Joe Sasto ’10 knows food.
After graduating from UC Davis (where he worked in the CoHo), Sasto spent years in some of the best restaurants in the country. He made it to the final three on the 15th season of “Top Chef” and tried again on an all-star season two years later. His passion for pasta — and signature handlebar mustache — made him a standout.
These days, he travels full-time for food and wine festivals, pop-up dinners and charity events and guest judges competition shows on the Food Network. He’s also gotten into the packaged goods space with Tantos, puffed pasta chips, and Ripi Foods, a gourmet frozen pasta company.
His first cookbook debuts on Oct. 21. Featuring creative recipes and personal stories, it’s called “Breaking the Rules: A Fresh Take on Italian Classics” (Simon & Schuster, 2025).
“Cookbooks take a very long time to do,” Sasto told UC Davis Magazine. “I wanted it to be something that I was proud of and something I could hang my hat on — or hang my mustache on.”
Why is now a good time for your very first cookbook?
For the longest time I did not think I was ready to write a cookbook, because I didn't have a restaurant. In my mind, as a young chef growing up, that was the route you went. You had a restaurant, then you would have a cookbook. Then COVID turned everything on its head. Social media made people a lot more interested in personal stories and gave chefs and creators an entirely new opportunity that wasn't really there before. It was my best friend and Tonto's co-founder, Sean, who really pushed and convinced me to get my proposal written. And as 2020 happened and people were starting to cook my recipes as I was posting things online, I realized people did care. People did want to know what I had to say, and people did want to cook what I was cooking. And so, it was this little birdie in my ear that kept pushing me to do this.
With a title “Breaking the Rules,” what does that mean to you? Are there rules you wanted to break?
Yeah, I think it speaks a lot to my own culinary point of view. I spent 10 years in Michelin-star kitchens in the world of fine dining, not only honing my craft, but understanding the so-called traditions of Italian cuisine, all these rules — what shapes of pasta could go with certain fillings and what sauces could go with certain cheeses. When I slowly became my own chef and my own person, I realized I wanted to break all these rules now that I knew them. That's my goal with the book: to make the reader feel comfortable in their own kitchen. Maybe you don't have an ingredient. The recipe calls for kale, but you only have arugula. Or it calls for spinach, and you only have kale. That's okay. There are no rules. And if there are, they're made to be broken.
What was your process like? What's involved in creating all these recipes?
I went the route of finding a co-author, Thea Balman. She really helped bring all these crazy ideas and stories that I had in my head come to life. Because at the end of the day, I'm first and foremost a restaurant chef. I'm not a cookbook author. And it's very different writing a recipe for a home cook. She was able to take my shorthand version of these recipes that I had been cooking for years and digest them and turn them into something that was easily adapted for a home cook. And not only the recipes, but also the stories. A lot of that process involved me recording voice notes.
You're known for a love of pasta. So how much pasta had to be in the cookbook?
Interestingly enough, I set out to write a pasta cookbook. That was my proposal. It was an all-pasta cookbook with all my pasta, pasta, pasta. But we had a long conversation [with the publisher] that I'm known for more than pasta, and I might be pigeonholing myself as a first-time author. So rather than all pasta [in the book], it's two chapters. One about dried pasta. I say use any dried pasta you want. And then there's a chapter on filled pasta. And it's one all-purpose pasta dough. I teach you how to make three simple folds, or shapes, but then it's all fillings. And spoon over melted butter, boil them in water, drizzle with olive oil, but don't worry about making this complicated dish. I wanted to eliminate that barrier of entry to pasta where people think it has to be a weekend project, or it is going to destroy the kitchen. The next book will probably be either pasta or bread or focaccia, but this one I wanted to be much more approachable.
You majored in communication at UC Davis. Did you have an alternate career path back then?
I knew I [wanted a major that] is going to translate the best to the restaurant. I originally looked at viticulture, but I realized science and math are not my areas of expertise. And communication turned out to be incredibly valuable throughout my career. Kitchens are very diverse, interpersonal, complicated systems. And having an understanding and a base understanding of how to interact with people, how to deescalate situations, how things interact, how to better communicate, how to be a good leader, all really helped me excel in my career.
