Episode Details

In this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I sit down with Matt Rodbard, Editor-In-Chief of Taste, the co-host of This Is Taste podcast, and his sub-stack, Food Time with Matt Rodbard, which is required reading if you care about what’s actually happening in food right now. Matt shares his Five Rules for a Food Writer’s Diet, from dialing in your relationship with alcohol, to balancing dining out with cooking at home, to traveling like a journalist, to permitting yourself to call simple meals “cooking.” We also get into coffee as a daily practice, the kind of ritual that sets the tone before the day starts moving too fast.

I love sitting down with Matt because the conversation always lands in that sweet spot between fun, useful, and insider whisperings. We can yap, we can talk scene, we can talk craft, and somehow it always ends with something I always think back on after we part. When food is both your profession and your personal driver, the line between work and pleasure gets blurry fast. Matt is great at naming the difference between mindless consumption and intentional living. Eating and drinking with intention is not about restriction, it’s about clarity. It’s about supporting restaurants, taking care of your body, staying present in the room, and building routines that make the whole ecosystem, your work, your relationships, your energy, actually sustainable.

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Intro

Hello, 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 to talk about the culinary community with, Matt Rodbard, who is the Editor-In-Chief of Taste, the co-host of This Is Taste podcast, and his sub-stack, Food Time with Matt Rodbard, is must-reading for anyone who wants insider insights for the food scene. He shares his five rules for a food writer’s diet. and talks about the importance of dining out versus cooking at home, that when traveling, how to get the most out of your adventures, and that by having a preferred coffee practice in the morning is the best way to ensure a fantastic day. I love any time that I get to sit down with Matt. It’s always filled with a fun conversation, a professional take on cooking, and some great takeaway tips for anyone who’s looking to get the most out of life when it comes to food. So let’s get into the rules.

Catching Up

Matt, it is always a pleasure to see you. I knew that we were going to get a late start because we were just yapping away before we even hit record. Welcome to the show.

It’s always good to chat with you. I know we were definitely talking about... Oh, no, we’re going to cut that out. But yes, we were having a very polite conversation about the scene out here.

I’ve known you for decades now. We ran in similar food circles in New York, and we’ve gotten to spend some time together in LA. You’ve been working in the food media industry for 20 years. Do you remember your salad days and those first few meals of eating out?

One of my first food stories was in 2005. I was working at a men’s magazine and I was working with consumer electronics and gadgets. And I took this egg McMuffin maker. Oh yeah. I took it to a restaurant called Chanterelle in Tribeca. Legendary place. Legendary. Run by David Waltock was the chef. I took the egg M