Netflixâs original reality series Selling Sunset introduces Chelsea Lazkani as a realtor, a fashionista, and a mother. But those closest to her â along with her 530,000 Instagram followers â know sheâs also a self-taught chef who’s casually hosting the sexiest cooking show around.
When the mom of two gets home from a long day of selling luxury real estate, there’s a chance you’ll find her testing out delicious recipes in her kitchen, recording the prep and tasting process, and meticulously editing the footage. The result? The most mouthwatering cooking show on Instagram â one that will leave you craving more.
The Selling Sunset star gave Instagram followers their first glimpse at her culinary skills in a Vietnamese Pho tutorial back in December 2022, but Lazkani has been cooking since she was eight or nine years old. “It’s very formative in my culture â my parents are Nigerian, I’m Nigerian â to start cooking early. And a lot of our recipes are really difficult. And they’re delicious, but they take a lot of like time to cook,” the reality star told Decider in a phone call. Inspired by her mom’s “amazing passion” for cooking, Lazkani recalled her and her sister growing up in the kitchen by their mom’s side as she opened a bottle of wine, put on music, and lovingly poured her heart into time-consuming dishes.
“It’s actually kind of funny. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his belly, and every time my mom would cook for the family â specifically my dad â the love that I would get from it filled my heart with so much joy,” Lazkani said. “As I grew a little bit older and started having boyfriends I would literally just cook for them. Most of my first dates with all my boyfriends when I was younger, I’d be like, ‘Come over to my house and I’ll cook you something!’ I remember my first boyfriend, the first guy I was dating, I cooked him like a shepherd’s pie and then he became my boyfriend.”
While Lazkani’s food is for everyone, I can’t stress enough that this isn’t your grandma’s cooking show. From sultry mood music, dim lighting, and sensual slow-motion shots to seductive tastings and a wardrobe that â in true Chelsea fashion â shows significant skin, Lazkani’s crisp videos are the epitome of food porn. After soft-launching cooking content in December, the Selling Sunset star started giving the videos her all in May. With the help of a talented videographer, two Sony cameras, and a clear creative vision, her Instagram series became downright cinematic.
While she’s understandably wary of revealing too many secrets, Lazkani assures fans that a lot of behind-the-scenes work goes into creating quality supercuts. “People think it’s just, ‘Oh, you bring a videographer in to come and do this.’ No, we literally plan shots, and then I go back and I’m like, ‘OK, I want this edited like this. I want to take this out.’ It probably takes around three and a half hours, so any dish times it by three, to film the video,” she explained. “It takes a long time, but the vision â from the angles, to the dim setting, to the songs, to the aesthetics â it’s all my vision.”
Whether she’s tearing a package of Ghirardelli cocoa powder with her teeth or dribbling milk down her chest, nearly every second of Lazkani’s videos feels sexually charged. The secret, she says, is largely in the edit. But fans of Selling Sunset know she effortlessly exudes personality and sex appeal. “I kind of fell into the sultry element of it. It wasn’t something that was actually planned. What most people don’t know…if you put anything on slow-mo and add a little bit of titties â which are always on show for me â it becomes sexy,” she laughed. “When I started to read the comments and people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I never thought I was gay, but am I gay? Is this food porn?’ I never saw it like that, because all I did was slow down the movements. It’s not so much that I’m sitting there like, ‘Oh, let’s be sexy. Let’s roll our hips. Let’s do everything so sensually.’ I’m doing things in normal speed. But if you take a bite of food and you slow it down and you’ve got a low-cut top, it’s immediately food porn.”
Lazkani’s comment sections are flooded with worship for the “domestic thirst traps” and pleas for someone to give her a larger-scale cooking show, but she’s not without her haters. Some followers criticize her fierce food-catching manicure and suggest she doesn’t eat the fattening entrees she cooks. To those critics, she feels she has nothing to prove. “The only thing I’d say is you don’t eat my food. Until I have a restaurant where people are eating my food, I think the only people that need to be concerned about long nails are my husband and kids, and they’ve never complained,” Lazkani said. “I do get a lot of comments like, ‘There’s no way she eats this food.’ I am a pig with a capital P. I am the biggest pig I know. I do work out, but I owe most of my body type to my metabolism.”
From a ribeye melt oozing with Swiss cheese, grilled onions, and mustard bacon sauce on parmesan sourdough or a recreation of Eggslut’s iconic Fairfax sandwich piled with scrambled eggs, chives, caramelized onions, and Sriracha mayo, Lazkani’s recipes are a combination of foods she knows and loves, meals she sees on Instagram and has eaten in restaurants, or whatever she feels like indulging in that day. When asked about her favorite food, she proudly declared, “My chicken parmesan will have everyone fall in love with you. It is simply the best chicken parmesan recipe ever.” And she shared the behind-the-scenes scoop on my favorite video, in which she performs the outrageous culinary flex of baking homemade Cookie Crisp cereal. “Imagine my husband’s in the living room, which is right next to our kitchen, because he’s waiting for his Cookie Crisp. By the way, it’s 1 a.m.,” she laughs. “So I pour the milk, and I pour it too heavy and it drops. And I’m like, ‘Oh, this is actually a vibe!’ So when I cut it, I burst out laughing, like, ‘Oh my god, did I just really pour milk and have it drip down my titties?’”
While the finished products are as immaculate as Michelin-star meals, Lazkani wants fans and aspiring cooks to know that “everywhere else but where the camera’s directed looks like a freaking bomb.” She fails just like any other chef and admittedly films entire videos that she never posts. “I tried to make eclairs a couple of weeks ago, and I just saw the video and was like, ‘OK, this is not going anywhere. This is not an eclair. This is more like a pancake with creme and chocolate.’” That said, she’d still be interested in hosting a larger-scale cooking show down the line. “I really enjoy it. So absolutely. I’d love that,” she confirmed.
Until a network or streamer *cough, cough â Netflix* takes her cooking videos to the next level, you’ll just have to keep an eye on the ‘gram. Lazkani promised me a risotto video in the future, said she hopes to film her “best lasagna recipe in the whole world,” and she’s even considering sharing a behind-the-scenes look at the less glamorous parts of chef life. But knowing her, even the blooper reel will be sexy.
The post ’Selling Sunset’s Chelsea Lazkani’s Sexy Instagram Cooking Show Is The Epitome Of Food Porn appeared first on Decider.
