In this episode of Five Rules for the Good Life, I dial up Omaha to chat with sushi chef, David Utterback, to talk about what it means to build a craft without a traditional roadmap. David shares his Five Rules for Being an Apprentice Without a Master, tracing a path shaped by the Saddle Creek music scene, a life-changing trip to Japan, and the decision to develop a personal philosophy instead of chasing someone else’s version of mastery. It’s a conversation about focus, humility, and the long game, told through sushi counters, punk shows, and the discipline of starting over when you think you’ve figured it out.

This one hits close to home for me because the overlap between music and food has always been where I feel most grounded. Snacky Tunes came out of that same punk, DIY instinct, make the thing yourself, build the community around it, learn by doing, and don’t wait for permission. That ethos has shaped how I eat, how I host, how I create, and how I move through the world. Punk isn’t just a sound or a look, it’s a way of paying attention, of choosing intention over polish and substance over shortcuts. Applied to cooking, music, or life, it’s about showing up honestly, trusting your taste, and building something that feels true because you made it your own.

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Intro

Hello, and welcome to Five Rules for the Good Life.

I’m your host, Darin Bresnitz.

Today, I’m in Omaha, hanging out with sushi chef David Utterback, who’s here to share his five rules to being an apprentice without a master. He talks about how the Saddle Creek music scene shaped his outlook on life, how a fateful trip to Japan changed the course of his cooking career, and how by starting over with a personal philosophy is the best way to move forward in life. It’s a deeply insightful conversation from someone who helped put sushi on the map in the Midwest. So let’s get into the rules.

Meeting David in Omaha

David, it’s so nice to meet you. Thank you for making the time to sit down and chat. Hopefully you’re keeping warm in Omaha.

Yeah, I’m trying to. It’s pretty cold here right now.

I first heard of Omaha as the legendary punk indie scene with Saddle Creek Records, and I knew that was a big part of your coming up. What drew you into that music scene as a young guy?

Girls. Yeah. You know, yeah, when you’re in high school, you’re just trying to do whatever you can to look cool, I guess. Joining a band was the thing to do. Punk music, we didn’t really know how to play instruments very well. And so it’s a really great place to start because you can build all of those songs with just a couple of power chords. At the time, the music scene here is just incredible. One of the capitals of independent music at the time. So it was a really great time to get into music.

From Punk to Sushi

That punk aesthetic really influenced your whole life and your approach to cooking in the way that you wanted to make the food you want to make, especially prevalent in a fateful trip to Japan in 2008. How did this approach to life eventually affect your culinary career?

Before then, I had no interest in being a lifer in the restaurant industry. Most people who, especially at the time, get into the restaurant industry, you’re a pirate. I was living in a house with all my bandmates and their girlfriends. There’s 10 of us living in this house. Incredible. Didn’t have any money. So got a job at a sushi restaurant. Didn’t have plans to do anything more, but this fateful trip that I had taken to Japan by chance ended up at this famous sushi counter. Kind of put everything into focus. Before then, I had never worked at a restaurant where anybody was a professional. These guys, they sort of blew me away. That trip, it’s where I decided to focus. Instead of trying to do everything, I focused on one thing and that changed it all.

It changed it all for the better and it put you on this fateful track to open up sushi and omakase restaurants in Omaha. Yeah. Which is a very punk thing to do because not the first place you would think. And I’m sure there are people who are dismissive saying you’re going to open what type of restaurant where. Yeah. How did that trip and how did your belief in punk music and that DIY approach give you the confidence to do it?

Especially coming up at the time in the music scene, it was the perfect time to be a musician. You’re recording your first album on tape. You’re recording your second album on Pro Tools, right? You’re doing everything by yourself. It’s the beginning of being able to make your own music, produce it, record it, and distribute it all on your own. So me and everybody here in the city, we were all doing this. When you go to open up the restaurant and the mindset, everything’s possible. You can do it. You’re only limited by how hard you’re willing to work.

Setting Up the Rules

That hard work, especially in this field of sushi and omakase, usually comes with a big apprenticeship. That’s definitely one way to do it and a similar path that many people have followed, which is why I’m so excited to chat with you about your five rules to being an apprentice without a master, which is a bit of a unique and novel approach to really learning a hundred year old tradition. But you talk about really setting yourself up in your rule number one.

Rule 1: Define a Master, Develop a Goal

Rule number one here is, you know, and these weren’t rules where I had made them before. You kind of look back on a career and realize the steps you’ve taken. And for me, rule one was define a master, develop a goal. That trip to that counter that really set a goal for me. It was, these guys are so cool. I want to be just like them. I want to make food on their level. That was back in 2008. I had decided to do that. Came back from the trip and was like, okay, enough with everything else. Not going back to school. I’m going to do this. You know, focus.

Rule 2: Become a Student

It’s funny you talk about not going back to school because it seems like you are going after a different education. A lot of the times with punk rock and DIY, you can eschew learning and just dive head in. But your rule number two talks about the importance of getting fundamentals and working towards gaining a base of knowledge before you go on your own path. What’s your rule number two?

Rule number two is become a student. We live in a time where all information is available. And so becoming a student doesn’t seem like it’s necessary. But when I’m coming up in 2008, I desperately want to be like these sushi chefs, but they have a deep apprenticeship program. Coming back from Japan at that time, there’s definitely less than 10 omakase counters in the United States. There really isn’t anyone to teach this material. And so I quickly realized if I want to know something that I need to teach it to myself. And so that means becoming a student, developing what we call in the sushi game waza or skill. I start buying every book on sushi and fish in English, every single one. Sure. The good ones, the bad ones, the at. home for moms anything that might have a little piece of information and i start doing that in japan too i start buying every book in japanese i can find i take myself to jimbocho which is a an area of town that just has used bookstores

And I just spend two days popping in each store, just asking each shop owner, do you have any books on sushi? And so now I’ve got this crazy collection. I’m having to use my mom to help translate. I’m looking at pictures, just trying to get any sort of information that I can to get me closer to my goal.

Rule 3: Visit Masters

I love this idea of gathering the knowledge on your own, becoming a student and reading up, gathering a strong base before you go out and sit with people who have been doing this for so long. It just seems that it leads to such a deeper conversation and you’re not wasting anyone’s time, which is a fundamental of your rule number three.

Visit masters. It really does tie in with rule two. Because music or any other creative art form, you can’t just create. It’s got to come from somewhere. You need someone to influence you. You need to see what you like. You’re not creating whole new cuisine out of nowhere. You need to be influenced. You need to know what’s good. You need to develop. a palate. You need to develop taste memory. From that first trip, I start going and visiting every single one of these counters I can get into in Japan.

At the time, these guys are known in Japan, but there isn’t a sushi craze or sushi counter boon that we’re experiencing now. And so I’m eating with guys like Takashi Saito when he has one Michelin star and He’s in the parking garage near the U.S. Embassy right now. He’d gone on to get three stars, lose them all because he becomes too famous. What a time. I’m picking up tricks. I’m seeing how they do it. I’m learning about the culture of the cuisine and the counter and how they conduct dinner, how they work with guests, how they talk, how they present food. Then I’m tasting it. I’m holding on to these things, making notes. and trying to come back home and reverse engineer these things. This abalone liver sauce is so delicious. How do I come home and reverse engineer it from memory?

Visiting these guys at the top of the game, they give you a reference point. They help train by actually consuming the food. Having this postmodern approach where you’re doing your research and visiting multiple masters of this cuisine instead of following or working under one person is very, very different than most people who study sushi because it’s one way and you’re just trying to impress your master and work your way up to their level of skill so that one day you may take over. But being able to pull from these books and from all these different counters allows you to create your rule number four.

Rule 4: Creative Philosophy

Rule number four is creative philosophy. Who are you? What was the point of all of this? Why are you trying to get to this level? For me, in the beginning, I did exactly what pretty much everyone does now, which is copy somebody’s work. It’s cosplay now. You have folks who maybe never visited one of these counters and they’ve only seen pictures on the internet. Mm hmm. They’re trying to copy what they see without ever having experienced it in person.

Also, you have apprentices. They’ll spend five, ten years working under somebody. They leave their apprenticeship and they’ve been taught how it’s done. Exactly. And when you leave that restaurant, you can create the work. of the master it’s like being an apprentice of Rembrandt you learn how to paint but when you get finished you can’t really create much of your own work no you can recreate the master’s work be a disciple it’s hard to move beyond that here we’re so far away from that apprenticeship program that now we’re trying to copy sometimes a disciple or something else we’re making copies of copies mm-hmm

The cuisine has gotten very, boring is the wrong word, but very sane. Uniform. Everybody’s trying to do the exact same thing. And so when I say create a philosophy, I realized at some point about eight, nine years ago that I was trying to recreate this meal that I had in 2008. For folks in Japan, in the apprenticeship program, that’s difficult for even them to do. And they’re there. Exactly. So I decided about eight years ago when I opened up the restaurant to just stop chasing them and trying to do my own thing. Try to create not what I think people will like, but what I actually like. And that’s been informed by my experiences.

Rule 5: Start Over

That idea of letting go, becoming your own person with your own philosophy and your own experiences ties directly into your fifth and final rule. Yeah. What’s your rule number five?

Start over, man. Talk about it. I hate the word master. I know we’ve said it a whole bunch. There’s no other word and it’s just been baked into culinary society. It just feels gross when you say it. It’s like, oh, this person is a master. No, there aren’t. And even at the top, I’m getting to know some of these chefs in Japan and I’m spending time in their kitchens and I’m learning that even they don’t know stuff. Of course.

Funny story. I’m working with one guy. We’re doing a dinner together. He has a famous dish. And I make a version of it too. It’s called tamago yaki. It’s an egg custard. He says, we’re going to do your egg custard. And I said, no, you have a famous one. I want to learn yours. I want to see yours. And he goes, no, no, no, no, no. Let’s do yours. Yours is very good. No, no, no, no. I want to do yours. And you go back and forth on this. And finally he goes, David, I don’t actually know how to make it.

That is the recipe that one of the apprentices makes and they share it and they make it at their house in their oven and they bring it to the restaurant. Wow. And too much time has gone by with this being attached to me as a famous dish that I can’t all of a sudden say, teach me how to do this. You know, it’s kind of a part of his career, but he doesn’t actually know how to make it. He’s like, David, you show me, babe. Right. It’s there that I learned that, wow, these guys don’t actually know everything.

The more I spend time with chefs and at counters around the US and Japan, there’s just so many different ways to do it. Every time I sit down in front of a new chef and I have an exceptional meal, my brain just gets scrambled. Mm-hmm. I used to think I had figured it out and I was pretty good. And now this guy just kind of put me back in my place. That just happens yearly. I start to get a little bit of an ego where I’m like, yeah, I got this. I’m pretty good now. And then I sit down with somebody and they just show me what’s up. It’s the best. It is.

Wrap-Up

David, congratulations on everything. Thank you for sharing the philosophy. Very refreshing to hear this approach, not just to cooking, but to life in general. If people want to come and sit at your counter and have some of your food, how can they visit? Where can they see what you’re up to?

Instagram is the new business card. So it’s @DavidYoshitomo on Instagram. If you manage to find yourself in Omaha, Nebraska, you know, we’d love to have you at Yoshitomo. At the sushi counter, it’s a little bit more difficult. Instagram is always the best place to just send a message and say hi.

Incredible. Well, hopefully the faint are going to have some sort of 50-year reunion and I can hit both the dance floor and the counter. Thank you so much for making the time and hope to be in Omaha sooner than later.

Yeah, I’d love to have you, man.

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