Israeli-American celebrity chef and restaurant owner Alon Shaya has been cooking and working in restaurants nearly all of his life.

“The first thing I ever made by myself was hamentashen,” the author of Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel, says. “I was 7 years old.”

He called his mom at work and she talked him through the recipe.

“She was wondering if I was gonna burn the house down,” he said. “But I got them done, and they came up pretty good.”

Shaya, who started working in restaurants at age 13, recalls spending time in the kitchen when his safta came to visit from Israel.

“The house would just smell of amazing different kinds of foods,” he said.

She would make blistering peppers and eggplants over the fire for Lutenitsa, stuffed grape leaves and different soups and salads.

“I would come home from school and see all that food,” Shaya said. “It would really just connect me with family; [it’s] what got me very interested very early on.”

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On this episode of Taste Buds with Deb, I speak with Alon Syaha, Israeli-American celebrity chef and restaurant owner. A two-time James Beard Foundation Award winner, Shaya is chef-partner at Pomegranate Hospitality and author of Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel.
Shaya discusses his cooking origin story, the power of food to connect, and his work rescuing/recreating recipes nearly lost during the Holocaust. He also shares his grandmother’s recipe for Lutenitsa (peppers and eggplants).

Read the full article about Alon Shaya, listen to the podcast, and get the recipe.