I'm Aiton Weinstein. And I'm Naor Menninger. And you're listening to Two Nice Jewish Boys.

This podcast is made in collaboration with the Jewish Journal.

In recent years, Israeli cuisine has been on the rise, becoming extremely popular throughout Europe

and the United States. This has many people asking themselves, perhaps rightfully so,

what the hell is Israeli cuisine? Some critical voices even claim that many of the wonderful

dishes Israel is claiming as its own are actually stolen, which of course echoes a longer, deeper controversy

that has plagued the Middle East for about a century. In a way, you might say Israeli food is the

Arab-Israeli conflict in a plate. But regardless, Israeli restaurants keep opening their doors

on street corners in almost every big American city.

Lines of clientele stretch around the block and lines of praise stretch across the food critics' reviews.

Michael Solominov is an Israeli-American chef, renowned for his critically acclaimed Israeli restaurant

Zahav in Philadelphia. He's the winner of several James Beard awards, including Best Chef Mid-Atlantic in

2011, cookbook of the year in 2016, and outstanding chef in 2017. His cookbook, Zahav,

a world of Israeli cuisine, is a huge bestseller. Fortunately for us, Mike is now touring Israel

and has been gracious enough to let us interview him here in Tel Aviv.

We are honored. We're extremely thrilled and we can't wait to get started. So let's just get to it.

Hello. Thank you so much. What up? How are you guys doing? Great. How are you? I'm good. Thank you so much for having me on.

Thank you for joining us. So let's start

with the, I guess, the big debate. Is Israeli food just the huge cultural appropriation?

Well, I'm glad that you're starting out really light. No, I mean, I think that, listen, I

understand where this, like, accusation would come from, right? Because if you want to make a case

for Israel not being sort of allowed or having the right to exist, then of course you can use food.

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