Nara Smith on the “Table Dress,” Her ASMR Voice, and More
Listen to her chat with Sophia Roe from Jubilee on today's Radio Cherry Bombe
Presented by Whole Foods Market & Airbnb Experiences
It’s our last Jubilee in July episode! All month long, we’ve been celebrating special moments from our Jubilee conference.
“Whose idea was the table dress?” Sophia Roe asked Nara Smith on stage at Jubilee. On the big screen behind them, an image of Nara wearing a pink gingham dress that fits perfectly over a round tabletop fitted around her waist—and it’s the cover of her wildly anticipated debut cookbook, Homemade, out October 13th.
It’s based on a vintage image Nara saw on Pinterest and custom-designed by Rodarte to fit over the model-slash-social-media-phenom, who is six feet tall. The food inside, inspired by her German upbringing and other family favorites, is artfully styled by the iconic Victoria Granof. We can’t wait to see the rest, which Nara told us is more personal than her typical content and the product of finding her creativity after a very difficult year. (Nara recently revealed her two-year-old daughter's cancer diagnosis and started a GoFundMe to help other families fighting childhood cancer.)
In less than three years of posting her cooking videos online, Nara has accumulated over 15 million followers across platforms. She’s famous for her ASMR-like narrations of elaborate homemade foods, but it wasn’t a gimmick. She started cooking almost entirely from scratch after severe eczema—and a subsequent lupus diagnosis—prompted her to reconsider what she ate. Cutting out processed foods was the goal, and the only solution was to buckle down and get cooking.
“I kind of learned by Gordon [Ramsay] yelling at people on camera and not wanting to be an idiot sandwich,” she told Sophia. “So I evolved from there and just watched a lot of cooking shows, watched people online, and talked to people in real life. When I’m at someone’s house and they’re cooking something, I’m like, ‘Why’d you do that?’” Her videos were often her making something for the first time, whether it was bubblegum (easy, she says) or hot dogs (hard: “I’d never stuffed a sausage before”).
“So where did the voice come from?” asked Sophia. While one of her kids was napping right next to her, Nara was testing how loudly she could whisper her voiceovers without waking the baby. “And then I got a lot of messages from people telling me that it relaxed them, and that they thought it was really soothing, because all the other content [they were watching] was very stimulating.” She stuck with it.
Listen to the full conversation now and pre-order Homemade at your favorite bookstore to see, well, how the sausage really is made.
P.S. Sophia and Nara are introduced by mom-to-be and writer Ella Quittner, who authored one of our favorite books of the year, Obsessed with the Best: 100+ Methodically Perfected Recipes Based on 20+ Head-to-Head Tests.
Strong as a mother
In the second half of today’s show, award-winning chef and restaurateur Karen Akunowicz of Fox & the Knife and Bar Volpe in Boston took the Jubilee stage to share her unexpected journey into powerlifting, becoming a mother at 44, and redefining what strength looks like. She reflected on what it means to take up space with confidence and intention—and how she hopes her daughter grows up believing she can do the same. Don’t miss Karen’s talk!
More from Jubilee 2026
🎧 Toni Tipton-Martin, Nina Williams-Mbengue, Adrienne Cheatham, Adé Carrena, and Mariana Velásquez
🎧 Rita Sodi, Jody Williams, Deanna Ting, and Zahra Tangorra
🎧 Jenny Nguyen, Adrianna & Olivia Maher, and Ifrah Ahmed
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