Shalom Japan
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with Aaron Israel and Sawako Okochi, the owners of Shalom Japan –– a Japanese-Jewish fusion restaurant in Brooklyn. Truth be told, I’ve been waiting for this conversation for a long time because it's thanks to Shalom Japan that I got this idea of Yiddishland and the fact that Jewish cuisine is evolving on its own terms for, it seems, the first time in history. I was lucky enough to visit back in May of 2021 to slurp up my own bowl of matzo ball ramen and that’s when it all just clicked. But enough of my memories. Let’s get to Aaron and Sawako! I started our chat...
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Leah Koenig's Roman-Jewish Kitchen
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with Leah Koenig, the much-celebrated cookbook author of a whopping SEVEN cookbooks, including Modern Jewish Cooking and The Jewish Cookbook. It’s like how there’s THE Ohio State University. Leah wrote THE Jewish Cookbook. We talk a little bit about that and I mention how instrumental that book was in moving me along my own Jewish cooking journey. But the focus of our chat is on her latest cookbook, Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome's Jewish Kitchen. It's a captivating cookbook, deep-diving into the two-thousand-plus-year-old world of Roman-Jewish cooking with...
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Rebecca "The Bad Jew" King Talks Porkstrami
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with Rebecca King aka The Bad Jew. Rebecca specializes in porkstrami, which she sells out of her very unkosher deli in Los Angeles when she’s not busy traveling the globe cooking at private events. I’ve been wanting to chat with Rebecca pretty much since I came up with the idea of Yiddishland. To me, she is the embodiment of what I think is so unique about this moment in Jewish food. That is, she’s someone who cares about her Jewishness and she’s going to express it however she damn well pleases.
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Cooking alla Giudia with Benedetta Guetta
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with Benedetta Guetta, whose name is arguably the most fun to pronounce in Jewish cooking, but it’s also plastered across Cooking alla Giudia: A Celebration of the Jewish Food of Italy. She’s also the owner of Café Lovi in Santa Monica where she's serving up a slew of signature challah sandwiches amongst other noshables. Before we get to our chat, allow me to throw out a shameless plug for an upcoming Forward event where I’ll be chatting alongside Rukhl Schaechter, editor of the Forverts, food scholar and chef Eve Jochnowitz, as well as folklore and food...
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Joan Nathan's Life in Recipes
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with the one and only, the matriarch of Jewish-American cooking––Joan Nathan. That’s right, Joan-freaking-Nathan! What can I say about Joan Nathan that you don’t already know if you’re listening to this thing? She’s the James Beard award-winning author of 11 cookbooks, most recently King Solomon's Table: A Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World. Next year you can get her memoir-in-recipes appropriately titled Joan Nathan: A Life In Search Of Recipes. Before we get to our chat, I mentioned last time that I started uploading videos...
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Lox, Stock, and Bagel: June Hersh's Iconic New York Jewish Food
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with June Hersh, the author of, amongst other things, Recipes Remembered: A Celebration of Survival, Still Here: Inspiration from Survivors and Liberators of the Holocaust, and most recently, Iconic New York Jewish Food, a History and Guide with Recipes.
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Tapping Into Nostalgia With Jeremy Salamon
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with Jeremy Salamon, the owner of Agi’s Counter in Crown Heights, a high-end Jewish & Eastern European-inspired restaurant inspired by his grandmother, the eponymous Agi. You can find him on Instagram at as well as at where you’ll get no shortage of photographic culinary temptations that are, to be honest, a tad torturous for someone like me who tragically lives too far away to just pop over the restaurant for a nosh. YouTube Videos mentioned
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Meet The Pizza Bagel Behind The Nosher
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with Shannon Sarna, certified pizza bagel and creator of , arguably the preeminent Jewish food website with everything from recipes to the surprising Jewish history behind just about everything: fish and chips, Baileys, Mickey D’s, you name it. Who am I kidding? If you’re listening to this, you know what The Nosher is. Shannon is also the author of two cookbooks: Modern Jewish Baker and last year’s Modern Jewish Comfort Food.
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Yangban's Korean-American Deli with a Heymishe Touch
Yiddishland
Today I’m chatting with , who co-founded with her husband, John. Yangban is a Korean-American deli in LA’s arts district with a bissele heymishe touch as a nod to Katianna’s grandmother. We talk about her earliest food influences, growing up in upstate New York, and when she started blending Korean and Jewish flavors. But first, I ask her to share the origin story behind the deli. As mentioned on the show
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Chopsticks Meet (Jewish) Fork
Yiddishland
Jewish Deli Scallion Pancake Rolls, Mapo Tofu Shakshuka, Red Bean Babka, Matcha Cream Sufganiyot, Za'atar Lox Onigiri, Taiwanese Brisket, and the list goes on. Today I’m chatting with Jamie Wei, who you might know as the Asian-Jewish recipe developer on Instagram. We talk about her first experiences with Jewish food and how she started blending Taiwanese flavors with Ashkenazi dishes.
info_outlineToday I’m chatting with Jeremy Salamon, the owner of Agi’s Counter in Crown Heights, a high-end Jewish & Eastern European-inspired restaurant inspired by his grandmother, the eponymous Agi. You can find him on Instagram at @jeremycooks as well as at @agiscounter where you’ll get no shortage of photographic culinary temptations that are, to be honest, a tad torturous for someone like me who tragically lives too far away to just pop over the restaurant for a nosh.
YouTube Videos mentioned
Exploring My Jewish Roots In Sighet, Romania