Discover Falmer’s recipes on The JC
Social media chef Falmer in his signature apron (Photo: Hannah Couzens Photography)[Missing Credit]
When we meet for the interview, I have two burning questions: where did the name “Falmer” and the “Dumb Bitch” apron come from? Falmer, it turns out, is a portmanteau of “fat Halmer” – a nickname he picked up as an overweight child in secondary school and has since decided to “own”. Similarly, “Dumb Bitch” started off as “friendly banter” with a close friend, but has since taken on a life of its own; after receiving dozens of requests, you can now buy your very own “Dumb Bitch” apron from his website. “At first I did it because it’s a schtick, it stands out,” he says, explaining that as his profile has grown it has become “more like a middle finger to the useful idiots who post hate comments under my videos, and to my followers, it’s a way of standing up, pretty much against the world.”
Falmer’s rise to internet fame has happened in two giant leaps. The first came when he posted a video from culinary school talking about the experience of being tasked with cooking a pork tenderloin. In typical style, it opens with the line: “Cooking pork as a Jew is like being a loaf of bread trying to fly an aeroplane – it just doesn’t work, and it’s completely unnatural.” Later he adds: “When I cook, I normally cook with love, but on this occasion, unfortunately, it was just with guilt. But don’t you worry, come Yom Kippur, this will be the first thing that’s on my mind.”
The second moment was when he shared a recipe for a Bissli schnitzel, which earned him 10,000 followers in five days, alongside a flurry of death threats. “You have to be thick-skinned,” he says of the hate he receives online, adding that growing up with three brothers helped prepare him to “take abuse or insults from random strangers who don’t know what they’re talking about”. While nowadays he says he “couldn’t give a toss” about the haters, he admits that in the early days he was worried that people might attack him if they recognised him in public, and says he “took action” by signing up for Krav Maga lessons to make sure he was able to defend himself should the online threats turn into real-world violence.
Discover Falmer’s recipes on The JC
Falmer's famous Bissli schnitzel (Photo: Falmer)[Missing Credit]
Despite (or maybe because of) the hate, the Bissli schnitzel is still his most-viewed video, and has come to define his culinary style, which can best be described as Jewish fusion. Other recent recipes in this vein include a Bamba and halva semifreddo, rugelach chocolate brownies, chicken shawarma pie, latke schnitzel and cinnamon malawach rolls – which all offer a fresh twist on much-loved flavours from Israel and the Jewish diaspora.
Falmer says his food upbringing was “typically Ashkenazi”, and his favourite childhood dish was his mum’s meat strudel. He fell in love with cooking around the age of 18, initially exploring food through the lens of nutrition in a bid to lose weight and get in shape. Soon he was hosting themed dinner parties for his friends, and had a hunger to “learn how to cook absolutely everything”.
Eight years on, his outlook is just as ambitious. “I want everyone around the world to eat my food,” he says, explaining that he’s planning to step away from private cheffing to fully invest his time and energy in building his social media presence and hosting pop-up dinner events.
Discover Falmer’s recipes on The JC
Falmer on his most recent trip to Israel with the Tel Aviv Institute (Photo: Roman Birman)[Missing Credit]
One thing that won’t be changing, he reassures me, are his no-holds-barred hot takes. “I will always say it how it is,” he says. “Every time I get a lot of love for my posts, it just reinforces my ideology – which I feel like a lot of Jews around the world also have, but they’re too afraid to speak out.” Later he tells me: “I want Jewish people to look towards my content as a ray of light in the darkness, and give them hope, positivity and unite us together to be strong.”
As our time together is coming to an end, Falmer tells me he is hoping to make aliyah by the end of the year – a decision that was “triggered” after experiencing Israel under a barrage of Iranian missiles earlier this year. “Seeing it first-hand, I thought to myself: this is the only place in the world where I can genuinely be myself, you know, be openly Jewish and not get criticised whatsoever,” he says. “And that’s how I want to live my life.”
Join Falmer for our Behind the Feed: Jewish Voices in the Digital Age panel on June 25. Find out more and book tickets here.
