Cookbook Author & Food Celebrity, Jake Cohen

Published Sep 11, 2023, 7:01 AM

Isaac Mizrahi goes deep with Jake Cohen about the surprising food he eats every day, their unique perspectives on being gay and Jewish, an unbelievably touching tribute to his husband and more.

Follow Hello Isaac on @helloisaacpodcast on Instagram and TikTok, Isaac @imisaacmizrahi on Instagram and TikTok and Jake Cohen on Instagram @jakecohen.

(Recorded on August 15, 2023)

I think people in my world fall somewhere in between sex workers and clowns, and it's like we're giving ourselves up. We're like really selling ourselves in a way, but we're also like we're clowns, but we can't take ourselves too seriously. Ring the entertainment business.

This is Hello Isaac, my podcast about the idea of success and how failure affects it. I'm Isaac Msrahi, and in this episode, I talked to New York Times best selling cookbook author and food celebrity Jake Cohen.

Hello Isaac is Jake Cohen.

I cannot wait to talk to you, and we are going to chat all things Nash's, all things.

Jewish, gay f Island. I'm going to have a laughed chatting with you.

I began following Jake Cohen on Instagram a number of years ago, and I was just so taken with his incredible presence as both a recipe writer, a food presenter, but also as an incredibly gentle spirit and as a fellow jew. We met when he came over to cook with me. We made snickerdoodles on my Instagram, and it was just such an incredible meeting of minds and meeting of hearts, Like, I really do adore this person, and so I'm kind of excited about taking the relationship to a different level, both a professional level but also a personal level, and so I'm eager to get started talking to him.

Let's do it.

Here we go, Jake Cohen, Hi, Hi, how are you to Darling?

Before we get started? What sign are you? I never asked you this? What sign?

And a cap? The core? I am a New Year's Eve baby? Right?

It makes sense. This is actually everything is falling into place now. You're from Bayside, Queens, is that right?

That is correct?

Do you ever go back to Bayside?

My aunt still lives there, so yes I do. We're actually just in Flushing for dinner last night because we love Cephon food, so yeah. And I live in Queens, so this is my borough. I think too often we're not.

We're sleeping on the best borough in the city.

Wow, okay, come on Queens. That was a plug for Queens. So now I think I'm going to start by asking you where it.

All started for you?

How did your obsession with cooking and baking begin?

It started as a a rather zoftig, uncool teenager that was in the closet, and I pretty much turned to food as a way to make friends. I was always obsessed with Food Network, and I started throwing these little dinner parties, and it was the way that I kind of tricked people into liking me or spending time with me. And that obsession around hospitality and the way that food can really bring people in was just it was so powerful that I knew this was the only.

Thing I could get.

Wow, this is amazing to me. First of all, when you say zoftig, you mean fat, you were a.

Fact I do.

I do?

Yes, yes, because I was a.

Fat kid too. I mean I'm still fat. I consider myself still a fat person. But you are like the opposite of fat, Darling. That is a revelation to me. I did not realize that you were a fat kid.

It builds character, It builds a lot of character and a lot of body dysmorphia.

But other than that, wow, wow, wow wow. So did you actively seek a career in food.

Yeah.

I applied to the culinary and STU of America with no backups, and I was just pretty much, this is what I'm going to do, and everyone else will like eventually get on board, and luckily I got in so I didn't have to deal with anything else. And wow, I immediately went up to the Hudson Valley started studying.

And that was a plan.

Yeah.

Everyone's like, oh, they think like I stumbled into this work I do, And really it's like, I'm just very blessed that I get to be living out my dream. I didn't know how I was going to get here, but this was the plan to get here eventually.

Right, tell me about that as a kid, maybe it's a fat kid thing. You go like, yeah, I'm not going to be a fat kid for long, right, exactly?

You have a plan of like, all right, how what am I going to do for me?

Personally? I worked in restaurants straight from culinary school. I was at Danielle and ABC Kitchen, and these were incredible experiences and it pushed me and made me a better cook and all these things.

And I knew very early on that this wasn't for I don't want to own a restaurant. I want to run a restaurant.

What about it turned you off restauranting?

So when you think about like that story about me as a teenager, it was about that personal connection of me cooking and people eating and having that real direct connection. In a restaurant, there's a little bit of separation. It's all like smoking mirrors, where it's like it's all happening behind the door, all the cooking. Even in an open kitchen, it's like you're seeing a very little portion of the big picture. And all I wanted to do was cook for people and get their reactions.

I r ol And that wasn't really scratching that itch for me.

And so did you ever have a job as a waiter or a bus boy, or a stock person or a subway token taker?

No?

No, always in the kitchen literally started.

I worked at this sandwich shop in like in high school, and like I just like throw me in the kitchen. They paid me in sandwiches, and that was it.

And do you ever wish you did anything out Like did you want to be a ballet dancer or a welder or a riveter or something?

And like many Jewish boys, I was conditioned to be like, oh, maybe I'll be a doctor. Maybe I'll be a doctor. And I played around with the idea for a little bit, and oh my god, thank god I didn't godless doctors.

Thank you for your service. I should not be your doctor. I should be making you a brisket. I must call it.

I'll marry a doctor and make the brisket Darling. So you are merely a food celebrity. You have no other income, but what you make as a cookbook author and an Instagram star and a guest on Drew Barry Mors like.

That's how you do it.

That's how I do it, right, That is amazing.

Do you know how lucky you are I do What was the decisive moment, Like what was the post or the book that you wrote, or what was it that you just went like, oh my god, this is my career.

Yeah.

The funny thing is, I think it's very similar to pop stars, because I really think like pop stars decide one day that they're just going to live their life like a pop star, and everyone else eventually will catch on. And I was like, oh, I'm going to live my life like Indergarten and eventually everyone will catch on.

And they did, right.

I married very young.

I married a banker, so it was just like I always say, like, the joke is, it's like I signed up to be a housewife and all of this just like happened, which isn't true. But like I always say, he is my news. I get my best ideas from him. He is the best taste tester for all my recipes. He like believes me. And you really need when you're doing anything, like someone in your corner cheering you on and having that. And my husband was everything in a way that like when my career took off and he ended up switching jobs and I was able to step in and support him for a bit.

And that's really all you want.

Really.

Everything took off with my first book, and that came about from us designed to start hosting shabat very much in a similar way where neither of us grew up with shabat in our households, and we were like, we don't have any friends because we met so young, we spent so much of our twenties really focused on our careers, focused on each other in our relationship, and I'm so grateful we put all that energy into that. But as a result, as we were getting like further in our twenties, we're like, we don't actually have like a friend group or that community that we were really craving. So I was like, oh, actually, I got a secret of how we could trick people into liking us.

Let's invite them for dinner.

Oh that's crazy, who wouldn't like you?

And by the way, how much a part of the plan was this to meet your husband?

Yeah?

We met on Hinge. He was like one of my first matches. We went on a date and pretty much the rest is history.

Wow. And is Hinge like like a dating app? Or is it like a book?

Up app?

No?

No dating, dating dating?

Right?

So you were seeing these shobot dinners, which I really want to get into. But tell me the progression of how that led to the book. And the book was called jew Ish right, that was the first book? Yeah, tell me something about all that.

It really was this way that we started to reinvent like Jewish ritual through a modern lens of how we were going to take what we've inherited as young Jews and make it work and be sustainable for our lives. And that looked very different than my grandparents or even my parents of how they celebrated Jewish holidays or the Sabbath. And what happened was we started inviting all of these just like cool Jews about town. And this was our way to connect, and it became this like word of mouth kind of thing about Jake and Alex's shabbats, and people would come up and be like, oh my god, I'm dying to come twenty years shabbots because they see pictures.

Yes, I live like looking over Manhattan.

And the thing is is that we were living in Manhattan at the time. My mother was just living in this building, and then my sister moved into the building and then we followed. Wow, so we turned it into this urban kibbutz. But my mother this was before we had the space really host So I would be throwing these dinners in my mother's apartment, which she loved because I could use her apartment whenever I wanted.

The only gist was she got to join, which she loved. So it was all these like twenty something year old gay men and.

Her and you were all right with this, like yeah, no, no, darling, we have a very very different take on family.

And funny enough, we're the only ones left in the building. My mother and sister are both a block away now and I miss it. I missed when they were even closer. A block is too far.

That is insane.

I mean, you obviously had a really fun, happy childhood. Yeah.

I mean everyone has their own drama, A messy divorce from my parents. Funny enough, my sister and I we were close. Oh so we kind of grew apart. And then my sister's my best friend. She's actually this new book is dedicated to her. But she and I got really close because she was going to college at the University of Alabama, and we went on Birthright together.

Which means you went to Israel. You went to Israel.

And she came back. She became a lot more religious, and she was like, what am I doing? I can't be in Alabama anymore. She's like, I'm transferring to Breoke College in Manhattan. And my mom calls me up and she goes, listen, Jamie's transferring to Manhattan. The dorms are all in the Upper East Side, but her cut campus is downtown. I was living on thirty six and third. She's like, if you let Jamie move in with you, I will let you take the money that was going to go towards her dorm and put it towards your rent. And I was working at sever magazine. I was making pennies. I was making nothing. I was working Monday through Friday the magazine and then the weekend at ain studio in the neighborhood for some extra cash and to get a free gym membership.

Wow.

So when she said that, I was like, h and now here's the hook. I was living in a four hundred square foot studio, so she threw out my couch moved in a pullout. Alex and I were only a few months into dating, and literally I always joked that I was like the Willy Wonka, like the grandparents and the bed altogether, Like that's how we were living for like six months. So we did that for a semester and we got so close. My favorite story is it was the first Hanukkah we were together. So we've been dating for almost a year. I surprised Alex. I got us these matching Tiffany key chains because it about the time that we were exchanging.

Keys for each other's apartment.

Oh.

We typically we get up on the weekend, we go get dressed, We go out to get bagels and I hit them in his pocket, so he put on his jacket.

He feels like he opens it up. We have this like incredible moment and the stuff and my sister just.

Rolls over and she goes, will you either shut the fuck up or get the fuck out?

And that was it I And it was so so heated, And yet there's nothing that brings people closer together than being under the same roof.

I guess so.

But here's the thing she went to that, you know, that birthright thing, and you both came back together and she became more religious.

Darling. You know that in the Jewish religion, homp sexuality is not permitted. It's a sin. You know that, don't you.

Yes, But again, the whole span of what that looks like in actual practice, everyone gets to find their version of Judaism. I go to many congregations that not only accept but celebrate queer members. So that was never going to be the world I lived in. That being said, that is everyone's journey to take by themselves with their own community. Listen, you're not wrong with the exception that that is one specific look at what Judaism could do.

Yeah.

Yeah, except for the fact, darling, that that's how I was raised. We were Orthodox. You know, it was an anomalous version of Orthodoxy because we were Sephardic, and it's slightly different from the Ashkenazek version, and we were taught that it was a big sin to be homosexual.

I was raised, of course.

With that and great and you know, I get hives around things to do with Shabat and the holidays.

I get crazy. It drives me insane.

And there's a wonderful kind of an aspect to Judaism. But I can't be around rabbis, I can't be around any kind.

Of shool like even the gay stual makes me the same.

I think what it comes down to is community, and this is why everyone's kind of craving and so often. One of my favorite aspects about being both gay and Jewish is this intersection of we talk about being gay's idea of chosen family and the way that we interact with each other and find queer spaces that we get to be our true authentic selves in. And for me personally, what I've been able to find in New York is this insane community within a community of gay Jews in which we're able to hold both identities in each hand at the same time in a way that does not look like many other Jewish communities that are more traditional. That being said, I have many gay Jewish friends who are a lot more Orthodoxed, who keep Kosher, who raped to fill in every day, and they're able to do that. And my biggest thing is like, go with God. Whatever works for you is what you should be doing.

But here's the thing.

You are considerably younger than me, and I look at your generation of gay people, and I want to address how you grew up as a gay and a Jew and how I think everything was permissible. I don't think you grew up with shame, did you.

No. I think it's one of those things where my journey to coming to understand pride as a gay person and pride as a Jew was one hundred percent intrinsic. It was completely me coming to my own terms of who I was, and then the same way as an adult, I feel like it was actually much easier to find pride as a gay man to find pride as a Jew. In America, it's kind of a lot more acceptable in a place like New York to be like an out and proud gay man, but being an out and proud Jew is often with a little more resistance. So for me growing up that way, and again, my grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, and she was very religious, and then she she has her own interesting relationship with Judaism, and then the way that that affected my mother's generation, and then how they raised us. It's so messy, but all I can say is I have come at it from a place of both total respect to my history and where I come from.

And there's this idea of.

Like, when I think of my great grandfather who was like a live back in like he was a black hat in Poland.

Wow, a black hat man, that.

Is, And that's not anything what I would expect for my life. And yet at the same time, it's part of our family history. That's part of who I am, and it helps dictate the traditions and culture that I hold so near and dear, even if I'm doing it in a very un orthodox way.

Right But when I use the word shame, you kind of use the word pride, And they are kind of on opposite sides of the spectrum.

Right now, we are proud. Did you grow up with.

Any haters, any challenges, any family? How did you relate to your grandmother? Did she know you were gay?

Funny enough, the joke is in the family that she's psychic, because allegedly She told my grandfather when I was a baby, asking him if he would be.

Okay if I was gay. Come on, And when I tell.

You, nothing but total support from that grandma, from my other grandmother who lived around the corner from you, nothing but love my grandmother. When I tell you the way she loves my husband, she loves my husband. He is the golden spouse of the family. The number one thing that someone wants in a Jewish family is an incredible Jewish son. And then when you get to marry another one of the same, it's like double double.

Enough, Oh my gosh, Darling, wow.

And yet he is a Sephardic Jew and you are an a Shchanazak Jew.

Right, correct, He's Persiany rocky, right.

Because I'm Sephardic, I'm Syrian Jewish, And Darling, a lot of what you do in your life with food, like even when you're braiding a in.

A speedo, which I think is like you know, by the way.

You know, it's like that that's wonderful because even though you are kind of exploring and expressing a kind of Jewishness, it isn't necessarily a stereotype.

Talk to me about that.

And by the way if I look like that in a speedo, honey, I would do everything in a speed out.

Okay, Well, it's funny because f Island as you call it.

Ireland, also known as Fire Island.

This last week we were there, there just ended up being like a bunch of gay Jews that we run into and it was too much for me to cook for everyone for shaban. So I was like, Okay, we're gonna do a little own egg, Like from seven pm to eight pm, I baked a ton of thala. Come over, we'll do the Kiddish, We'll do the moze to the prayers on the wine and the pala.

Everyone gets a little nach and then they can go and do their their dinners.

We ended up having like forty to fifty guys over in the house and it was absolutely beautiful. And I'm in a crop top and like everyone's in there, like it's every thing that you wouldn't expect done as we want it. And to me, that's the magic of what I do is if I can create a space that somebody feels more at home in, then they're more likely to find their own personal power of reclaiming these traditions and rituals in a way that works in their life, versus just being like, this isn't for me, it doesn't accept me for who I am.

I'm going to walk away completely.

That's what I did.

Like sometimes a lot of the rituals and things put me right back there and I don't like it. So it's like, I don't know if I could ever sort of just lay back and enjoy a Friday night.

Oh, I'm gonna I'm gonna get you there, because I'm telling you there is something when you.

Boil it down.

So much of Judaism, it's conversations on morals and ethics and community, and my shabbad is literally just self care. It's how do you pause at the end of the week, reflect, recharge, and be as present as you can with those around you and when you when you boil it down to that, it's an act of gratitude and it's an act of self care in a way that's very similar to the fact that like yoga began as a Hindi practice that now everyone does because it's so good for you.

I don't disagree with the word of what you're saying, and I love that you've taken this and created an entire, beautiful, successful career around it. Was there a moment in your assent as a very successful food celebrity where you've failed.

Yes, Oh my god. My first book, Jewish wasn't supposed to be the first book. The first proposal I made for a book was I poured my heart into it.

It was this love letter to my husband. His family's mainly Iraqi Jewish, and it's something that's never actually been documented, is like an Iraqi Jewish cookbook.

And I wanted to do the.

First Iraqi Jewish cookbook that would kind of break down their entire cuisine and preserve all of their family recipes. And it was called Hellua, which is both the word and arabek the first sweet, beautiful, but also the name of his great grandmother, the matriarch of the family.

Oh, it's also a delicious dessert. Helloujah is like delicious. It's like a bulgar wheat that's been soaked in honey and orange exactly.

So I felt it was one of the most like, powerful, meaningful, unique things that I worked on. And we pitched it and it got rejected by every single publisher and the responses were crazy. One was like, eh, we already have a Jewish cookbook this season. No.

Others were like oh, others were like, it's too niche. And I was terrible because I was so young.

So I was telling everyone like, I'm so excited, and then obviously I'm not because it's not happening.

And then that's when I went back to the drawing board.

I came up with the idea of Jewish based on my spots, which is always going to be like book two, I was like, all right, why don't we move this up to book one. I broke down all of these recipes and I started incorporating a lot of the Iraqi recipes into Jewish, and they were some of the most viral.

Popular recipes in the book.

Wow, I do this Iraqi salmon and these Iraqi common cookies, and they were when I tell you, I get like thousands of people still to this day will come up be like I make your salmon once a week and wow. It was something that was a just proof of concept that even something that someone thinks is so niche can be really beloved by all because you're just looking to find common ground. People already know that, like these are recipes that are adjacent to things that they love, just in a new way, and they want to explore that. I have so many more of his family recipes in my new book, and it's like, now it becomes this, this.

Thread that I'm going to do forever.

Tell me, is your book kosher? Is it kush ruth?

No? No?

I want to talk about kush ruth for a minute, because I totally respect people who keep kosher. I think it's an incredible pursuit in a life, you know, to like decide on something that is completely you know, pure and random like that and just kind of go with it, you know, in the plates and the dishwashers and the glass versus china, blah blah. It's incredible. But is there such a thing as good food that is kosher? I mean it, like, besides, yeah, you're DELI.

Here's the deal. When I think of being kosher, it is it's intentional eating. You're putting so much headspace towards how you eat and that ritual around eating, and there is something very meditative about discipline.

It's like being a vegetarian or a vegan or something one hundred.

I think that it's something that's so beautiful that everyone gets to dictate their own and everyone.

Knows that person.

Like I have family members where it's like they won't eat pork, but a little shrimp is okay. They won't do this, but if it's on paper plates, then that's fine. No pork chomps, but bacon occasionally. And at the end of the day, I just I don't believe in judging others. I think it's funny. I'll make fun of people occasionally if it's super out there, but if that's what works for them, it brings them joy, then of that that in the same way that I'm a lunatic, the way that I can crush a pint of ice cream, yet we'll only use flenda in my iced coffee.

It's crazy, it's crazy.

None of it makes sense, yet it's part of my own craziness.

Absolutely, no judgment, no, but just a reckoning recon you know. It's like, if you're going to use pork fat to emulsify some egg eggs and put it onto pasta, there is just not a real substitute there really isn't you know what I mean?

Olive oil.

You could use avocat whatever it is, but it doesn't taste the same. It's not a judgment, it's just my own preference. All right, Let's get back to food for a minute. What's your favorite food?

I would say, like, there are two realms. On the one hand, hala. I become very well known for it because A I think baking fresh bread for people is one of the most intimate things that you can do. It's a process, it takes time, and someone's reaction. It's it's so so so special.

Hala is not exactly a briochhto because there's no butter in it, but it is enriched.

It's an enriched with eggs, yeah, eggs, fat honey, yes, but dairy free. So there's something so kind of magical to that. And I bake it every Friday. So that's on the one side, that's the very like high end fancy answer. On the other side, a peanut, butter and jelly. Like when I tell you every day, every day, really every day, I think I do it on I actually have a recipe in the new book where it's like I do it on Calla and then I dip it in an egg like a Monte Crisco and fried in butter.

Yes, Now do you egg wash and bread it and do it like just.

Oh god, darling, darling, you know how to live. I know how to live delicious. What's your jam of choice or your jelly of choice?

So I am a big concord grape lover. I think it is delicious. How delicious? Second is raspberry with the seeds. I don't want seedless love?

Come on.

However, I hate strawberry jelly. I hate it. I hate it. I think there's strawberry jam and peanut butter is never never a go for me.

Wait, can I say yes? Wise orange marm Wow? Okay, okay boom oh so good. Orange and peanut butter is so good?

All right?

Are there foods that you actually hate besides strawberry jam?

Yeah, there's one thing that I really hate, and I shame people in public for all the time, because there's nothing worse than like when I you're at a table and someone orders like truffle fries because like I love, I love fresh shaved truffles. Anything with truffle oil is ruined.

Ruin. We agree, we agree, dout.

If someone ordered it, I literally I could smell it, hit the table. I was like, oh, my husband like kicked me. He's like you can't do that to people. And I was like, oh, you order this truffle fries is like putrid hate it.

And yet Darling, one of Oprah's favorite things is truffle oil. So go figure, you know. And by the way, we're not judging, We're not.

Just like it's quote to quote Countess Luanne.

Even even Louis Vuitton makes mistakes like it's like like.

Uh no, no, but but we should make that distinction. Just because we say we don't like something, it doesn't mean I'm judging.

It's just not right for me. Distinction has to be made right now.

Okay, what is your favorite holiday based on food?

It's hand so, oh.

You are pervert. You are just saying that to be ridiculous.

I love it a I love the challenge. I love a challenge, okay, and be it's all my favorites.

I love Montiple soup, monsible soup. It is my death row meal. I I live for it. I love a brisket, I love gafilter fish, but like not the good stuff, like the high end stuff. I love like the challenge of a kay for pea dessert.

And I make some.

I've made some great ones, but the best the best thing you can do. I have a recipe in the new book for it is the Mansa toffee crunch where it's like you cover Monza with butter and sugar and chocolate.

That ah, I love that. So you have to make that for me, especially.

Whenever you want.

I will tell you calorically. It is the most calorically that I like. Like if I was dropped on a desert island like Triangle of Sadness style, all I would need is like a big bag of Matza crunch and I would I would live for weeks.

You would you would never be thin?

Yeah, never.

And by the way, like matsubry when you do it right, is pretty delicious, and macaroons when you do it is pretty decious. And you know it's a Sephardic Jew, we can eat rice whereas you can't eat rice. Yeah, so there are a few benefits to being Sephardic Jews. Okay, I want to talk to you about social media because it's a very, very big especially for your generation.

Darling, would you mind telling us how old you are?

I'm twenty nine. I turn kill you.

I can kill you. I didn't know you were still in your twenties.

I'll be thirty this New Year's eve.

Fuck, I can't even believe you're twenty nine. Nah, I'm sixty one.

Well, love, I will say we're still on this like journey of finding friends and community and the f island and dabbling. We don't mesh as well with blur age as we do with more mature gay men.

But listen, darling, when did you get your first phone when you were like what ten something?

No, No, it was lucky.

I didn't get get it until like right at that end of the middle school beginning of high school, so like formative years making it through puberty without social media was.

Huge, and then high school is when it began.

And when I got to college, I think was like my first semester was when like Instagram was created, because we were both raised with technology and yet the kind of rampant screen time didn't really kick off until honestly I graduated college and was out in the real world.

Right well, I remember like sort of after the first number of years of Instagram, everybody was like, will you please stop taking pictures of your food?

Stop it? You know, and no one listened.

It became almost the chief subject of Instagram, right if you go on my search, you get bulges first, right.

Of course, first naturally get.

Like you know, like gay things like Golden Girl, Housewive memes, real yeah.

Et cetera, and then you get food.

But this is why we get alongst We have the exact same page.

Exactly, Darling.

So, how much of your life is based in social media? Like how much importance does it have on your business, on your relationships with your friends who you follow and unfollow, et cetera.

Excellent question. So business wise, I'll start with that it's super important.

It's huge.

It's what allows me to do what I do because I have this built in platform. So when it's like they're giving a book deal or they're working with someone, they want to know that a product will be sold and my product will get eyes on it.

And that's what I'm able to guarantee in a way that I know that I have.

Worked really hard to create this relationship with the community based on recipe. That's also with this intention that I am constantly sharing free recipes online knowing that if you love my recipes and they work out really well for you, you're going to be so much more enticeed to want to get a hundred of them in a new cookbook, because we already have that trust and loyalty. That being said, in terms of the relationship aspect of it, of my friends family, I'm very much a big believer, and I think too often we don't talk about it. It's not a real place. I think a lot of people forget that it's not a real place. The Internet and even though you want interrect I say this all the time, where other big people have like huge followings on social and they'll talk about something like, oh, yeah, my friend whoever.

I'll just go have you met them in person?

Wow?

And if the answer is no, then they are a pen pal. I'm a big believer that I very particular on how I use the word friend, and I think.

Other people are a little too trusting. By the end of the day.

These are people that like this idea of you or this persona of you online, but you got to build these connections outside. So what I share who I share? Again, some of that's calculated. People love when like other people that they adore in a different field are hanging out together because it's that cool little thing.

It's like a crossover episode.

It's like Real Housewives Ultimate Girls trip, like when celebrity, when celebrities just hang out outside, That's what it's like. That being said, I think the craziest thing is I used to share my husband a lot, and we used to do these videos cooking together. And as it's grown, I compartmentalize it. I don't actually share him so much. It's like very like Barbie, like my job is beach.

No, my job is phone, And.

I do what I do to really like have a good relationship with social media, and in those moments where it's making me crazy and making me feel like garbage, I step away, I log off, I take breaks.

Darling, but you have like over a million followers. Was it the speedo aspect of it or was it the recipe?

It's spectrum And I think people in my world fall somewhere in between sex workers and clowns, and it's like we're giving ourself up. We're like really selling ourselves in a way, but we're also like we're clowns. We can't take ourselves too seriously. We're in the entertainment business. So for me, I think the number one thing and it's so it's so it's so like cheesy, and people hate it. But it's like, you gotta be yourself, and some people are likable and some people are not. But even someone like me, like I'm in the food world, this is gonna be like a really tough thing. I'm sure people won't agree with me, but that's that's life as a gay man in the food space.

I will never have a following or passion following like.

Some of the female figures in our space because our audiences are predominantly female. And while they love me, the relationship that they have with another woman in the way that they can emulate them of I want to be like that is something that they can't have with me. And gay men don't support other gay men. We sexualize them, but we don't support them. So like even like gay celebrities, it's only through the lens of sex.

And their body exactly.

That's why I've been doing a little more speedo stuff because if that's what it takes to sell a couple more books.

It's like, I tell you something, Darling.

When I was a young gay man, I had this older gay friend and you know, in those days there were few and far between, and I said to this guy, is you know I've always been a little chunky is it already was like, no, it's not a right, darling. Unless your thin, it's not going to be fun for you as a gay man. And he meant that, and I chose to ignore that. And it's like there are things that you have to choose to just kind of like go, no, the world is not about that for me, even though there is truth to it, you have to go like, no, the world is not about that for me. Right, But what I want to know, like, are you a top or a bottom? That I ask this of all my friends, I am a total verse. Hooray for you, good for you. That is a good answer. I guess I would say that too. I'm verse a lot more about him, Darling.

I believe I believe it's all mental.

A friend of mine he always says, like everyone should be Versu's like you can't give dick if you can't take dick, Like there are no good tops who don't know how to bottom, which is I don't know if that's totally true, but there's a different level when someone understands the full experience.

I think that might be, like, you know, one of the eye opening things that anyone has ever said on this podcast, Darling, how do you not get hugely fat by eating peanut butter.

And jelly and cake ol fucking day? How does that happen?

It's the number one question.

When I tell you these middle aged Jewish women, they get angry.

They're in my diet. They're like, you're you're not eating this, you are not eating this food. You are a liar.

Look, okay me middle age.

Here's the answer. Here's the answer. It's quite simple. I am a lunatic, so it's about balance. I don't cut anything out in terms of diet because I'm one of those people that if I cut something out, I end up having this emotional.

Break and start binge eating. So here's what I do.

I work out six days a week. I use this this virtual training app that has helped me a lot. I city bike everywhere in the city, not e bike, regular bike, so I'm biking eight to ten miles a day. And protein and protein. The number one thing that people aren't doing is eating enough protein. You need a gram a gram of protein for every pound you way, so like I'm two hundred pounds, Like I am aiming for two hundred grands of protein, which is a lot. It takes a lot of protein shakes of like just real intentions, a lot of a lot of cottage sheens. It is intentional eating, not unlike being kosher, being vegan, being gluten free. It just requires a discipline. And it doesn't happen overnight. When I tell you this body I have, this was a discipline. This required constant, constant, constant attention in a way that I wanted to do for myself.

I am a Jew, I have constantly been sickly.

I herniate discs, I throw things out, I break both and I was a teenager I fell on grass, snapped both bones in my arms. Like It's like I am a brittle person, and this is a way that I get to reclaim strength and power that I've never had before. And I don't believe in sports. I will go to the gym. I will build strength and call it again.

Well, I have to tell you, as a kindred sat kid, right, I never cared about muscle or anything.

I just wanted to be skinny, and.

At one point I was too skinny, and it was sort of a problem for a year or two.

And it can get dangerous, this sort.

Of thing always does.

I also wanted that until one day you come to the terms of like, this is what I have. I can either be heavy or muscular. I've always wanted to be that, like lanky, skinny, especially because exactly yeah, but it's like I'll take what I can get. And I found such beauty and pride in my own body and my skin and then things and no matter how hard you work, how great you get, Like everyone has their insecurity, but you.

Do you do this thing about health, which is really smart, I have to say, really really smart. Okay, we're going to play some games now, Darling.

Get ready.

The first one is called gnash or squash, and it's basically rate the cake. Okay, I kind of name some some bakeries that you might know, starting with Entonmen's.

Uh those mini choco chip cookies smash.

Really that's where you got? Not the beautiful raisin kind of like.

None, Nos, gorgeous of chocolate chip cook Yeah.

God got Magnolia Bakery.

No, the banana pudding, banana pul.

I don't like that. Butter cream. I'm not into butter cream.

I'm not into butter cream either, I agree.

How about Little Debbie? Do you get into Little Debbie? Or is that too it's too boyish.

It's those galaxy the o'del pies, Like, no, it's boyish.

All right.

Next one we're playing.

It's called die or Dianau and it's right the Deli right the day kats is Deli go.

Diana is the good?

Right Diana, Yes, is the good.

Dian is the best bashami in the city. Really, I only go at like eleven am. I don't do lines. I don't do lines of lines.

What about Eli or z Bars Die?

Oh that's a hard one. I'm gonna say, Diana, here's the caveat.

Okay.

The prices, I mean, come on, the prices are insane, insane.

Cohen, are you kidding me?

I's sane.

They are insane. But I have to say that's what makes me like it so much.

There's good deli salads there, like they do a good like potato salad, and you can get everything one stop shot.

Everything is good at zay Bars.

Everything.

That's why it's all one thousand dollars.

Yeah, yeah, Wait a minute, Russ and Daughters go Rus.

Diana love classic. We need, we need, we need.

I'm also a big believer in like continuing Jewish own multi generation family business.

And no one does smoke salmon like them. All right. This is called shove it or shove it in your mouth?

Oh love that.

This is about like rate the gay lifestyle, chess Chelsea, shove it or shove it in your mouth?

Oh, shove it. Chelsea needs to go away? Yeah no, no, no, yeah.

No, no Island island.

Show, shoving, shoving your mouth it is. It's gay summer camp. It's everything love, love.

Love Asbury Park. Have you been?

Uh No, I'm a queen's boy. I don't do Jersey, not Jersey, not Jersey.

I love you.

And what about like, I'm just gonna go like San Francisco, the whole city of San Francisco.

I am.

I'm going for the first time on my book tour. I've only been on my way to NAPO, but I've actually never done San Francisco.

It's amazing. It's one of my favorite places in the world. But be careful, okay, darling, be careful, all right? And my final question for you, what is your obituary say? What's the headline and what does it say?

It's about how long I was with Alex, my husband, and how in love we were. Come on, no, it's just like that.

That was I did not expect that.

That's it. That's it.

It's this is the love, the love story of my life that will go on, hopefully until we're that old and decrepit and no longer have to be wheeled.

On the boardwalk in f Island.

And then the other part is that my recipes live on in like Jewish tradition for the rest of the time.

The fact that like people make.

Them for their own family holidays and becomes their family traditions. To make my recipes, that's the honor. I've always wanted my recipes and my books to be more famous than I am because I love I love the life of slight anonymity and slight ego. Stroke again, when I'm at the deli, I get recognized, and that's that's kind of nice. But in gay spaces, I'm visible, which I love.

What Okay, well, you're crazy, but I'm a fame who I love. Okay, what are we promoting on this podcast?

Tell me?

We are promoting my second cookbook, Hold I Could Not, which literally just came in from the printer not like an hour before we recorded, comes out September twelfth. Wherever books are sold in which we will be incredibly talking at that.

I can't even wait. That's going to be so exciting. Your book is really beautiful.

It's gorgeous, and not only the food is gorgeous, but you're gorgeous in it.

So there you go.

I took some time to get some good headshots this time. I didn't get any for my flask book and this timmer and I was like, you know what, I'll do a couple. I don't believe in like those cookbooks where everyone puts their face where the it's like every recipe is like them human food.

I want to see the dish, not you eating it.

Okay, all right, but I'm on the back cover, yes you are, and there's a centerfold. I'll leave that to your imaginations. All right, Darling, you have been an absolute delight. I love you and I never thought I would say this, but goodbye, Isaac, goodbye. Everyone needs to listen to this podcast episode, if only to kind of discover how this incredible man, how Jake Cohen wove together all of these incredible parts of his past to produce this incredible present life. He has taken everything about himself the fact that he is a really, really good chef, the fact that he is a beautiful specimen, the fact that he is Jewish, the fact that he is gay. He has put all of that together to produce this incredible, incredible, what product, and that is Jake Cohen. It was a revelation to me to hear how much apart the relationship with his husband plays in all of that. That was my favorite part of the interview. It almost made me choke up at the end. Anyway, thank you for listening and witnessing this incredibly from me powerful conversation.

Darlings.

If you enjoyed this episode, do me a favor and tell someone, Tell a friend, tell your mother, tell your cousin, tell everyone you know. Okay, and be sure to rate the show.

I love rating stuff.

Go on and rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts so more people can hear about it. It makes such a gigantic difference and like it takes a second, so.

Go on and do it.

And if you want more fun content, videos and posts of all kinds, follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at. Hello Isaac podcast, And by the way, check me out on Instagram and TikTok at.

I am Isaac Mssrahi.

This is Isaac, Missrahi, thank you, I love you and I never thought I'd say this, but goodbye Isaac.

Hello Isaac is produced by Imagine Audio, Awfully Nice and I AM Entertainment for iHeartMedia. The series is hosted by me Isaac Musrahi. Hello Isaac is produced by Robin Gelfenbein.

The senior producers are Jesse Burton and John Assanti. Vis Executive produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Karl Welker, and Nathan Cloke at Imagine Audio. Production management from Katie Hodges, Sound design and mixing by Cedric Wilson. Original music composed by Ben Waltzer. A special thanks to Neil Phelps and Sarah Katmak at im Entertainment.

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Hello Isaac with Isaac Mizrahi

Isaac Mizrahi is an expert -  at almost everything! He’s an iconic fashion designer, actor, singer,  
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