The Restaurateur Behind One of Hollywood’s Favorite Haunts Makes His Directorial Debut

Josh Loeb has spent the past two decades surviving 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’s turned to a similarly precarious second act: independent filmmaking, with his directorial debut, In Spite of Ourselves, debuting Friday in limited release at the Quad Cinema in Manhattan and the Westside’s Landmark Nuart Theatre to follow Oct. 16. It’s a wry, winsome romance featuring a meet-cute over a cinnamon bun, and a hospitality-vet love interest based on his ex-wife, the pastry chef Zoe Nathan.

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

Rustic Canyon — which regularly draws the likes of Michael Mann and Larry David, as well as Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann on a date night — turns 20 this fall. It’s celebrating in October with a series of bring-the-band-back-together-again dinners highlighting old hands, including the critically acclaimed chefs Jeremy Fox (now at Edna in San Luis Obispo) and Evan Funke, who’s since made his name with the local coterie of Italian restaurants Felix, Mother Wolf and Funke. “What Josh was trying to do at Rustic, and is still trying to do, is the hardest thing: Instill true sense-of-place and conviviality,” explains Funke. “His intention was to build the quintessential neighborhood restaurant, and that’s what he’s done.”

Loeb named Rustic Canyon after the tony Westside neighborhood where he grew up, tucked between Brentwood and the Pacific Palisades. While in college at Berkeley, studying English and film (his favorite movie: the culinary classic Big Night), he became entranced by Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse and Judy Rodgers’ Zuni Kitchen. After a post-grad stint reading scripts in New York, he decided he wanted to bring their spirit home. “I just loved their idea of food at that level, delivered in a non-fancy way,” he says. “There’s a way it makes you feel.” Nathan’s father, Stephen, the Bones showrunner, describes the appeal as “like going to someone’s house for dinner, where you just know the food is going to be great and everyone will be comfortable. You can relax.”

Loeb’s family, which includes brother Dan (now the billionaire hedge funder), was always food focused. “I had my bar mitzvah lunch at Michael’s,” he recalls of the Santa Monica standard-bearer of California cuisine. “Michael [McCarty], who’s a friend now, gave me a bottle of Bordeaux then, at 13, that would be maximizing 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 Farmer’s Market and other independent local vendors, it was still pioneering. Loeb and Nathan made it easier for other L.A. restaurants to follow them. “They demanded better eggs, better milk, better flour — at scale,” says Karen Beverlin, vice president of specialty sales for FreshPoint Produce. “None of those things were available in Southern California at the time they started with Rustic. Their impact isn’t only on their own restaurants, but how they’ve influenced food service in our entire region.”

Loeb’s deceptively modest notion of what he’s always been after with Rustic Canyon is specific. “For some people, ‘neighborhood restaurant’ means you come in and get the same thing every Friday,” Loeb says. “I would be so bored by that. For 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 a few salads and a few interesting appetizers and some greens — but I don’t know what exactly they’re going to be, or how they’re going to be served.’ Just that they’ll be excellent.” Director Ed Zwick, a neighbor during Loeb’s childhood in Rustic Canyon, affirms the point: “I’m trying to think of how many other restaurants that I’d go to where I’d just order a chicken. Then they’ll do a reduction on it that’s very special.”

Nathan, who now operates The Dutchess and Three Birds in the industry-favored getaway town of Ojai, says, “what’s cool about Rustic is that it continues to evolve. We’ve all had a mom who suddenly got really into Moroccan food. But it’s still the same mom, and she’s still having the same conversation with you across the table. As we would bring in new chefs over the years, it was about having somebody cook with the same values, whether that was expressed as Persian or Italian or Californian cuisine.”

What are the values? According to Loeb, “we used to have shirts printed for Rustic. They said ‘Simple Ain’t Easy,’ which I think encapsulates it.”

Yet, as the years pass, everything has become more difficult. Like every other restaurant in L.A., Rustic Canyon has dealt with rising costs for everything from labor and ingredients to insurance, along with persistent bureaucratic challenges. There’s also been the one-battle-after-another of the Covid pandemic, industry strikes, streaming collapse, corporate layoffs, and, most recently, the 2025 wildfires. 30 percent of Rustic Canyon’s clientele lived in the Palisades, many of whom are still displaced.

Hollywood’s doom cycle is felt at the restaurant, along with others in Loeb’s since-expanded hospitality group, which also includes fellow Santa Monica spots Milo & Olive, Huckleberryand Sweet Rose Creamery, as well as the since-shuttered Esters and Cassia.Not long ago, 40 percent of diners were from the industry. Now it’s 25 percent. “There’s less expense accounts, less group orders, less big events,” he says. Then there’s other trends, including appetite-dampening GLP-1s, sober living and delivery app culture. “You don’t choose a place like Rustic for delivery,” he says. “That’s not what it’s about.” Loeb observes, more broadly, “All these things make it much more difficult to operate. There’s a lot of headwinds.” (His Midwestern-Jewish place Birdie G’s and Mexican concept Talullah’s have closed in recent years.)

For now, Loeb’s turned his attention mostly to film, launching a production company to develop the kinds of character-driven, tender projects that major studios and streamers aren’t prioritizing anymore. “With [In Spite of Ourselves], when we screened it at the Playhouse in Ojai, people kept saying it felt like one of their favorite movies from the Eighties or Nineties — something in the tradition of what John Hughes or Rob Reiner or Nora Ephron made. That’s exactly what I wanted to hear.”

As for Rustic, Loeb sees its philosophy of change — over seasons and years — as key to its persistence, despite the many challenges it faces. “I love that Bob Dylan quote, ‘Either you’re busy being born or you’re busy dying,’” he says. “That’s restaurants, too.”