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 by asking Aaron about some of his earliest Jewish food memories.

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 more than 100 recipes. I also get her thoughts on the evolution of Jewish cooking, particularly her own.

Show Notes

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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.