The ‘Babka King’ is bridging cultural gaps on Instagram — one blintz at a time

When asked whether he prefers babka or kokosh cake, Chris Caresnone’s grin expanded. Otherwise known as the Babka King, the 41-year-old social media sensation from Chicago was answering a lightning round of questions — knish or kreplach, bagel or bialy?

“Babka. Kokosh is like the bad cousin, the one that gets in trouble. It’s less bready, more gooey, more chocolatey. It’s so good, but babka…” he told The Times of Israel, letting the sentence fall off.

Caresnone’s 470,800 followers on TikTok and 159,000 on Instagram relish his food reviews and his bridging of cultural differences one bite at a time.

“I try to bring a lightness and a warmth to what I’m doing. There’s not a hateful bone in my body,” he said in a video chat from his car in Chicago.

Admittedly, clicking on one of his Instagram reels for the first time can cause a person to tense up. Like many others, this one starts with a closeup of Caresnone loudly calling, “The Jewish people have been gatekeeping again!”

But this reel is no antisemitic screed — Caresnone’s eyes light up and he pops an apricot rugelach into his mouth. Next, he samples a chocolate one. Then he tries the apricot one again, this time with coffee.

“Damn. I could eat 1,000 of these,” he said, chuckling, sitting in his car outside Shalom Kosher Bakery in Buffalo Grove, Illinois.

Shortly after that, a viewer suggested Caresnone taste babka.

“My first thought was, ‘What the hell is babka?’” he said.

Now when he speaks about babka, it’s like a Shakespearean sonnet wrapped in a Hallmark card.

“It’s a delicious pastry. Even a bad pastry is good. But it’s more than that, it’s beautiful. It’s flowy and braided. When you cut it you see all these layers. And there are so many different kinds,” he said.

Born Chris Campbell, he adopted the surname Caresnone several years ago because he doesn’t care if people have negative things to say about him or don’t like the content he posts. Instead, he focuses on the positive.

“On the surface, I try to live by the golden rule, if I treat you right, you treat me right. You know, energy begets energy. It also comes from trauma though. My mother died when I was young and I never really knew my father. It was just me and my grandma and my half-sister. I was longing for connection,” he said.

Caresnone also shared how he overcame obesity and social anxiety as well as how he lives with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.

All of this inspired him to become a motivational speaker to spread “good vibes” rather than pursue culinary school. However, it wasn’t until six years ago that he made his first foray into social media with a YouTube channel. Just over a year ago he started posting about foods from different cultures, talking about everything from Vietnamese pho to Mexican pozole.

And while he spent time around Jewish people growing up in Wheeling, Illinois, which like nearby Buffalo Grove and Highland Park has a large Jewish population, he hadn’t really explored Jewish food aside from the occasional bowl of chicken soup with matzah balls.

Since his first posts about babka and rugelach, Caresnone has expanded his palate.

(Courtesy of Chris Caresnone)

He featured The House of Glatt in Crown Heights as one of the best kosher food experiences he’s ever had (“The burger and beef sandwich were out-of-this-world good”). He collaborated with Babka Bailout in New Jersey, creating his own flavors, a sweet peach cobbler and a savory birria, a Mexican stew. And he’s now a little more than obsessed with pastrami after visiting Katz’s Deli in New York — so much so that he went on a quest to find a Reuben sandwich in Milwaukee.

The response from the Jewish community has been overwhelmingly positive, he said.

“I’ve been invited to Shabbat dinners and rabbis’ houses. Doors are opening to me. The warmth I’ve gotten from the Jewish community is unreal, it’s been great,” he said, adding that there has been some backlash.

“I see the antisemitism, it’s very open. People say some crazy stuff. I got a death threat. It was the first time I ever got something like that but it made me double down,” he said.

Of all the foods he’s so far tried there is one that he’s not exactly a fan of: gefilte fish.

“It’s not the greatest, it’s not my favorite,” he said, adding that he heard from a lot of Jewish people that they felt the same way toward the chopped fish dish.

That’s saying something considering that Caresnone has tried p’tcha, a particularly pungent traditional Ashkenazi meat aspic dish made from jellied calves feet. At hearing that, this 98.9% Ashkenazi reporter told Caresnone that she wouldn’t be caught in the same room with a pot of p’tcha.

Before Caresnone has to go, he gets one last question — stuck on a desert island with one Jewish main, side, and dessert, what would he bring?

He thought about it for less than a minute.

“Chicken schnitzel,” he said. “No, wait. A pastrami sandwich, cholent for my side, and of course babka.”