I met them in Italy two summers ago, when we found ourselves crammed into the back seat of a car on the way to Lake Como—though it feels like we’ve known each other much longer. Secretly, I knew who they were before they introduced themselves: I’d long been a fan of the couple’s colorful and eclectic design style, which I’d clocked in all the big magazines and through the eye-catching work they had done for mutual friends and acquaintances. As we whizzed past tiny mountain towns and fields dotted with cattle along the Swiss border, we gabbed about growing up in Southern California and how the state’s dressed-down, free-­spiritedness informed our personal aesthetics (and our shared cravings for Mexican food).

Rodman and Rudy are design mavens, but I didn’t realize they were equally fanatical about food until the day we shared a basket of french fries on a hotel terrace. I remember how their faces lit up when the food arrived: The frites were cut like little scoops, and we marveled at the way their concave shape smartly offered both maximum surface area for crispness and a perfect vehicle for mayonnaise or ketchup. We still talk about those damn fries every time we meet, be it in Italy, Mexico City, New York, or elsewhere.

Looking ahead to autumn entertaining and the holidays, I found myself hankering for the kind of fresh food-meets-design intel I knew Rodman and Rudy would deliver, so I thought I’d touch base. Like good friends do, we wound up chatting for hours. Here are the highlights from our conversation.

Kate Berry: How did you guys land in Mexico City, and why do you love it?

Rudy Weissenberg: Rodman and I have spent our careers working in and around Mexico. Rodman was the head specialist of Latin American Art at Christie’s, and I was in Spanish language media in the U.S., always dealing with Mexican music and television. We both started traveling to Mexico right out of college. Mexico City was this amazing, cosmopolitan place full of culture and food, and living here was a dream of both of ours. After I got my second graduate degree, I knew we needed to pivot from what we were doing, and we decided to do something entrepreneurial together, which meant moving here.

KB: Rodman, I remember you’re the cook. Rudy, what part do you play when you entertain together?

RW: I tend to be front of the house. When we have a dinner party, I’ll set up the tables and the bar. Abundance is important to me, while Rodman is very comfortable and measured. You know what I mean? We have a different approach.

KB: That’s a nice balance. Is that a similar dynamic to how it was in your families growing up? What was entertaining like in your childhood homes?

RW: Rodman and I both think about our adult life being modeled by our grandparents. My grandmother on my father’s side was very gregarious and a great cook who made everything. Every week, she would call and invite us for lunch and ask every single grandchild what they wanted to eat. It was like 30 of us coming and going, so it was lively and loud. My maternal grandmother was Italian. Twice a year, she would call and say we’re having a huge feast, first the pasta, then the pizza. She would bring out all the recipes from her mom, who moved to Guatemala from Italy. We’d walk into her house and there would be pasta hanging from wooden rods everywhere—enough to feed all 30 of us.

KB: You entertain guests from near and far. Does your approach change depending on where they’re from? What’s your entertaining style now?

RW: I would say we’ve become a lot more informal. We just want to make it easier on everyone and consider more than just [the number of] guests because it always ends up growing. Now, we do lap dinners all the time. We like everyone to feel comfortable. Come whenever, leave whenever, have as much as you want or as little as you want. We put out big serving bowls and platters of cozy dishes, and people can serve themselves. If we’re having locals over, we don’t normally do Mexican food for dinner. But if we’re having people from out of town, then we definitely cook Mexican.

KB: I know you’ve gleaned a lot of inspiration from your travels. But what are other sources of ­inspiration, like any books, movies, or nature?

Rodman Primack: I love cookbooks and read them from cover to cover. I love old ones. I love new ones. When we’re traveling, there’s nothing more exciting than finding a vintage cookbook. I found one in Puebla by the local equivalent of the Junior League with amazing recipes for old-fashioned dishes. One is budín azteca, a layered casserole of tortillas, cream sauce, and chicken.

KB: Your book, Love How You Live, is out this fall, and it pictures many meaningful kitchen objects. Tell me about those, and how you go about ­choosing pieces that work together.

RP: For us, there’s little that’s just decorative. So it’s, “Oh, that platter can hang on the wall and it’s going to be great for serving.” We don’t think about what’s going to look good with this or that. We just know intuitively that it’s going to look good with other great-looking things.

We’re very interested in craft and the people who make things. They tend to be humble, slightly informal, and utilitarian, which is beautiful. We design a lot of open kitchens, and people are like, “But everyone is going to see your ugly things!” Not if you just buy what you love. It’ll all work together.

KB: Does design also factor in when you’re buying kitchen stuff for more practical, everyday use?

RP: I don’t really care whether someone walks into my kitchen and thinks it’s pretty or not. I know that fundamentally it’s going to be, because we’re aesthetic people, but the most important thing is that I can walk into my kitchen and make an awesome dinner in 45 minutes because it’s so organized.

KB: Rudy, somewhere you wrote that correct color creates space in emotion. So let’s talk about your black floor. How does it make you feel?

RW: When we were designing the kitchen, it was becoming so graphic and colorful that we needed to bring it down. I’m obsessed with vintage materials and was trying to get inspired when I saw the black linoleum. I hardly see linoleum in black anymore and thought it would be a beautiful counterpoint.

KB: Let’s talk about these vintage wall tiles. I know they were already there when you bought your apartment.

RW: The building was finished in 1952, but the tile reads more late ’60s or ’70s. The first thing that people said to us when we moved in was, “You’re of course getting rid of the tile, right?” But I think it’s absolutely wonderful!

RP: What was ugly, Rudy, were those faux-­mahogany cabinets next to the yellow tile. We painted them bright yellow, and that’s what made it work.

KB: If you had to boil it all down, what’s your ­philosophy when it comes to kitchen design?

RP: There’s that old adage, “The kitchen is the heart of the home.” It really is. Rudy and I make homes wherever we go. We’ll buy potted geraniums and put them on the kitchen counter of a vacation rental. It’s all connected with a desire to be at home and make other people feel at home, too.

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