Here Are Your Nominees For Best Jew-ish Chef Of 2018!


Image by iStock
It’s that time of year again — it’s time for the Forward Food Awards, where we celebrate food as an essential part of Jewish life and ask you, our readers, to pick their favorite places to fress.
The nominees were chosen by Forward staff, but the choice of winners is entirely up to our readers.
Here are your nominees for Best Jew-ish Chef:

Chanie Apfelbaum
@busyinbrooklyn, alias Chanie Apfelbaum, has 41,000 Instagram followers. Her cookbook, Millennial Kosher, sold like gangbusters on Amazon. She exemplifies a new kind of Orthodox chef, one who isn’t afraid to embrace her Jewishness, while retaining her social media savvy and keeping her food consistently delicious, modern and camera-ready. She’s not just a chef of today. She’s a chef of the future.
Molly Yeh
If you don’t know who Molly Yeh is, you must have taken a break from being part of the national conversation for a bit, but don’t worry. This Jewish-Chinese American chef who just scored a Food Network show is about to be everywhere. She’s about to bring Jewish cuisine to the TV screen, her blog mynameisyeh, with its comfortable, sparkle-friendly take on foods, is an internet favorite, and her new book on yogurt is set to make people rethink their dairy semi-solids.
Michael Solomonov
Did Michael Solomonov change the face of Israeli cooking? Well, is hummus not a household name now? Solomonov’s landmark Philly eatery Zahav and his James Beard Best Chef award make him one of the most recognizable Jewish chefs out there right now. His cookbooks have been feted by all, and his journey from drug addict to celebrity chef is an inspiring one. When his new creation, Israeli Soul, is released, watch out. The food world may never be the same.
Alon Shaya
Alon Shaya understands Middle Eastern cuisine, perhaps better than anyone. A trip to his new restaurants Saba and Safta, named for grandparents, is more than enough evidence of that. After publishing Shaya: An Odyssey of Food, My Journey Back to Israel, a cookbook cum autobiography chock full of the recipes that made him the culinary inspiration he is, Shaya declared his loyalty to various social justice movements and made himself cooking’s new socially conscious heir apparent.
Julia Turshen
This was a banner year for Julia Turshen. Her new website, Equity At The Table, launched, promising to create diversity and inclusivity in the food industry by way of a public listing of professional women looking to make the connections they are often not considered for. Her cookbook “Feed The Resistance,” about nourishing each other in the age of Trump, was named Eater’s Best cookbook of 2017. Her newest cookbook, Now & Again, is a guide on what to do with all those tricky leftovers. This queer Jewish chef is making waves all over the food industry and she’s[ nowhere near done.
Vote here!
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
Culture Trump wants to honor Hannah Arendt in a ‘Garden of American Heroes.’ Is this a joke?
- 2
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 3
Fast Forward The invitation said, ‘No Jews.’ The response from campus officials, at least, was real.
- 4
Opinion A Holocaust perpetrator was just celebrated on US soil. I think I know why no one objected.
In Case You Missed It
-
Film & TV In ‘The Rehearsal,’ Nathan Fielder fights the removal of his Holocaust fashion episode
-
Fast Forward AJC, USC Shoah Foundation announce partnership to document antisemitism since World War II
-
Yiddish יצחק באַשעװיסעס מיינונגען וועגן די אַמעריקאַנער ייִדןIsaac Bashevis’ opinion of American Jews
אין זײַנע „פֿאָרווערטס“־אַרטיקלען האָט ער קריטיקירט זייער צוגאַנג צום חורבן און צו ייִדישקײט.
-
Culture In a Haredi Jerusalem neighborhood, doctors’ visits are free, but the wait may cost you
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.