INTERVIEW CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

Josh Lurie: Were you driven to do take an organic inventory just because of your personal commitment, or was this feedback you were getting from customers?

Josh Loeb: Personal.

Zoe Nathan: Honestly, probably 85% was organic already.

Josh Loeb: People don’t really know the other stuff, but we thought about how we shopped at home and were like, “Why would we shop any different for our restaurants?”

Zoe Nathan: Our eggs are organic, our milk’s organic, our flour’s organic. Meat, but also olive oil. Even things that nobody sees, that you don’t write on our menu… I had to explain to my kids why we eat organic. It’s so important what we eat. Not just because of goes into our bodies, it’s what goes into the earth. It’s what goes into the person that’s picking it, into their body. It’s a much greater system, so we can all as cooks and restaurant owners keep those things in mind. It’s really important, and I think there was a shift when I became a mom. Okay, these restaurants affect the earth and affect the world and I hope there’s one my children can enjoy.

Josh Loeb: Success comes and goes, but the ability to have a platform to speak who you are in the world is awesome. That’s what these restaurants are. For us, whatever beliefs we have, whatever sign we put up, and the ingredients, it’s our ability to say what we believe in and put it out there… We can start the conversation why we’re doing this and it gives us the ability to put who we are out in the world and what we care about out into the world.

Josh Lurie: How come you’ve never opened another Huckleberry?

Zoe Nathan: Why? Why? This is Huckleberry. For me, I would never want two of anything. A thousand people have asked us.

Josh Loeb: A million people have been like, “This would be a great Huckleberry.” No. There’s no way. I have yet to go to somebody’s restaurant that I like, have them open a second one, and not see some sort of drop-off in quality in both the new and the old locations. I’m not going to name any, but there’s a purity to doing things individually and having that be the best version of that. And keeping everything in-house. As soon as you start making stuff from a commissary and shipping it out to multiple locations in plastic bags and all that crap it gets shipped out in, it’s not as good.

Zoe Nathan: I don’t know if it’s not going to be, because I think that’s pretty hardcore, but it’s really challenging, and I can say that I’m not up to that task. I will say that I generally only do what I want to do. It’s the good and the bad of me. Like Josh gave me a market list. I was like, “Just so you know, I don’t do lists. I can’t buy that way. You should probably do Instacart.” It’s the good and the bad of me – I’m working on it – where I can literally only do what I want to do.

I love this place. I love these walls and how perfect it is, and the people who work here. I’m not dying to meet new people or make new walls. People who do these greater things, that’s a different style and a different kind of creativity that I just don’t have. I feel like I just have to be me.

Josh Loeb: That’s a very generous answer, but I think it’s generally about money when you open another location. We want to make money, but we will never make a decision because of money. We’ve stuck to that. Every single thing. Why we’re going to open this restaurant. Why we’re going to keep this person. Why we’re going to partner with this person, but not that person. We just don’t make those decisions. Growing is organic. We make a decision based on what we believe and then figure out the money. The only reason we would have done another Huckleberry would have been to make more money. It was more important for us to continue to make Huckleberry more special than it was to be more profitable.

[Huckleberry is packed at 11 a.m. on a Monday.]

Josh Lurie: It looks like you’re doing okay here.

Zoe Nathan: Yeah, and this is the community that we grew up in. Back in the day, people were like, “Why do you want to open in Santa Monica? You’ve got to open in Hollywood. That’s where all the cool kids are.” I’m five blocks away from my mom. His mom is five blocks the other way. My parents aren’t in Hollywood. Also, this is our community and we love them and we see them for who they are and we’re grateful. That’s why on the day of our 10-year anniversary, we’re not trying to do this big thing where we can make money doing it. We just want to say thanks. We would be nothing without our employees and without our customers.

Josh Lurie: What happens on the actual day?

Zoe Nathan: We’re making birthday cake. We’re making a lot of birthday cake for everybody who wants it.

Josh Loeb: For Rustic, cooking with other chef friends really excites Jeremy [Fox]. For Rustic, we had all of those dinners and had all the different chefs come in, and it was fun. Huck, we started thinking, “What are we going to do? A special event?” Everything should represent the identity of what that place is. For Huckleberry, it isn’t about a special night or special event. Really, when Zoe opened it, it was, “It’s a place where I can be, and all of my friends and family can come in and eat a big donut or take home a chicken.” That’s what we’re doing. Zoe and I are going to be here during the day and we’re baking cakes.

Zoe Nathan: Out kids still come in here and bake in here. They’re awesome about it. They make space for them. [Huckleberry bakery sous chef] Charlotte [Doimo-Mueller] was trying to test garlic biscuits and was like, “Who wants to taste it?” Felix was like, “I do!” He takes a bite and was like, “I do not like that, Charlotte. It is garlicky.” Later, she’s like, “I have another one, do you want to bring it home to Felix?” The energy is hopefully still in there. There’s still someone back there testing. There’s still a kid coming around. Your kid can yell here and not be shy, and we appreciate it.

Josh Loeb: Every restaurant goes through this roller coaster, its best time, and its worst time. That happened at Rustic, there were lots of ups and downs, but we had our 10-year anniversary and we were the best version of that. I feel the exact same way about Huckleberry. It feels good. I love sitting here and looking at everything. It’s the best version of itself. It’s still imperfect, which it should be.

We have this one family who we’re friends with who used to come to Saturday Morning Breakfasts. Every Saturday, when we opened Huckleberry, they got here at 7:50. We open at 8. Their boys, brothers who were 5 and 7 at the time, were banging on the door. They always made sure they were the first people in every Saturday. That’s when we used to work every day. Now those kids are about to apply for college. That’s fun. Now there are new kids. That, to us, being a dorky family business, we’re not trying to win awards and get notoriety, we’re just trying to be a place that we’re proud of and our families are proud of and that other families are proud of. That is at its best right now. That spirit is still in Huckleberry and I feel good about 10 years.

Zoe Nathan: Me too.