipping that to something that you look forward to? Or are there just days when it’s going to be a struggle? I have a list of recipes where it’s: I don’t know what I want to eat, but here’s my list of things that I can whip up. I’m a list girl. So I just have a list in my notes of “I’m hungry, what can I make with what I have in my kitchen?” Oh, I can make tuna most of the time. I can make pasta most of the time. I went to the market and I got yogurt and granola or something like that. So I always have those essentials to make sure that I’m set up and I’m always able to eat something delicious. No pun intended—but it is pun intended. I love it. Puns allowed.I never thought about having a list. I have one meal that I always go to when I’m at the grocery store. Oh yeah? What is it? Pork chop, potatoes, and whatever vegetable is in season. Ooh, that sounds amazing. Yeah. But the idea of having a list of five dishes that I could just look at and be like, “I’m going to cook this,” is such a great tip. Thank you.Born and raised in LA, you talk about being inspired by so many different ingredients and cuisines. How do you pull all those different inspirations together to inspire you to cook at home? I love the farmers markets. I feel like that keeps things really creative and fresh and not stale. That’s why I do like to go to the farmers market, because it does allow me the opportunity to explore what’s available. And that keeps ideas flowing and you don’t have to repeat the same patterns and the same recipes. So I feel like that always keeps things fun and exciting when I’m cooking—and recipe developing too.That teaching of what ingredients to shop for and how to shop for them—Grandmother did that for you. My mom taught me how to go grocery shopping the day before I left for college. But for those who don’t have someone who’s taught them how to shop for food, I’m excited for you to share your five rules for grocery shopping that make dinner easy. All of us have gone to the supermarket hungry. All of us have gone without writing anything down. It never turns out well. No, never. Every time I think I can ad-lib or I’ll remember everything, I come home and I’ve forgotten the mayo, the broccoli, something like that.What is your rule number one that shows that shopping actually starts at home? The first rule is to have a plan. You can’t aimlessly go to the store. Maybe I will for fun, but if I want to have a plan for dinner and I want to actually cook, that is where I need a plan. So what I’ll do is on a Saturday or a Sunday or even Friday, I’ll kind of think: What am I vibing with this week? What’s in season? What am I feeling? Am I feeling like a salmon? Am I feeling like a chicken? So I’ll start with the protein and then I’ll be like, “Okay, I want a salad with that or roasted potatoes.” Then what I’ll do is I’ll make a categorized list—fruit, vegetables—and then also location too. I’ll go to the butcher for my meat and then I’ll go to the farmers market for the produce. That is definitely my favorite, very first step to really making sure that I have my ideas down. I’m not going aimlessly to the market. And I have my grocery list, so when I’m there, I can just check it off right away.There is something so soothing about checking off that list and knowing what’s growing at that time. Building that list around what’s fresh and delicious—which ties directly into your rule number two.Rule number two: shop seasonally. And this doesn’t mean you need to go to the farmers market. You know, at most markets, they’ll have persimmons popping up really soon that aren’t there in the summertime. I find when I’m getting good in-season produce, I’m able to do less to it too. Just salt and pepper—I don’t need to zhuzh it up as much. It’s just tasty on its own versus like, a winter tomato needs more love.Thank you. Sometimes what stops me from buying so much fresh food or something seasonal is that I’ll open up my fridge and I forgot about some tasty tomato or an apple or a bunch of herbs that have gone to waste. Your third rule talks about how you can avoid having food go bad.After I’ll have my plan and I’ve gone grocery shopping, I’ll come home, clean out the fridge—sometimes even do that before—but I’ll organize it. And it doesn’t need to be, “Oh, I see everything,” because in this next rule, I’ll write down what I bought and what I plan to make with it. But I kind of do like to have a more visual cue for it. I’ll put a magnet on my fridge. Oh, you can do a Post-it note inside your fridge or on the table. I’ll write down everything that’s in the fridge—mint, parsley, cucumber, chicory. I’ll write down the ingredients and then I’ll write down what I plan to make with it. I love this. I bought chicken from the butcher and I bought chicory from the farmers market. I’m going to make a one-pot chicken chicory dinner. Be right over. I write that down so I’m not going in my fridge on Monday night and I have chicory and I have chicken, but I forgot I had the chicory and I didn’t have my plan. Now, I’m not only having my plan from step one, I now have it written down and I’m executing on the plan. And I find that allows me to have the execution to actually cook dinner without having to think of what I want to make for dinner—it’s already been planned. But also it saves waste where I would forget that I bought that ingredient.On the other side of the fresh ingredients and things that can go bad immediately is the pantry. And I can’t tell what is worse—having a full pantry and forgetting a fresh ingredient or having all the fresh ingredients and missing something from the pantry. True.What’s your rule number four? Rule number four would be: having the canned goods ready. Having my olive oil. I use a lot of vinegars. I’ll have all my vinegars stocked and ready to go. Also, vinegar is so versatile. If I want to change it up and change the vinegar, change the flavor—I have all of those there. I have different types of olive oil, different types of seasonings and spices. So I’m pretty much not shopping. I’m not going to the grocery store. I’m making tacos tonight and I spent $100 on a recipe for one night of tacos. I kind of am able to streamline the whole week’s worth of dinner by having those fundamentals in my pantry.We’ve talked a lot about planning. We’ve talked about the rules of how to shop to make dinner easy. This could stress people out and it could feel like if you don’t go in with a plan, you won’t have any sort of success—you need the list, you need the organization. But t

ChatGPT said:Yia Vang joins Five Rules for the Good Life this week to share lessons from the line and reflections from his incredible journey in food. Chef, storyteller, and champion of Hmong cuisine, Yia opens up about what it means to cook with purpose, lead a team, and feed a community. We talk family meal, kitchen language, and how to stay curious no matter where you are in your culinary path. And for the first time, he’s bringing that passion to The Chef Assembly in Los Angeles on October 20th. Catch him cooking live and sharing stories from the heart—tickets available here and more info at thechefassembly.com.I’ve loved watching Yia’s story unfold over the last few years—from the early pop-ups to the full realization of Vinai. He’s one of those chefs who truly cooks from the heart, channeling personal history, cultural legacy, and deep care into every dish. His food doesn’t just taste good; it means something. You can feel the weight of tradition and the joy of discovery in every bite. He’s doing the work of telling the Hmong American story plate by plate, and it’s been amazing to see how that voice has grown louder, prouder, and more confident over time.The Chef Assembly makes its annual LA stop on October 20th, with an impactful lineup of chefs and other culinary luminaries. The event will be held at ChowNow HQ and provide an inclusive space for connection between LA-based chefs, journalists, and industry colleagues from across the country and abroad. Supported by Resy, an American Express company, The Chef Assembly LA will consist of six panels, multiple delicious meal breaks, and a reception!Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with my buddy, Yia Vang, who’s the chef and owner of Vinay Restaurant and the host of some incredible cooking shows like Relish on PBS. He’ll also be in Los Angeles on October 20th for the Chef Assembly, where he’ll be cooking up some food and sharing his love and thoughts on Hmong cuisine. Today, he shares his five rules for being a good line cook. He talks about the importance of learning the shared language of the kitchen, how sharing a meal is more than just about eating together, and the best way to grow is to keep yourself curious. So let’s get into the rules.Yia, so great to see you and sit down with you. Congratulations, two stars in the New York Times. What an achievement. I loved seeing your face and your name in the article. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. I felt good about what the write-up was. I’m glad that I didn’t know when they came in. So that was good. Yeah, it’s a nice thing to wake up and open up the paper and see yourself end of this morning. You and I first shot together almost about seven or eight years ago now. You’ve been on your journey as a chef for quite a long time. Do you remember how it first felt when you stepped on the line at a restaurant?I remember my first line cook job, it was Italian Americano place. It was the kitchen manager literally was like, hey, do you know how to cook steaks? And I’m like, yeah, I think so. And he literally took me to the grill and was like, okay, you’re going to be making steaks all night. You know, the little thing, the whole like on your palm, rare, medium, rare, medium well, you know. Sure, yeah, and when you press your palm and you put your fingers together like he showed me real quick this is how you figure it out and then it’s like oh tickets are coming in get going and that was pretty much it and i just kind of turned it into a game in my head where i’m like okay here are the hot spots get the ticket time down and that’s kind of how i started with literally thrown into the deep end there’s no better place to learn how to swim than the deep end. Yeah or drown or drown or drown or drown.Getting started as a line cook is such a good entry point. How much of it was learning on the line? How much did you know? What do you think is a base level that people should know before they step into that role? Some of my first cooking jobs were just prep, peeling potatoes and, you know, washing me as a dish kid, you know? I worked at this racetrack where literally I put the burgers at the end of the conveyor belt and I picked it up on the other end, you know, when it goes through the broiler. My first experience on the line was tough because nobody was really communicating with each other. You would just expect to know stuff. But even now I get to run a line and in our restaurant, we’re constantly communicating each other. You know, I always tell the guys over communicate, over communicate. Even if you’re saying, hey, two minutes on the fried rice, it’s like awesome. Over communicate so that we’re all on the same page to get everything out. I learned that by being on some bad lines. Right, right, right, right, right. I can tell people there’s always a conductor. There’s always one person who leads the charge. So let’s all follow him or her. I tell people that life is kind of like working on the line. Know how to prep enough for the night, but also enough that if it does go over crazy, you’re not running to the back to prep some more while you work.Now that you’ve learned so much by being both on bad lines and good lines and now your own line, what do you look for when you’re hiring a line cook? The acronym I always have in the back of my mind when I look for people to come work on the line for us, it actually spells out the word FAT, F-A-T, right? So you’re looking for someone who’s F, faithful. They’re going to show up every day. And when they come in, they’re going to be coming in ready. A is accountable. They’re accountable for their actions. So if sometimes they mess up something, just tell us, hey, I messed this up. Awesome. There’s nothing so bad that you can do that we can’t unfix it or help. And in T, it’s trainable. We want them to be able to come with an empty mind to be able to be trained. So it’s just FAT, faithful, accountable, trainable.Having this wealth of knowledge and this experience and your openness to teach people who want to learn how to be a line cook is really exciting because you’ve been there, you’ve grown, and they’re giving it back, which is why I am so excited that you’re going to share your five rules for being a good line cook. Now, anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant or been in back of the house knows that there are so many specific terms and ways that people talk to each other when they’re cooking, which ties directly into your rule number one.Rule number one is food is a universal language we use to speak to each other every day. I firmly believe in that. I believe that every cook, everybody who comes in and cooks, we already know this language. We’re using it every day. For example, a lot of our cooks are Latinos. I don’t really speak good Spanish. When I say I don’t speak good Spanish, I don’t speak Spanish at all. I know a few phrases. We’re definitely speaking two different languages but tell ralphie this is how we like this cut to be or if i’m talking to patricio and i say hey this is how i want you to do the grill they understand that because we speak food first before any other language.That bond, that coming together, it obviously happens when you’re working and when you’re in the weeds. That type of companionship and being together extends beyond when you’re working. What’s your rule number two? Rule number two is never eat lunch alone. And when I say lunch, what I really mean is never eat family meal alone. I’ve been in the restaurant so long that we just have family meal. Family meal is part of what we do, right? People who aren’t in the restaurant world, they will look at me and go, so every day you guys eat together or you guys do a family meal together? I’m like, yeah. The one thing I love watching is all our cooks, our AM cooks before they leave, our PM cooks before they start, we all gather and then we just sit at the big table together and we just eat together. It’s so cool. It’s just this beautiful picture of all these chefs in their black shirt and they’re just eating together. And when they’re done in unison, they get up, they clear the table, they put on the aprons and they hop on the line and get ready. And it’s so incredible because I feel like that’s the most important part of building that team is eating together.Because you all work together and you eat together, doesn’t always mean you’re always going to see eye to eye. Absolutely. Your third rule encourages people who are on the line to ask questions first before they make a change. What is your rule number three? Rule number three is before you take down a fence, ask yourself why it was put there in the first place. It was a quote I heard a long time ago. I’m like, that’s so true. Because I think that especially young cooks are always thinking, I have an idea. I have an idea. And I remember as a very young person, my freshman year of college, I would have all these ideas. And I remember I had a mentor who said, hey, man, I don’t doubt that one day you’re going to be a leader. I don’t doubt that one day people are going to listen to you. But right now, it’s time to soak things in. And what I loved about what he said to me both in that moment, really in the trajectory of this 18-year-old kid. You have to ask, why are there certain boundaries that were set? And not saying to stay within the boundaries, but learn how to say, hey, if we need to move this fence, well, let’s realize why this fence was put here at this spot. There was a reason for it. Let’s figure out where that reason is before we start going, oh, well, I just kicked this fence down. Who cares? And that’s like cooking. Cooking, you have these base, these structures that we cook within. You have to have it. How you make your sauce, how you sear a steak, how you make rice. There’s these bases that you work on it. To say that, oh, well, I’m going to do it this way now, well, you just total

On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Chris Shepherd and Lindsey Brown, the power duo behind Southern Smoke Foundation, the organization they founded to provide emergency relief and mental health services to food and beverage workers nationwide. Chris and Lindsey share their Five Rules to Prepare for the Unexpected, including their new Crisis Toolkit, a great personal and professional resource to prepare yourself, your team, and your loved ones for scenarios like natural disasters, legal and medical emergencies, and more. If you're in or around Houston this Friday (October 4), make sure to get yourself to their biggest and most delicious fundraiser of the year, Southern Smoke Festival---a delicious day on Discovery Green feat. 85+ chefs and beverage pros from across the country.This conversation means a lot to me. The culinary community has always been one of the first to show up in times of crisis—feeding, supporting, organizing. But the recovery process is never quick. The heartbreak doesn’t end when the fire is out or the floodwaters recede. It’s long, hard, and often invisible. That’s why organizations like the Southern Smoke Foundation are so essential. They remind us that true support is sustained support. Lindsey and Chris continue to show up—not just with funding or resources, but with empathy, experience, and structure. Their work is an inspiring blueprint for how to care for a community, not just in the moment, but long after the headlines fade. Photo by Daniel OrtizTickets are on sale now! Mark your calendars for October 4, 2025, as the Southern Smoke Festival presented by Sysco returns to Houston’s Discovery Green. This high-energy event brings together 85+ top chefs, beverage pros, and live music for one unforgettable day. More than a feast, it fuels the Southern Smoke Foundation’s mission to support food and beverage workers in crisis. Come for the flavors, stay for the cause.Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.It is always a pleasure, and today I get to sit down with Lindsey Brown and Chris Shepherd, the Executive Director and the Founding Director and Honorary Chairman, respectively, of the Southern Smoke Foundation. They’re here to share their five rules to help prepare for the unexpected. We talk about this year’s devastating storms in their home state of Texas, how being prepared with checklists and important documents before disaster strikes is the best way to stay safe, and how taking care of your mental health is a key step to survival.So let’s get into the rules.Chris and Lindsey, always so good to see you two. Congratulations on the festival that’s coming up right around the corner. Thank you for making the time to sit down with me for the show.Your home state of Texas was hit with devastating storms and flooding in the Hill Country. I know that the Southern Smoke Foundation was early on the ground to help offer support and guidance during this terrible time. Can you share some of the details of your outreach immediately after the storm?We have a very focused niche when it comes to supporting natural disasters. There was so much devastation in that region, yet so few of those people that were devastated work in the food and beverage industry. Our Chief Mission Officer actually has family in Kerrville, so she spent a couple of days hitting the pavement, letting them know that we’re here and we’re available and we are accepting applications for assistance. What she found was a lot of hesitation and a lot of distrust. There had already been people down there scamming a lot of these folks.What we found is that a lot of people are on a business cash basis in that small town. One of the things that we remind people is you need to keep track of payments, you need to keep track of your pay stubs. Unfortunately, as a 501(c)(3), we’re not able to fund people who get paid in cash. To be really honest, it’s been a challenge for us to help anyone in that region for those reasons. There’s a lot of mistrust for people from the outside. A lot of those businesses are cash businesses. And as close as we are, we’re still so far away.Dealing with the Eaton Canyon fires, it really is a ground game. It just feels like such a tenuous time in these little communities and the culinary industry at large. What have you two seen personally, even closer to home?What we’re seeing on the emergency relief side is that we’re getting more individual applications, not disaster-related, than we ever have before. That can be a mix of a couple of things. It could be the fact that we have more awareness now than we have before. There’s a lot of crisis out there. There are a lot of people who don’t have a safety net. In addition to the quantity of applications, the grants that we’re giving out are larger than ever. The need is real.With these increased needs and your desire to support the community, how does Southern Smoke garner enough support and then distribute it accordingly?You mentioned Southern Smoke Festival, and so these events that we’re doing to fundraise are very important. Festival is still our largest annual fundraiser, and that, plus Decanted—which is our wine auction in the spring—that’s about half of our annual revenue. Everything else comes in through third-party events, fundraisers, corporate partners, individual donors. We’ve staffed up pretty significantly on our programs team. So we have more full-time people working cases. We also have more contract people working cases, and we have it in our business plan to continue to hire next year.It’s also about going out and doing events. Like this weekend, I’ll be in Greenville for Euphoria, their food festival there, raising awareness for Southern Smoke. And then literally going off to California to do another event to raise more awareness. As much money as we’re raising—or trying to raise—we still need to do more, because we also grow in what people know of us.Getting that awareness out and helping get people prepared for what life throws at them is really inspiring. That’s why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules to help prepare for the unexpected, which is something my family went through this year when we lost our house to the Eaton Canyon fire.Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize that.It’s okay. And I appreciate it. The rules we’re going to talk about—I see them, and I feel good because I knew some of them, but not all of them. When you are faced with even having the opportunity to evacuate or to see something coming that you have no control over, it’s easy to scramble. It’s easy to grab things that are personally important, but maybe won’t help you immediately in getting you even just to the next step of getting you back on your feet or in a safe place.Your rule number one is one of the most important things you can think about when dealing with something unexpected. What’s your first rule?Have your documents online and know how to access them. We see all the time—people don’t know how to find their paystubs. They don’t know where the copy of their lease is. All of those things they’ll need in a crisis, not just to provide to us, but any other disaster or crisis relief organization is going to ask for those things too. Creating a free Google Drive account and uploading the documents so you can access them from your phone, from any computer, anywhere you are, and just knowing that all of it is there in one place. Hopefully you will never need it—hopefully—but if you do, it’s there and you know how to find it.Had I known how on our own we were going to be, as far as having those types of documents or even having a plan, I would have prepared even more. Which speaks a lot to your rule number two: have a plan.Have a plan in the case of a natural disaster. Think about a lot of people that are having a baby—they’ve got their bag packed by the door. It’s another version of that. What do you do if something is headed your way and you have to evacuate? What are you going to have ready? How are you going to get the word out to friends and family or employees if you’re a business owner? Knowing exactly what that plan is, is so important.Well, it’s funny, because as we say this, I need to do this better.Everybody does.Everyone should be prepared.You touched on this earlier about people being guarded because the scammers have come in. And we’ve seen this as well too, in California, dealing with the fires. What no one really warns you about is that once you survive, once you get out, once you start rebuilding, a lot of people are going to come and try to take advantage of you.Which brings us to your rule number three: know what your rights are.One thing we found is that our case managers have really become advocates for our applicants when they’re working those cases. So they’re the ones connecting them with legal aid. They’re the ones connecting them with different organizations, immigration organizations. We’ve sort of built internally—we don’t post it because things change so quickly—but we have an internal Rolodex of different groups that we can recommend our applicants reach out to or connect them to. I mean, so many people that come to us don’t know about disability. There are even people who don’t know about SNAP benefits.We also partner with other like-minded nonprofits—if we partner with Giving Kitchen or we partner with CORE, we can help that applicant further with all of us working together and providing larger sums. Once you know your rights and once you know what you have access to, it really allows you to plan.And your fourth rule helps you stay organized—which, Chris, you know, anyone who’s ever stepped into a kitchen does this all the time just to make a meal or service happen. But people rarely do this for the bigger moments in life. What’s your fourth rule?Have checklists printed. I can definitely speak to Chris—he’ll cook Thanksgiving dinner and he’s got it all written

On this celebratory Rosh Hashanah episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Amanda Dell, Vice President of Programs and Communications at the Jewish Food Society. She shares her Five Rules for Creating New Traditions through meaningful gatherings rooted in food, memory, and hospitality. From hosting a modern Seder to using her grandma’s heirloom plates, we discuss hosting in a way that’s inclusive, generous, & deeply personal, without losing the thread of tradition, both old & new. As someone raising a family and navigating what it means to carry Jewish tradition forward, I’ve been thinking about how to celebrate the holidays in a way that feels personal, relevant, and connected. I’m not trying to replicate the past exactly, but I don’t want to lose it either. Amanda speaks directly to that balance. Her perspective shares the same permission to adapt—whether that’s hosting Rosh Hashanah dinner on a night when everyone can gather or adding new dishes to the Seder table—without guilt. It reminded me that what matters most is being with the people I love and creating something that’s ours.When people ask me about how the community rebuilding effort in Altadena is coming along, I point to what Randy, April & the entire team at Good Neighbor Bar have done with their patio. Home of the fire map, they transformed their parking lot into a family-friendly patio, featuring a rotating pop-up of local restaurants. Now that space is in trouble, & we need your support, Please sign here and help us get the word out!The Chef Assembly makes its annual LA stop on October 20th, with an impactful lineup of chefs and other culinary luminaries. The event will be held at ChowNow HQ and provide an inclusive space for connection between LA-based chefs, journalists, and industry colleagues from across the country and abroad. Supported by Resy, an American Express company, The Chef Assembly LA will consist of six panels, multiple delicious meal breaks, and a reception! Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I am joined by Amanda Dell, the Vice President of Programs and Communications for the Jewish Food Society. She is helping me ring in the Jewish New Year by sharing her five rules for creating new traditions. She talks about how honoring the past is the best way to create something new for the future, that the most important thing you can do is to get people together to celebrate, and how to always leave your guests wanting more. So Shana Tova and let's get into the rules.Amanda, happy new year on this air of Rosh Hashanah. I hope you got your apples and honey supply in check this year. So excited to chat today and feeling like we go way back, full circle, perfect for Rosh Hashanah in the new year. What I love about Jewish traditions is that they're always centered around food, which I know is something that you have dedicated a good chunk of your life to with your work at the Jewish Food Society. Yeah. Why do you think good food and Jewish traditions go hand in hand?What makes Jewish food so exciting and interesting, why it's such an integral part of our life, is a couple of things. First of all, Jews live all over the world. We do. Our food reflects that. We get to bring some of our traditions, what we eat, depending on the climate, the terroir, the location. Food is actually part of a lot of our holidays. A holiday like Passover, a food that we eat like matzah, it's part of the story. There's a lot of symbolic food. That's a really strong connection. And then there's also in the same vein as matzah, Shabbat foods are foods that are cooked overnight. By following the religion, you get these foods that are specifically made for Shabbat and holidays. I think that's what anchors a lot of Jewish food.Speaking of Passover, one of my favorite traditions was us completing the second half of the Seder during hockey intermissions. What do you love about people taking these historic holidays and making their own traditions within them?I love everything about that. When people want to honor the past, they want to bring some elements of their childhood, but they want to make them their own. To me, the perfect balance is bringing these two worlds together. At Jewish Food Society, we just did an amazing home visit with my friend Marissa Lippert. She's a chef and writer. She has this recipe from her grandma Bibi for kuchen, which is the generic German word for cake. It's something she grew up with. Phoebe would make it for Rosh Hashanah with apple, something very traditional. For Marissa, who's a chef, she puts her own spin on it. It makes it all seasons of the year based on what's at the market. She's feeling kind of puts her own spin on things.I think for people in our age range, I'll say, I think this is the pivotal time to move things into your domains. It feels natural amongst me and my friends that when you're younger and there's a lot of kids in the family, it's more natural to do these holidays and for everyone to come to the grandparents. But then as the older generation passes away and people start having their own families, that's the time it naturally morphs into the next generation.Creating tradition for our generation can be exciting because you get to bring your own perspective onto it, but it can also be really terrifying. I remember the first time I changed something a little bit in my grandma's recipe and I was so nervous for her to try it and she wound up loving it and we had this connection over food and me taking her recipe and making something new. What is the right mindset to have when you want to change a tradition and create something new?Honestly, it's as simple as the act of just being inspired by what has come before you. I love that. It's about thinking about that family member, remembering the tastes, remembering the smells, what the house was like by just updating something or being inspired by something that's more seasonal. It's really just about doing it. I really love this idea of taking all that you've experienced in your life, all that you celebrated, and really making it your own, which is why I'm so excited for you to be here to share your five rules for creating new tradition. Now, whether you're Jewish or you have a different cultural background, there has been so much that has happened that one can pull from to really find inspiration. And your first rule focuses on looking backwards to make the future yours.Number one we touched on a little bit. Honor the past while looking forward. I kind of cheat this one because I actually live in my grandmother's apartment. I totally get a pass there because it's truly honoring the past. My grandmother was a truly amazing person, and I grew up in a family that loves food, but my grandmother went to college. She had a job. She was interested in traveling. She was interested in going out to dinner. So for her, it was never about cooking all the time and being in the kitchen. She wanted to be more modern than that. But loved food and loved eating. So I think she would be so thrilled to see her home filled with my friends, with my sister, with my nephew. I saved some of her most special plateware and pieces. And I love to use those. And that's one way I kind of hold on to the past, but lets me then explore more what I want to cook.That's so beautiful. Yeah. The thing about holidays is that they come around every year, no matter where you are in your life. And so that means when you're getting people together and you're celebrating, that doesn't always mean you're going to be on the same page. But your second rule talks about having that openness to host and celebrate with people who might be in a different spot than you are at that time. What's your rule number two?Rule number two and rule number three go hand in hand. Second rule, meet people where they are. Third rule is the most important thing is getting people there. I just try to really put myself in someone else's shoes of all the people that I want to invite and be like, okay, when is it most convenient for everyone? If it has to be on the second night of a holiday, if it has to be shifted a little bit, we're not waiting till sundown if it's not convenient for everyone. It's really about meeting people where they are is like the best way I can describe it. I don't put so many guardrails around exactly when we're doing it in a certain way. And there's always room for another person. Yes. That is my third rule. It's about getting people there. Assemble a great group and everything will be totally fun as long as you get people there.Even if it's not a traditional group. Totally. For Passover last year, I co-hosted with my sister. It was at her place. We had some friends that weren't Jewish. We had some friends that I never celebrated holidays with before. We had my nephew there who was two. So we had to do like a lot of story time and going through the Seder plate, which was so fun and doing a very two-year-old focused explanation. And then once he went to bed, we broke out more wine.Pouring that extra wine and having extra dishes, even if they traditionally don't go with the dinner or celebration at hand, has always allowed me as a host to relax and also allowed me to push the guests to really indulge and to enjoy themselves. And this type of hospitality aligns with your rule number four.This is a big rule for me. Be generous with the food and the drink. Huge. I love to create something that's really bountiful. Not to hate on anyone, but I think we've all been to events or gatherings where it's very twee, very intimidating. And I hate that. I like to set up a drink area where people can pour their own drinks. I love to just have a lot of variety and make it as visually beautiful as it can and people feel comfortable to dive in.And not get too caught up in what one might expect from food and drink. Totally. Totally. I love to do a combination of s

On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with author, culinary producer, and certified legendary party person, Courtney McBroom. We talk about her new cookbook Party People: A Cookbook for Creative Celebrations, co-written with her best friend and fellow party person, Brie Larson. The book is a love letter to creative celebration, making space for joy, and giving yourself permission to host however you want. Courtney shares her Five Rules for How to Celebrate the Little Things, from picking the perfect music and lighting, to being open to messing things up, and to aligning good vibes with small moments. Whether you're a solo host or part of a party-planning duo, this one’s packed with smart, elevated, heartfelt advice for making any gathering feel good.Celebrating the little things has kept me grounded these past few months. After the fire, after the stress, after everything, I found myself holding onto small joys more tightly than ever. A Tuesday night dinner with friends, a good tennis session with my kids, and a nice stroll with my wife & the dogs. These tiny moments of gathering have shifted my whole outlook, and Courtney gets that better than anyone. This episode is a reminder that we don’t need an excuse to connect, only a little intention. I walked away inspired to keep throwing parties, especially it’s just my family and me making pizza in the backyard.Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I sit down with author, culinary producer, and legendary party person Courtney McBroom, whose new book Party People: A Cookbook for Creative Celebrations, that she co-wrote with her best friend and fellow party person Brie Larson, is out everywhere October 23rd. First, today she shares her five rules on how to celebrate the little things. We chat about how to give yourself grace when hosting, to be open to trying new things and not afraid to mess them up, and how a great aesthetic is just as important as great food. So let's get into the rules.Courtney, so good to see you. Congratulations on your book, Party People. Thank you. It's a gorgeous book. It's a fun book. It's one that makes me want to open my doors and welcome in the people. That's the whole reason why we wrote it. So I'm glad I worked on you.In your mind, what defines a party person? Here's the great thing about being a party person—it’s that literally everyone is a party person. It takes all kinds of things. It's genetically coded in our DNA to get together with other people and be around each other in real life. And so I would argue that even if you're sitting here before me today thinking to yourself, "I'm not a party person," I would argue that that's incorrect. It really is a state of mind.You wrote this book and have thrown quite a few parties with your best friend, Brie Larson. Throwing a party by yourself versus throwing a party with another person, even writing a book by yourself versus writing with another person, is a different approach. How do you compromise when throwing a party with a partner?Working with Brie specifically, we haven't really had to compromise. Because we've been doing this for years since we met, throwing parties together. We're both hardcore party people to the max. There was no real compromise so far. I mean, knock on wood, we're about to go on the press tour. So far, it's been really great. Compromise in general—that's something you have to do with everyone no matter what. If you have any other person in your life, unless you live by yourself in the woods and never speak to anyone, you're going to have to compromise with someone at some point.Brie and I specifically work together really well because I have more of a food background. So I handle most of the intense cooking and food prep and all that stuff. She'll handle getting the decorations and write out the menus and do the party game aspect of it. And of course, we cross over. Of course. And help each other in that. But we found our own natural niches in that way. And so it was really perfect. As a person who's thrown a lot of solo parties, it is very nice to have a partner in crime. It makes all the difference when you don't have to plan and host a party yourself. Yeah, helpful.According to you, everyone is a party person, but there are some people who may have never thrown a party or are trying to elevate their party game. What is the best piece of advice you've received or given?As a person who's made a living out of throwing parties, something that I've learned along the way—the hard way—is to not take it so gosh dang seriously. Make it easy on yourself. If you don't have the bandwidth to do a 10-course meal with 20 of your best friends, invite three people over and order pizza. I love that. It doesn't matter how intense or how far you go. The most important thing is being around people, whether that's your family or your chosen family.My place is really small, so I can't have huge parties. I'll fit four people and we'll have a dance party in my living room. Alzheimer, yeah. But I definitely grew up with Martha Stewart, who I love and adore. I grew up watching her and being like, everything must be perfect and all this stuff and thinking I could never. And then I realized slowly over time, oh, but I can. And it actually doesn't have to be perfect.This idea of finding the appropriate party that fits perfectly into your life is a really good approach to living, which is why I'm so excited to talk about your five rules on how to celebrate the little things, which is really something that you can incorporate into your daily life. The idea of understanding how not to stress yourself out is a big part of starting to celebrate your daily life. What's your rule number one?Rule number one is be easy on yourself. There's a reason why Thanksgiving happens but once a year. We don't have the bandwidth. Not everything has to be some huge blowout with the perfect flower arrangement and the perfect place settings. Let people help you.I remember reading back in the good old days, Emily Post—the etiquette of parties—which is like, never let your party guests help you clean up. I say, absolutely. I have one friend, her name's Erin, and she legitimately loves to clean. And anytime she comes over, I know that she will start doing the dishes and refuse to let anyone help. She always says, it's better to do them when you're drunk than when you're hungover the next day. And I'm like, you know what Erin, you're right. That's a bonus rule.People also really love to cook. If you're making a lasagna and you have friends come over, let them chop an onion. Help your friends help you. Put them to work.One of the greatest pleasures about bringing celebration and partying into your daily life is that impromptu, inviting people over, we're just going to get together, we're going to see each other, which you talk about in your rule number two.Rule number two is don't overthink it. Literally anything can be a party. It doesn't have to be some huge, we got engaged, I'm having a baby, I'm graduating. All of those can most certainly be parties, but you can also be like, oh my God, I found the perfect pair of jeans. Or my best friend finally broke up with that stupid dum-dum they were dating that everyone hated and she finally saw her worth. Literally all the little things that happened throughout our day, throughout our lives, those are all worth celebrating. We have to find those small moments and really lift them up.We've been taught as a culture to push things down and to not celebrate those things and to always be working, always be achieving, and that's not what life's about. One of the parties that we have in the book is called a "brag and complain" party. I love that. It's so fun. Just invite however many friends you want over, sit around a table, you can have little paddles or you can just raise your hands that either say "brag" or "complain." Everyone literally takes turns being like, I have a brag or I have a complaint. And you complain about something and it can be as banal and silly as you want it to be.And in the very beginning, people are a little shy and like, what? This is weird. I couldn't possibly. But then by the end, everyone's like, I have a brag. I have a complaint. And it's so fun and you feel so great afterwards. And just being heard by your peers about the small little things that you want to talk about is so important. And it's not something that we really get to do that much.Having that comfortability and having that openness when you have people over and you get into the habit of hosting and throwing parties at your house is great because it allows you a lot more swings or a lot more at-bats, which is something that I think about when you talk about your rule number three.Don't be afraid to f**k something up. Go in there and do it. Try the hard recipe. Do the thing that you aren't too sure if it's going to work out, but try it anyway. Ideally, you're throwing little parties constantly every day. Celebrating the thing. So it's okay if you do something and the soufflé falls. The most important thing is surround yourself with people that you love and care about and who care about you and love you and share that space together.Taking it a step further, don't be afraid to say or do the hard things. Parties are a liminal space, and we live in a society that's so shame-filled these days, and there's so many people pointing fingers and trolls. I really want to drive home how important it is that we use these places of communion to hold grace for each other and to let people be their wild, messy selves without either feeling ashamed yourself or making other people feel ashamed. It really is so important to have these safe spaces in real life and to be allowed to feel like you can mess up, whether that's messing up the soufflé or calling someone the wrong name.What I like about this mindset of celebrating the litt

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with chef & restaurateur Alon Shaya, co-founder & chef of Pomegranate Hospitality. He shares his Five Rules for Supporting Local Restaurants, and we discuss what it means to invest in your community, from celebrating the institutions that have built a city’s identity to connecting with new spots that are pushing the industry forward. We discuss how eating early helps a restaurant’s bottom line, showing up for seasonal traditions shows how much you care about their personal story, and how simply taking the time to thank the people who make your meal possible makes all of the difference.Talking with Alon reminded me how deeply I care about investing in restaurants at every level. It’s not just about fine dining or hard-to-book tables. It’s about the corner coffee shop, the deli that’s been in my neighborhood for decades, the taco spot that remembers my kids’ names. Supporting these places creates community, and every dollar spent, whether on a full tasting menu or a single flat white, goes a long way in keeping them open and thriving. I am excited to be moderating the closing reception of Nicholas Hondrogen's show at The Hole in Los Angeles on Sunday, September 14th at 12 pm. I will be chatting with Jeff Vespa, the Head of Nicholas Hondrogen's estate, and Jeremy Shockley, one of LA's dreamiest artists today.Family Style, LA’s all timer of a food festival, is back this Saturday, 9.13! Snag tickets here and keep your eyes peeled for exclusive drops!Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz.It is always a pleasure when I get to sit down with today’s guest, Alon Shaya, chef and co-founder of Pomegranate Hospitality. He’s here today to share his five rules for supporting local restaurants. We talk about the importance of continuing to dine at local legends, why eating on the early side isn’t just good for making bedtime, but also for helping a restaurant’s bottom line, and why thanking everyone who cooks and serves you at a meal is so meaningful. So let’s get into the rules.Alon, it’s so great to see you. Always excited when we can make time to sit down together. Thanks for coming on the show.Thanks so much for having me. I’m really honored to be on this and excited to get into what I love about New Orleans.One of the things I’ve always appreciated about your career is your deep love and appreciation for restaurants and their place in communities and neighborhoods. Why do you think they hold this kind of singular importance more than almost any other business?Well, you know, I’ll speak from my own experience. I was living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and in the aftermath of the storm, I saw it firsthand. I saw restaurants become the place where the community gathered, and I understood at that moment the importance they hold in people’s lives. It really set the tone for the way I believe I should operate my restaurants and what I love so much about restaurants — and about New Orleans as well.Having gone through the Eaton Canyon fire, it was restaurants who showed up first to support and feed the community. So many people want to give that support back, but it’s hard to ignore just how expensive it’s gotten to go out to eat. Why is it still so important for people who can to invest in restaurants, and for those who want to support but can’t afford a huge meal, what advice do you give them?I think it’s about supporting an entire ecosystem — not just sustenance, but human gathering. There’s a real cost to missing out on being together, engaging in live conversations, and restaurants are such a natural way to do that. Everyone has to find a place where they’re comfortable, and also comfortable with what they can spend. Things are more expensive today, sure, but you can still find good deals out there. I’ll grab a seat with a friend at a local dive, order a sandwich and a beer, and still feel really connected. There are ways to do it without spending a lot of money.I know that through your philanthropy with the Shaya Barnett Foundation, you’re teaching the next generation of chefs, restaurateurs, and even diners about what it means to be part of the culinary scene and support restaurants. Why is that so important to you?We have to. I was educated by someone. As a young cook and culinary student, I had people step up and reach out to me. They helped shape my career and my path forward. I feel like the greatest gift I can give is reciprocating that generosity and belief — that people can reach their goals, no matter what profession they choose. Being a chef, cook, manager, or server, there are ways to make it an incredible life. But you need people along the way who are willing to help show you that path and guide you forward. I hope I can make a difference in someone’s life the way people made a difference in mine. Passing along that knowledge is so important.And even beyond education, there’s an understanding that going out to eat represents so much more, which is why I’m excited for you to share your five rules for supporting local restaurants. Your first rule hits home, especially these days when it feels like every week I see a legend — especially in LA — shutting down.My first rule is always support the local institutions, the places that have been around for a generation or more. That’s such an important way to keep a city and a neighborhood grounded in tradition. It’s easy to get caught up in what’s hot and new, but I love going to those classic spots. In New Orleans, one of my go-tos is Pascal Manale’s. It’s been around for over 100 years and is just two blocks from my house. I bring friends and family there, show them off, and talk about how special the city is because of places like that.Going to the classics is big for me, but that also ties into my second rule: go early. Supporting a restaurant doesn’t always mean getting the Friday night 8 p.m. table. One of the greatest ways to show love to a place you care about is by going at off-peak times. I like to be in bed by 9 p.m. these days — two kids will do that to you — so I love the 5 or 6 p.m. reservation. It’s a great time to connect with the chef, manager, or team before the chaos hits. Showing up early lets you engage with the people who make it happen, enjoy the meal, and then get out so they can turn the table and make another round of guests happy.This ties into my third rule, which is about celebrating traditions. I love supporting restaurants during those moments when a city comes alive — whether it’s Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, or any other special time. Every city has its moments, and I like seeing what restaurants are doing to celebrate them. In New Orleans during Carnival season, for example, bakeries and restaurants all make their own versions of king cake. I love going around, trying them all, and showing my support for those limited-time offerings. It honors the moment and strengthens the connection between locals, the community, and the restaurants.Supporting restaurants also goes deeper than just showing up to eat, which leads to my fourth rule: show appreciation for the people who make the experience happen. I see how hard teams work, from the front of house to the back. Hosts greet hundreds of people a day with a smile, chefs work long hours under pressure, and servers deal with demanding guests. Saying thank you goes a long way. I always make a point to leave a good tip, wave to the chefs if I pass an open kitchen, or even ask to step back and thank the entire team personally. I think those moments really matter.Finally, my fifth rule is to support the people and places you believe in. I love eating at restaurants where I know the owners care about their team, their community, and their vision. When you go to a restaurant where the values align with yours, everything feels better — the music sounds sweeter, the food tastes better, and the whole experience just clicks. Supporting those kinds of people and places ensures that one day they’ll become the institutions future generations can enjoy.Amazing. Well, Alon, thank you so much for sharing. If people want to see what you’re up to or learn more about what Pomegranate Hospitality is working on, where can they go? How can they come eat your food and support your restaurants?Come visit us in New Orleans or Denver, Colorado. We have Saba in New Orleans, as well as Miss River and the Chandelier Bar. And in Denver, we have Safta, which continues to be a really special place for us. You can also follow me on Instagram at @ChefAlonShaya, where I keep everyone updated on what we’re doing, where I’m going, and who I’m supporting. Please follow along and say hello.Thank you so much for making the time. And hopefully I'll be at one of your spots sooner than later.Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Five Rules for the Good Life at fiverules.substack.com/subscribe

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I’m joined by Sue Chan, founder of Care of Chan and C/O/C Projects. In this episode, she shares her Five Rules for Hosting with Heart, covering everything from curating an intimate guest list to setting an intentional tone to the importance of toasting guests. We talk about what it takes to make gatherings meaningful, memorable, and grounded in personal connection.Talking with Sue brought me right back to planning our wedding with my wife, Anna. I remember the hours we spent debating the decor, the lighting, and how to make the ceremony feel like us. That experience taught me how powerful personal details can be in shaping a moment, and that same lesson echoed throughout this conversation. Storytelling has always been at the center of what I do, whether I’m building a show, producing an event, or just hosting dinner. Sue’s perspective reminded me that when you lead with heart and clarity, the people you gather can feel it.Photo by Matthew GlueckertFive Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptionHello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz.Today I sit down with my friend and colleague, Sue Chan, founder of Care of Chan, COC Projects, and a staple of the New York and LA restaurant scenes. She shares her five rules on how to host with heart. We chat about her lifetime dedicated to hosting, how storytelling is key to making any event a moment, and how gathering guests for a few words can make a night memorable.So let's get into the rules.Sue, always a pleasure to see your smiling face coast to coast. Thank you for taking the time and sitting down with me on the show.You and I have worked together in the past and talked a lot about our approach to hosting and hospitality. What I love about your approach is that it's been a part of your life almost your entire life. I remember the story you told me where you threw your first dinner party in second grade.Yes, it was for my birthday party when I turned eight years old.What has drawn you to hosting and throwing parties?I moved around a lot as a kid because my parents were academics. I pretty much moved every four years when I was younger. Because of that, I had to make friends in every single new school that I went to. So building community has just always been something really important to me, and something that I got a few reps in throughout my life.Some of those reps were working in the restaurant industry. You've worked at some of the most high-end restaurants in New York, and you're friends with a lot of chefs. What from that world have you incorporated both into your personal life and your professional life, especially with hospitality and hosting?I always take a hospitality-first approach to the events that we plan. It's not just about having a beautiful tablescape or having a delicious grazing platter. It's about what are the extra touches that you add to everything to make it feel super personal. Those details really make the difference between a good event and a great event.What I’ve always loved about Care of Chan, your agency, is that in addition to those details, storytelling is a big part of what you do. Why is that so important to you and to throwing a good event?Whenever we plan events, it's really important for us to identify what story we're trying to tell. That story can be something as simple as a theme, or it can be something as complicated as, “I want guests to walk away with this feeling.” From there, when you decide the food or the tablescape, it levels up into that story you're trying to tell.That story and hosting with intention and putting your whole being into it is something that is learned over time and something I think people can see on social media and not really know how to get started. That’s why I’m so excited for you to share your five rules on how to host with heart. This includes the details, the storytelling, everything that goes into the final iteration of a hosting moment or an event.Over the years, I have thrown parties both big and small, and I've really come to enjoy the latter—the smaller parties—which ties into your first rule. What is your rule number one?My absolute mandatory rule is no phones at all on the floor.Bonus rule?Yes. Almost like rule zero, like a starting point. Base level is absolutely no phones. Sure, take your content that you need to take at the beginning, but then put that phone away so you can be super present. But yeah, my official first rule is to keep it intimate—smaller, more curated guest lists. Curated doesn’t mean exclusive. It means that someone shares a common value or a common passion. Whether it’s a chess-themed event or everyone is from your running club or everyone is a mom, having some sort of curation really helps foster deeper connections. Those more intimate, curated groups allow people to have more intimate conversations.And it also allows you to feel comfortable in asking them for this, which is rule number two.Rule number two is invite contribution. Ask your dinner guests to take part in your event. Maybe they help cook. Maybe they bring their favorite bottle of wine. Maybe they bring a dessert that they love. Nothing feels warmer than a meal made together, no matter the contribution. Let’s say one of your friends isn’t a super foodie—maybe they can bring the flowers and arrange the flowers for the table. I think people come with greater intention when they have actually contributed to the night. Contributions through things like decor and helping to set the scene are really important, because even when you have people over to your house, there should be some sort of transformation.Or if you go to a bar or a restaurant, which ties directly into your third rule.Create a sense of place. Transport your guests to your favorite setting—real or imagined. Dress the room, dress yourself, dress your guests even. Are you throwing a pajama party and does everyone need to come in pajamas? Are you maybe giving them a set of pajamas to wear to the party? Perhaps you always vacation in Italy in the summer but weren’t able to make it this year, so instead you throw a party inspired by spending a summer in Italy. For that party, you bring in all of your favorite accents from Italy. You have a spritz bar. The entire menu is a coastal summer Italian menu. The décor is also in line with that. Perhaps you bring in some Italian ceramics to decorate the space, and then you play Italodisco. What can you do to transport your guests to your favorite setting?When you're hosting, when you're throwing a party—especially something that means a lot to you—people want to become a part of that world. I think with your rule number four, this is a must-have to make a party your own.Rule number four is add personal touches. Infuse the programming of the night with your craft. Personalize the takeaway. Show your guests a piece of you. Perhaps you serve your favorite childhood dish, and then that becomes a talking point and you can share that with your guests. When you share personal touches at an event, it really shows your guests that they matter. It’s that care, not extravagance, that really transforms a moment into a memory—and a guest into family.I love that so much. That transformation of people coming together has to catch a certain rhythm, and you don’t ever want to really disrupt the party once it gets flowing. But I do think it is important at some point to take a pause, bring everyone together, and do your rule number five.Rule number five: raise a glass. Always make a toast at an event because it frames the gathering and reminds everyone why we've all come together. It's important because then people walk away knowing what it is they just experienced and why it was that we were celebrating. So it's always important to set an intention at an event.Sue, congratulations. Love what you're doing with your events and the storytelling and the worlds that you've built through Care of Chan. If people want to check out your work or maybe they want to hit you up to work with you, where can they go?They should follow us on Instagram at @careofchan or check out our website at careofchan.com.Well, Sue, here's to more hosting and I hope to be in a room with you raising a glass very soon.Yes. Thank you, Darin. Cheers. Get full access to Five Rules for the Good Life at fiverules.substack.com/subscribe

On this week’s Five Rules for the Good Life, I’m posted up in Houston with Aaron Bludorn and Cherif Mbodji, friends and partners in the growing Bludorn Hospitality Group. They share their Five Rules for Juggling a Family and a Restaurant Group, including embracing therapy, building trust within their teams, and even attending Phish shows. They discuss scheduling family time like a meeting, getting comfortable with taking weekends off, and why joy has to be part of the plan. This conversation is about doing the work and still making room for happiness. These five rules serve as a blueprint for anyone seeking to achieve balance without burning out, especially when they have people relying on them at work and at home.This conversation really stayed with me. I deeply believe in finding balance between the intensity of creative work and being a present dad & partner. Hearing how Aaron and Cherif navigate that same space, especially in the high-pressure world of restaurants, was both inspiring and affirming. It’s not just about running a business, but about building a life that feels full, fun, and aligned with their core values. Their honesty made me reflect on how I’m doing my best by showing up for my own family, and also gave me a little more permission to protect that space as well.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Transcript:Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I'm in the deep heart of Texas, hanging out with Aaron and Cherif of the Blue Dorn Hospitality Group. It started as a friendship in the New York restaurant scene and has transformed into one of Houston's fastest growing and most exciting restaurant empires.Today, they share their five rules to juggling a family and a restaurant group. We chat about the importance of getting exercise and therapy, that the key to success is communication above all else, and we go back and forth on the rivalry between the Astros and the Dodgers. So let's get into the rules.Aaron and Cherif, so good to meet you. Thank you for taking time out of your busy restaurant empire to chat with me today on Five Rules for the Good Life. Welcome to the show.Thank you. Thank you for having us. Excited to be on the call.What I found as I've gotten older is that so many of my work habits have been directly inspired by my parents. And I find that people usually take a path as they get into their own adult working life—either embracing their parents' work ethic or running away in the opposite direction. What do you remember of your own parents' work-family balance and were you drawn to it or did you run away from it?My dad was an airline pilot, so he had a very set schedule. He worked 12 days out of every month and then he was off 100% of the time after that. I would say I ran away from it. He had a ton of time off. I gravitated toward a career in kitchens that was 16 hours a day, six days a week. And I still feel like I learned my work ethic from my father, but yeah, I definitely went the other way.Same here. I grew up in a family very stable where we spent a lot of time around each other. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and my dad—very typical government 9-to-5 job. He was around the household a lot. We all had breakfast, lunch, dinner daily together.I love that. I mean, those are beautiful memories and that's what I grew up with. And I think if anything, it really gives you this sense of family presence and having parents who are around all the time. They were able to raise their kids, and you always kind of want some of that, no matter how busy life is.Wanting those things I think comes later in life. What were those early days like when you were all-in, getting your jump on your career in the restaurant industry?Well, the greatest thing about those days was that it was just me that I had to worry about. Throughout my 20s, full-in on learning how to cook, learning how to run a kitchen. I knew that the more I put into it, the more I'd get out of it. I remember just knowing that if I worked hard now, I'd be able to have what I wanted later.That's good foresight. The harder you work, the easier it is to write your own ticket. And knowing that that's where you want to go, you can create your own path through that.That was my goal—to always give myself as much flexibility as possible.As you started your own restaurant and as you guys came together as partners in the Blue Dorn Group, when did you start to think about having balance, getting to write your own ticket? Was it an active thought that you worked toward or was it, “Oh, we're having a kid and this is what it's leading to”?My wife had a big part in pushing me towards finding balance very quickly after our first child came. We were in the throes of opening up our first restaurant. But I had also watched Cherif go through all of that. Cherif had kids when we worked together in New York and watching him balance those two... and I always thought that he did a really great job.I don't know whether your wife thinks so or not.I don't know.And that inspired me. The hardest pill I had to swallow was my wife being pretty adamant that I took Saturdays off along with Sundays. I felt this immense sense of guilt, like I wasn't contributing to my team. But then I realized that my whole team all got two days off themselves.Of course.Well, and I'd always been pretty adamant about that. I would push for that. And so I'm like, well, why am I cutting my nose off to spite my face just to work the sixth day and not create balance?And one of the things that really helped me out is going to therapy to work less.Yeah, to let go.Well, when you have this mindset and you're just thinking about yourself and working for yourself, and then other people come to rely on you—both at work and at home—you've got to shift that mindset. And sometimes, having therapy really helps.And for those who haven't crossed into that world of therapy, I'm really excited for you guys to share your five rules for juggling a family and a restaurant group. Or for those who just have one restaurant—it applies, I think, just as well.Your very first rule was the first step I took into finding a balance. What is your rule number one?Keeping healthy is extremely important to us. And it became something really apparent. Aaron's been really someone who actually has inspired me to start working out again because he's very active.He runs.Love it.And I remember one time I wasn't driving when I first moved here and I would catch a ride with him all the time. As we're pulling up here in front of our office, he says to me, “Our health is the biggest factor in our ability to be happy and successful.” And it is true. 100%.I think that also speaks to staying healthy mentally. The ability to find ways to calm yourself, to collect yourself. For a long time, running has always been a way for me to sort of filter out the day or set myself up for the day. Having yourself in a healthy mind space where you're not just burning the candle at both ends—having a healthy mind, a healthy body—it all comes from us, especially the drive and the push and the leadership. And if everyone sees that we're taking care of ourselves, they will as well. And that's so important in keeping the machine going.Being very public about shifting the way you eat and going to therapy is pretty vulnerable, especially in a very competitive place like a kitchen or a restaurant group. Which ties directly into rule number two and surrounding yourself with a certain type of people. What's your second rule?Building a team you trust and building that trust with your team. For us, it's been all about team building since day one. We've been so lucky to have such amazing people come on board and work for us. And it's picking the right people that mesh well, setting up a culture with those people where everyone buys into it. Where if you have someone that comes in that doesn't fit that mold or potentially is a bad influence, they find themselves out pretty quickly.One other thing I want to point out in here that's so important is paying them appropriately and paying them well. You can't try to nickel and dime your team. You have to pay them what they're worth.It's an investment. It's an investment in your own company and how your company grows. If you don't take care of your team, you get what you pay for. We are very open with our team. They're all very invested and aware of how we're performing as a group. They understand the financial operation side of things. And we sit with our team members every six months—not just annually—where we are constantly making sure that they feel valued. Whatever their worth is, it's acknowledged and taken care of to that extent.You talked about supporting the team you've built at work, but there's the other team at home where the balance is really important—because the team at home gets you for two days and the team at work gets you for five. What is your rule number three?It's protecting family time. Family time is something that, just as we think about important meetings or the things that we have on our calendar and protect and make sure that there is no excuse—we're there for it—family time is treated the same way.It starts with creating the culture where we are understanding and respectful of each person's family time. We do our best to give you the space to spend it with your family. If they have wants and needs with their family, we respect that just like we ask them to respect ours. That’s from day one. Because if we're equitable in the way that we protect this—so it's not just us that's being protected—everyone will find ways to run blocking for each other. Knowing that that is the way that it works in our company is incredibly important.But this is specific to our role and how we are obviously running this company with all these restaura

On this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with my friend and colleague, Andrew Friedman, author, podcaster, and one of my favorite writers working in food today. We dig into his Five Rules for Living an Artist’s Life, from trusting your gut to trusting the process, and why sometimes the hardest part is just having the confidence to call yourself an artist in the first place. Whether you’ve got a blank page, a hot stove, or a guitar in hand, this episode is a reminder that finding your voice is a lifelong process—and it’s worth every step.This one hit close to home. I’ve spent a career in creative work—producing, directing, writing—but for whatever reason, I’ve always hesitated to use the word “artist” when talking about myself. Hearing Andrew talk about permitting yourself to own that title, even if only internally, was a real shift. This episode isn’t just about the craft. It’s about belief. Belief in your instincts, your process, your weird ideas, and your voice—even if it’s still forming. And maybe, just maybe, it gave me the nudge I needed to start saying it out loud.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptionHello and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz. Today, I am so excited to be sitting down with my friend and colleague, writer and author, Andrew Friedman.He has written some of my favorite books about the culinary world, including Chefs, Drugs, and Rock and Roll, and The Dish, which is a deep dive into how one plate of food can represent the entire industry. I also enjoy his weekly podcast, Andrew Talks to Chefs, where he sits down and chats with some of the greatest voices and minds of the food scene. He joins me today to share his five rules for living an artist's life, and he gets into finding the right balance between working and living, what it really means to trust your gut, and the all-important north star, which is finding your voice.So let's get into the rules. Andrew, it is always a pleasure to see you and to chat with you. I feel like we've gotten to have a lot of conversations this year, and it just makes me so happy.I feel the same way, and it was all kind of happenstance, right? It all kind of started when we ran into each other at the big benefit for the LA Fires. And who says there was no benefits for my house burning down? A small price to pay. A small price to pay.I'm so excited to see you today to chat about your career in creative work and being an author and everything that's fallen under that umbrella. And before we get to the latter stuff, I want to talk about the earlier days. Do you remember the first time you did any sort of creative work? I don't know that it was that unusual, but I do remember little assignments, like in elementary school.I had done this kind of illustrated story. There was this whole civilization, like in caves, like underground. And I remember the teacher wrote, what an imagination.And I was really young when I did it. Yes. There's this crazy memory, and I swear to God, it's true.The Miami News, which used to be the Miami afternoon newspaper, and every year they had a scary story contest at Halloween. And I wrote the winning entry for my age category in about half an hour. I had an idea, and I banged it out, and I mailed it in.Love it. But I didn't know I had won until I went to a newsstand after school that day, bought a copy of the paper, and opened it up, and there was my story. And that was a big moment.Having those moments, having those early creative wins are so important, because it shows you that there can be success in doing this type of work, or having an idea and turning something real. And in addition to that, having someone support that creative work, whether it's a family member or a teacher. If you don't have that, good luck trying to get any sort of creative work done in your life.Yeah. Who was that in your life that supported you in your early endeavors? When it came to the mechanics and the craft of writing, there were teachers all the way back to elementary school who told me what a good writer I was. A woman named Eleanor Bachman at my elementary school.Several others. When I was at Columbia, undergraduate as an English major, there was a professor named Victoria Silver. I remember sitting in her office, and she was one of many teachers who felt like I wasn't really applying myself.And I still remember this sentence. She said to me, she said, you are incapable of writing an unintelligent sentence. The place where I was constantly for 10 years of my education, getting reinforcement was on the writing front.Getting this reinforcement and having all this support throughout your childhood and into college, when did you realize that you were actually making a go of it professionally? What was the tipping point? At the end of my freshman year, I read The Great Gatsby on a flight home. And that's when I decided, I'm not kidding, sounds overly romanticized, but that's when I decided I wanted to be a writer. That book made me want to see if I could make a go of doing prose fiction, actual narrative fiction, which I haven't yet managed to do.But I also haven't really pursued that beyond short stories in college. From that initial thought after reading Great Gatsby to where you are today, you've lived quite a life and put together quite a portfolio. So I'm excited for you to share your five rules for living an artist's life.And the very first rule you have is interesting because it's about the actual naming of that life itself. What is your rule number one? My first rule is don't be afraid to call yourself an artist, even if only internally. I think if you ask 10 different people to define what makes somebody an artist, you might get 10 different answers.But I do think if you are trying to do something that has meaning, something that might affect other people, that might provoke an emotional or an intellectual response. And to you, that is art. Declare that for yourself, to own that, to kind of commit to that level of ambition and intent, I think is something that one should not apologize for and one should put out there.And if you don't want to put it out to the world, at least in your own mind, that's an important thing to know for your own self and for your work and for how you go about your life. But I do think that's an important distinction. Putting work out there is such an important part of living the artist's life and trusting your gut.What's your rule number two? My second rule is to go with your instinct, no matter how weird or idiosyncratic it might seem. And all I mean by that is I worked for a film producer for four or five years right after college. I remember we had a new intern starting one day and he was kind of giving her a briefing.They were talking about reading screenplays. And he was saying, not just in reading screenplays, but when you go to movies or when you read books, just be attuned to what pleases you. And don't worry about, is it high or low? Is it sophisticated or sophomoric? Just figure out what floats your boat.I put out my third solo nonfiction book about a year and a half ago. And it's the first book where I really feel like I homed in on my voice. What is my real voice? And it's because I stopped trying to kind of put on airs and I let myself sound the way in a full length book that I sound in my emails or that I sound in blog posts where I used to feed my blog more often.There's some irreverent humor and I got the best reviews that I'd gotten, but I've stopped trying to be anyone but me. And I think for better or for worse, I'm writing stuff that's more true to myself. A lot of what I thought artists did for a living was inspired by the movies that I watched as a kid.And their lives consisted mainly of long martini lunches, gallivanting around New York City, dinner parties that lasted deep into the night, and most of the creation of art was done off screen. And that the emphasis of their work-life balance was definitely on the life part. Your third rule challenges that perception I had.What is your rule number three? My third rule is to ignore the zeitgeist and specifically all the talk in the last several years about balance. Work-life balance is certainly healthy. I do also think that it can be just downright incompatible with an artistic ambition.Years ago, Lin-Manuel Miranda, before anyone had heard of him, tweeted something that said Lin-Manuel Miranda dot dot dot is working on Founding Fathers on Saturday night. And years later he retweeted it. It was a little message above it that basically said, you will have to say no to some things to say yes to work.It will be worth it. Of course. And of course, Founding Fathers eventually got renamed.It was Hamilton. And I just moved back to New York City two and a half years ago from suburbia. And my kids are in college now and I could be out every, especially doing what I do for a living.I could be out every night of the week. Absolutely. And if I showed you my calendar on my iPhone right now, it's almost all white because I have really backed off on plans.I will not have lunch on any day except Friday. And I just want to be here working on stuff. That's awesome.If you want to be doing something that rises to a certain level, you're not entirely in control of when the best of that is going to be available to you. I still live by this notion of sometimes the muse descends. And when that happens, I want to be available for that.Unless you get struck by inspiration like you did for your scary story, you're going to have to make that time to sit down and write. Exactly. On the other side of the work-life balance coin is a question that every artist must ask themself and ties directly into your rule number four.Well, my fourth rule goes back to myself and every other English major I spent time w

On this week’s episode, I sit down with Alvin “Pepper” Baumer III, the president and CEO of Crystal Hot Sauce and born-and-bred ambassador of New Orleans. Pepper shares his Five Rules for Southern Hospitality straight from the Big Easy—where the host is always gracious, the drinks are always served cold, and the music never stops. We chat about what it means to take on the responsibility of hosting, how to curate the perfect vibe, and how to make everyone feel like family the moment they walk through the door. Talking with Pepper reminded me of why I love hosting. It’s something I grew up with—watching my family welcome friends, neighbors, and near-strangers into our home with open arms, full plates, and the right music flowing from the speakers. Pepper gets it. His approach to Southern Hospitality is rooted in intention: making sure his guests are fed, heard, seen, and sent off already dreaming of the next invite. We connected over our shared love of New Orleans’ culture, where music and food are more than entertainment: they’re acts of service. From backyard boils to black-tie dining, Pepper shares the ethos that’s kept his family’s love for hosting alive for over a century and why he’s honored to carry on the tradition of care, flavor, & celebration.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.TranscriptHello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life. I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz.Today, I sit down with New Orleans native Alvin “Pepper” Baumer III, the CEO and president of Crystal Hot Sauce, an iconic American hot sauce that has been around for over 100 years. Pepper shares his five rules for Southern hospitality and his deep love for the Big Easy. We chat about the importance of having hot food and cold drinks, the importance of music setting the vibe, and how to leave your guests always wanting more.Let's get into the rules. Pepper, great to meet you. Appreciate you sitting down with me today. Coming all the way from New Orleans, the one LA to the other LA. Welcome to the show.I appreciate you, man. Thanks for having me. When I hear third generation, 100-plus year American heritage company, all I could think about are the parties your family must throw. What is a typical soiree like in the Bomar extended family?Well, we're in New Orleans. Partying and food and culture is right in our wheelhouse. Right off the bat. Being born into a food family on one side, and also on the other side—my mother's side of the family is in the restaurant industry. So parties and birthdays and Christmas is just like a come one, come all extravaganza wherever we go.What's the music and food situation like?It's funk, jazz, you got crawfish boils, crab boils, your Cajun boudin and stuff like that. But then you get the upscale, like white tablecloth service at like Commander's and Herbsaint and those places too, where it just—you can't have a bad time here.You were literally born into this. The legend goes that your grandma gave you your nickname, Pepper, while you were still in the womb.Too many Albans running around. She was just done with it. I am named after my grandfather and my father, but I've been going by Pepper since the womb, and that's the only name that I've ever been called. Unless I'm at the DMV.What's it like to be born into this destiny, this responsibility of taking the mantle of your family's heritage and legacy?A lot of personal pride comes with it for sure. My name is Pepper. I'm a walking billboard. I wear it on my sleeve. It's part of my identity. It's part of my family. So I really take that to heart when we ever have people compliment all of our products, that's phenomenal. But even when people say hey, like we wish you kind of did something here better, I take that to heart. And I really go back to the team and be like okay, well this didn't taste well, so what do we need to fix that? How do we improve on that? Because not only do we do our Crystal-branded products, we also do a lot of private label business for customers around the world. So we do a lot of cutting, and they'll be like hey, this is great but we would rather more heat-forward or citrus-forward or however you want to do it. And then we really try and get to the customer exactly what they want.I imagine that customer relationships and those personal connections all over the world leaves you with a very full dance card. What is your approach to being a guest at someone else's party or what is your approach to being an ambassador out in the world?Being a guest at someone else's party, forgive me, but you can't show up ass and face. You always gotta show up with at least a bottle of wine or some sort of thank you to the host. I'm very proud of where I'm from, New Orleans—especially being a junior in high school when Katrina hit. That galvanized everybody in my generation from here. We're here to stay. We wear that New Orleans bandana wherever we go, like a badge of honor. Everybody wants to come down here for Jazz Fest. Everybody wants to come down here for Mardi Gras. Now, granted, those things are great too, but you can come down to the city anytime and have a phenomenal time.What I've always loved about New Orleans and big families from New Orleans is this hospitality that runs through your veins, that you just get a sense of when you show up, you know that you're going to have a good time and be taken care of. Which is why I'm so excited to talk to you today about your five rules of Southern hospitality.Now, coming from the Northeast, it was a while before I had a chance to really experience Southern hospitality for the first time. And when I did—not saying the Northeast doesn't take care of you—but it's a completely different approach. I remember going to my first wedding below the Mason Dixon. And I would say that your very first rule ties into my experience there. What's your first rule of Southern hospitality?My first rule is a warm welcome, preferably with a cocktail. Hospitality is in the blood. My mom's family is the Brennan family. So we have a lot of restaurants in our wheelhouse. We have Christmas parties. We host Mardi Gras parties. We have all that set up for people. That's not a normal occurrence. Most people don't kind of come into a household like that. And we live a block off the parade route. You walk in and it's just open bar, open food, come one, come all. There's nothing that you can't do. It gets a little rowdy from when we were in college to when my younger cousins were in college. But now we've all kind of grown up, and the amount of bicycles that used to go to the house are now been exchanged for baby strollers.I love it.It's fun to see how it's come full circle. I grew up going to my aunt and uncle's house when I was my kid's age. And for me, trying to bring it back, and they're coming at this time—same house, same corner—kind of surreal. That is really kind of getting back to that. Going back to the very first thing of my first rule, you always got to be the most welcoming host that you can be. When you host and agree to host, it is a responsibility.Yeah. I mean, you can relax, but you can't take your eye off the ball.Correct.What's your rule number two?The food hot and the drinks cold, man. It's tried and true. You can't go wrong when there's cold drinks flowing, preferably being served to you. And staying with the food—what's the best tasting sandwich that you can have? A sandwich made by somebody else. Those are always the best things to do. There's no worry. You're there. Everything's taken care of for you. The hassle-freeness is one of the best things that you can get from Southern hospitality parties.Wow. When you're having these big Southern hospitality parties, especially when your family is such a big part of the community and has restaurants—not everyone who's going to come to the party is someone that you know, or might even be one or two degrees of someone you know.Yeah.But that's all right because of your rule number three.You got to make everybody feel like family. To your point, if I have a friend who brings a friend, we don't balk at that. Come one, come all. As long as you're at my house, you're going to have a great time. I'm going to make sure you're having a great time. But also, I'm going to engage with you—kind of know who you are if I don't know you.I love that.What brought you here? At the end of the day, we want people to have a great time and want to keep coming back. We always have to have our best dress on, if that makes sense.Absolutely.You want them to see all the positives that goes on in the city and in the community. It gets them wanting to come back to New Orleans. This is kind of our bread and butter. We have to kind of get people to keep on coming back and coming back and wanting to come back.Food and hospitality are two of the biggest draws in New Orleans, but there is a third that everyone loves. What's your rule number four?Music and vibe, man. It's got to keep the party going. Mardi Gras, you always have your Mardi Gras music with The Meters and Dr. John, and then with Jazz Fest, it's always Trombone Shorty, Kermit Ruffins. There's kind of themes to it, but the cool thing about New Orleans is how easily accessible the music scene is here. Everybody knows New Orleans is known for music. It doesn't get the hype that Nashville, or country row, gets. I think a lot of people underestimate how culturally impactful New Orleans music is.You and I are the same age of like rap. New Orleans put Southern rap on the map. And then Dave Matthews Band, even though he's not from here, he's from South Africa, he has a lot of New Orleans influence on all of his music. And Jon Batiste is a New Orleans musician who's up in New York all the time. And he's living up there. He went to Juilliard. New Orleans has a very big stranglehold on the music scene around the world that I don't think it

This week on Five Rules for the Good Life, I’m joined by the one and only Dana Cowin—former Food & Wine editor-in-chief, zine creator, podcast host, and party-throwing legend—for a conversation on how to entertain with joy and intention. Dana shares her Five Rules for Throwing a Sustainable Party, from the power of the potluck to the importance of local beeswax candles, and saying no to the disposable single-use platter. We talk about rethinking leftovers as party favors, the ethics of bodega bouquets, and how to host with less waste and more meaning. This one’s for anyone looking to throw a party that feels good and does good for the environment. Photo By Morgan FoitleEditorial Note, Updated 7.31.25: Dana left Food & Wine in 2016, not 1996.Five Rules for the Good Life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.(00:00:00):Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.(00:00:02):I'm your host, Darin Bresnitz.(00:00:03):Today, I am joined by food and media legend, Dana Cowin.(00:00:07):For over 20 years,(00:00:09):she was the editor-in-chief at Food & Wine Magazine until she struck out on her own(00:00:14):creative culinary journey,(00:00:16):launching such incredible zines like Speaking Broadly and her new podcast and event(00:00:21):series,(00:00:21):Progressive Hedonist.(00:00:23):She joins me today to share her five rules for throwing a sustainable party.(00:00:26):We chat about taking the pressure off yourself as a host by asking your guests to(00:00:31):pitch in for a potluck,(00:00:33):how to source locally grown flowers to make the perfect details for your setting,(00:00:39):and how to make sure that no food goes to waste.(00:00:42):It is a delicious, fun, and educational conversation.(00:00:46):So let's get into the rules.(00:00:50):Dana, so good to see you.(00:00:52):Always a pleasure when we can make time to sit down and chat.(00:00:55):So happy to see you.(00:00:56):With such an illustrious career in food,(00:00:59):especially from an editorial perspective,(00:01:01):have you been able to spot the difference between a trend or fat in cooking versus(00:01:06):something that becomes more permanent?(00:01:08):I gave up my trend spotting.(00:01:11):I started in print, so Legacy Media, in 1982.(00:01:16):And all I focused on for the next three decades was what is the trend?(00:01:21):What are people talking about?(00:01:23):When I left Food & Wine, which was in 1996, I was like, I'm done with that.(00:01:28):I'm not interested.(00:01:30):I don't care.(00:01:31):The trends, they do come and go.(00:01:33):Some are longer, some are shorter.(00:01:34):But at the end of the day,(00:01:35):they actually distract from some of the bigger questions that we should be asking(00:01:40):ourselves about the food that we're eating and the people we're supporting and the(00:01:44):way that we're living on this planet.(00:01:46):The biggest trend that I see right now is people looking to find a more restorative way of life.(00:01:53):I have to imagine,(00:01:54):given all that time looking at recipes and looking at different dishes and what(00:01:58):people want to cook,(00:01:59):when you're throwing a dinner party,(00:02:01):how do you select from your deep arsenal of dishes what to cook when you have(00:02:06):people over?(00:02:06):This is funny, Darin.(00:02:07):You're making all these assumptions.(00:02:09):You know that I wrote a cookbook.(00:02:10):I know.(00:02:10):I'm mastering my mistakes in the kitchen.(00:02:12):So I'm not a cook.(00:02:13):I didn't come to this world as a cook.(00:02:16):And I had 20 years of tasting the best food in the test kitchen every single day(00:02:22):saying,(00:02:23):this is incredible.(00:02:24):Am I going to make it at home?(00:02:25):I'm not so sure.(00:02:26):The greatest irony is that for those 20 years, I cooked not at all.(00:02:34):Being in the test kitchen every day,(00:02:35):I learned a lot of tricks,(00:02:37):shortcuts to flavor,(00:02:39):better ways to shop.(00:02:40):Crispier potatoes.(00:02:41):Oh my God, the smashed potatoes.(00:02:43):Absolutely.(00:02:43):These things when you're in the kitchen, you're like, wait, how did you do that?(00:02:47):So I learned a lot of technique.(00:02:49):I learned about all kinds of ingredients that I'd never heard of before.(00:02:53):It was super exciting.(00:02:55):Since leaving Food & Wine, I've cooked so much more.(00:02:59):Taking the technique and the ingredients and the enthusiasm and all the ideas that(00:03:03):are in the back of my mind,(00:03:05):that's what's stored.(00:03:06):Just all these ideas, but not the recipes themselves.(00:03:09):It has made it really fun, and I am a much better cook.(00:03:12):And it feels very ironic to me with Progressive Hedonist,(00:03:17):I host and co-host events all over the country and a lot of them at home.(00:03:21):And I do so much cooking for people because I ask other people to bring dishes that(00:03:26):regenerate themselves and regenerate the planet.(00:03:28):And I have to find my own set of dishes that match that.(00:03:32):I think it's really important,(00:03:33):especially when you're having people over,(00:03:35):to be conscious of what you're buying and what you're working with and not having(00:03:39):more food in your trash can than on your plate at the end of the day.(00:03:43):And that's why I'm excited to be chatting with you about your five rules for(00:03:47):throwing a sustainable party.(00:03:49):We've all had a party where sometimes we put all the pressure on ourselves,(00:03:53):but your first rule gives a little grace to the host of a party.(00:03:56):What is it?(00:03:57):make it a potluck.(00:03:58):If you take on the responsibility of cooking for whatever number of people it is,(00:04:02):it can be very stressful.(00:04:03):Inviting people in to cook with you,(00:04:06):to bring ingredients,(00:04:07):to bring complete dishes,(00:04:08):I have found it's such a delight,(00:04:11):not just because it's less stressful,(00:04:13):but people cook things that I've never tried before.(00:04:16):I used to have a test kitchen that expanded my horizons.(00:04:19):And now with potlucks, I have a way to expand my horizons and try new things.(00:04:24):Of course, restaurants as well.(00:04:25):But in terms of home cooking,(00:04:27):I did a congee potluck and seeing all the toppings that people brought and the(00:04:32):different chili oils and the little fishes,(00:04:35):and it was completely delicious.(00:04:38):and something I would have never done myself.(00:04:40):It builds that sense of everybody in this together because everyone has brought(00:04:45):something to the table and gives everybody something to talk about.(00:04:48):Lastly, and this is important to me because I now host quite a bit, it saves you money.(00:04:53):Yes.(00:04:53):Because if I had to pay to feed 20 people twice a month,(00:04:57):that's exorbitant,(00:04:58):but much less so if you're making a couple of dishes out of everything that's on(00:05:03):the table.(00:05:03):My second fear when we're having a big party,(00:05:06):when I'm hosting,(00:05:07):number one,(00:05:08):running out of food.(00:05:09):Total Shonda.(00:05:09):I really identify with that.(00:05:11):I am always worried.(00:05:12):I always overcook.(00:05:13):But my second one, I don't have enough serviceware or the right plates.(00:05:17):New Year's Eve last year found me running to Sur La Tabla to get two white serving(00:05:22):platters because I just couldn't do it.(00:05:24):One more New Year's with the wrong platters.(00:05:26):But rule two advises against this.(00:05:29):What is your rule number two?(00:05:30):I am wagging a virtual finger at you.(00:05:32):I know.(00:05:33):I believe that we should avoid buying new things when we're entertaining.(00:05:38):And particularly in the area of service wear.(00:05:42):So that would be beautiful platters or forks and knives, even napkins.(00:05:47):I avoid things that are both disposable and new.(00:05:50):You probably have something that will suffice.(00:05:53):And will people leave your party saying,(00:05:55):oh my God,(00:05:56):did you see that platter under the chicken wings?(00:06:01):Actually, no one's going to say that.(00:06:02):No.(00:06:03):People seem to leave a lot of platters here.(00:06:05):So my platter collection has grown.(00:06:07):There's a couple of reasons that I believe this.(00:06:10):I believe that it's best to use what we have.(00:06:13):I believe that if you buy things that are paper and plastic that are single use,(00:06:18):you're doing a disservice to the experience because eating off of paper and with(00:06:23):plastic is not very satisfying.(00:06:25):And also it ends up in the trash.(00:06:28):And the other thing is I now have enough plates and there was a time when I was buying them.(00:06:34):So at some point you have to buy them.(00:06:35):I'm just saying, try not to get the one off and then borrow.(00:06:38):Many a friend has gotten a last minute, oh my gosh, I just realized that I do not have a(00:06:42):cutting board that's big enough for this gigantic ham.(00:06:45):Could you rescue me?(00:06:46):We've all been there.(00:06:47):So instead of going and buying one,(00:06:49):someone comes over,(00:06:50):hopefully on time with a gigantic cutting board.(00:06:53):While a cutting board in need is a great thing to ask a friend for,(00:06:58):rule three deals with something that people usually bring,(00:07:02):but never really give a thought of where they come from.(00:07:04):People who want to be good dinner guests often bring one of two things.(00:07:08):Wine, which is great as far as I'm concerned.(00:07:11):Fantastic.(00:07:12):And the second is flowers.(00:07:14):And I abhor cut flowers that are from the local bodega because those flowers are(00:07:21):part of the international flower trade,(00:07:24):which runs on bad labor practices.(00:07:27):M