Rustic Canyon Restaurant Group owner Josh Loeb makes directorial debut

Josh Loeb has spent the last two decades surviving in the high-risk, low-margin, passion-driven local restaurant business with his pioneering farm-to-table restaurant Rustic Canyon, which has become a Santa Monica classic. Now, he has turned to another similarly uncertain pursuit: independent filmmaking, with his directorial debut, In spite of us, debuting on friday Limited release in Quad Cinema It will be screened October 16 at the landmark Nuart Theater in Manhattan and on the Westside. It’s a quirky, entertaining romance that includes a cute rendezvous over cinnamon buns and a hospitality-animal love interest based on his ex-wife, pastry chef Zoe Nathan.

“I can’t help it, I have this stubborn, idealistic streak,” says Loeb. “I can only open and operate the restaurants I want to spend time in and make the kind of movies I want to see. Even if the market isn’t easy for them.”

The rustic canyon – which regularly attracts the likes of Michael Mann and Larry David as well as Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann for date night – will turn 20 this autumn. It’s celebrating in October with a series of band-back-together dinners highlighting old hands, including critically acclaimed chefs Jeremy Fox (now at Edna in San Luis Obispo) and Evan Funke, who has since made a name for himself with the local troupe of Italian restaurants Felix, Mother Wolf, and Funke. Funke explains, “What Josh was trying to do at The Rustic, and is still trying to do, is the hardest thing: creating a true sense of place and camaraderie.” “Their intention was to create the quintessential neighborhood restaurant, and that’s what they’ve done.”

Loeb named Rustic Canyon after the tony Westside neighborhood where he grew up, located between Brentwood and Pacific Palisades. While in college at Berkeley, he studied English and film (his favorite film: Culinary Classic big night), he became enchanted by Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse and Judy Rodgers’s Zuni Kitchen. After reading the script in New York, he decided he wanted to bring its spirit home. “I loved their idea of ​​that level of food, delivered in a non-fancy way,” he says. “There’s a way it makes you feel.” Nathan’s father, Stephen, bones The showrunner describes the appeal as, “going to someone’s house for dinner, where you know the food will be great and everyone will be comfortable. You can relax.”

Loeb’s family, including brother Dan (now a billionaire hedge funder), was always focused on food. “I had my bar mitzvah lunch at Michael’s,” he recalls of Santa Monica, the standard-bearer of California cuisine. “Michael [McCarty]What is now a friend gave me a bottle of Bordeaux when I was 13, which I would have maxed out when I turned 21. It was really very thoughtful.

Farm-to-table, hyper-seasonal, organic-oriented cooking has become a cliché. When Rustic Canyon opened, sourcing from the nearby Santa Monica Farmers Market and other independent local vendors, it was still on the cutting edge. Loeb and Nathan made it easy for other L.A. restaurants to follow them. “They demanded better eggs, better milk, better flour in a big way,” says Karen Beverlin, vice president of specialty sales for FreshPoint Produce. “None of those things were available in Southern California when he started with Rustic. His impact is not just on his own restaurants, but how he’s impacted food service throughout our region.”

His deceptively modest take is typical of what Loeb has always striven for with Rustic Canyon. “For some people, ‘neighborhood restaurant’ means you come and get the same thing every Friday,” says Loeb. “I would get so bored of that. To me, it’s like, ‘I know there’s always going to be a chicken and a fish and a steak and maybe a pasta and some salad and some interesting appetizers and some greens — but I don’t know what. Absolutely They are going to be, or how they are going to be served.’ They will simply be excellent.” Director Ed Zwick, who was Loeb’s neighbor during his childhood in Rustic Canyon, confirms this: “I’m trying to think of how many other restaurants I would go to where I would just order Cock. “Then they will cut into it which is very special.”

Nathan, who now runs The Duchess & Three Birds in the industry-friendly getaway town of Ojai, says, “The nice thing about Rustic is that it’s constantly evolving. We’ve all had a mom who’s suddenly interested in Moroccan food. But it’s still the same mom, and she’s still having the same conversations with you at the table. As we’ll bring in new chefs over the years, it’s about finding someone cooking with the same values. Whether it was expressed in Persian or Italian or Californian cuisine.”

What are the prices? According to Loeb, “We printed shirts for Rustik. They said ‘simple isn’t simple’, which I think sums it up.”

Yet, as the years passed, everything became more difficult. Like every other restaurant in L.A., Rustic Canyon has faced constant bureaucratic challenges, as well as rising costs of everything from labor and ingredients to insurance. There have also been back-to-back battles with the COVID pandemic, industry strikes, the streaming collapse, corporate layoffs and, most recently, the 2025 wildfires. 30 percent of Rustic Canyon’s customers lived in the Palisades, many of whom are still displaced.

Hollywood’s doom cycle is felt at Loeb’s since-expanded hospitality group as well as at other restaurants, including Santa Monica partners Milo & Olive, Huckleberry and Sweet Rose Creamery as well as the shuttered Astor and Cassia. Some time ago, 40 percent of the diners were from the industry. Now it is 25 percent. “There are fewer expense accounts, fewer group orders, fewer large events,” he says. Then there are other trends, including appetite suppressant GLP-1s, sober living and delivery app culture. “You don’t pick a place like rustic to deliver,” he says. “That’s not what it’s about.” Loeb believes, more broadly, “All of these things make it very difficult to operate. There are a lot of headwinds.” (His Midwestern-Jewish spot Birdie G’s and Mexican concept Tallulah have closed in recent years.)

For now, Loeb has turned his attention mostly to film, and launched a production company to develop the character-driven, tender projects that major studios and streamers are no longer prioritizing. “with [In Spite of Ourselves]When we screened it at the Playhouse in Ojai, people kept saying it was one of their favorite movies of the eighties or nineties – something in the tradition of those made by John Hughes or Rob Reiner or Nora Ephron. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

As for Rustik, Loeb sees its philosophy of change – across seasons and years – as the key to its perseverance, despite the many challenges it has faced. “I love that Bob Dylan quote, ‘You’re either busy being born or you’re busy dying,'” he says. “That’s also restaurants.”