With 296,000 followers on Instagram, another 173,000 on TikTok and 40,000 on YouTube, Coral Hota Solomon, 27, is one of Israel’s leading food influencers. She is known for her huge curls, long nails and indulgent, tempting recipes. Now she sits across from me, beautiful in the final trimester of her first pregnancy, drinking iced coffee and getting those half-recognizing looks from people nearby, the kind reserved for someone they are used to seeing in story format.
Her dazzling career has taken shape over the past five years. Before that, she dreamed of very different things. Even the curls were not always there.
“I was an insane nerd, the nerdiest you can imagine,” she says. “I studied 10 units of computer science, five physics, five math, five English. In the summer I flew to the particle accelerator in Switzerland. That was my dream. During summer vacations, I didn’t go to camp. I went to courses at the Technion, physics Olympiads, things like that. Style, friends and all that did not interest me.”
“Until the army, I didn’t even have curls, which today are so identified with me. I only had straight hair, always blow-dried. People didn’t even know I was curly. Then I enlisted and spent about six months in basic training and the course, and you’re not allowed to bring a straightener or a blow dryer, so I simply discovered the curls.”
The army brought another change. Hota served in the navy at the Kirya in Tel Aviv, in what she describes as “a crazy role that I really wanted, but one that was very draining. I didn’t sleep for two years.” During that period, she gained weight.
“I had never weighed myself. My weight never interested me,” she says. “Then suddenly in the army I realized that from week to week, the uniform no longer fit me. Just during basic training and the course, I gained about 15 kilos. I went online and read that to lose weight you have to cut flour, carbs and sweets, so I did that. I lost a lot of weight and stopped getting my period. I didn’t get it for two years.
“My parents were worried, but I promised them I was eating healthy and working out. I had no desire for food. I became apathetic toward it, and that was really depressing. So I went into the kitchen to try to make myself things that were both tasty and within my limits, lower in calories and high in protein. That’s how it started.”
After her discharge, she returned home to Haifa, where her mother works in insurance and her father works at Rafael. She is the eldest of three siblings. She scored 700 on the psychometric exam, began teaching in psychometric prep courses and was preparing for the studies she had dreamed of, computer science at the Technion. At the office, she baked cakes and treats for her colleagues, and they responded by signing her up for auditions for the 10th season of “MasterChef.”
Looking back, that was the turning point.
“At the time, my culinary knowledge was very thin,” she says. “I passed the audition into the team, but I was eliminated at boot camp. I was already good with doughs, but everything was very early-stage. I was super shy. At the audition, I served them a bizarre dish, with gogol mogol on the side, which we drink with coffee at home, and something with corn. They let me in because they said whoever made that was a psychopath. They called me an alien. It was a funny audition, and it got a lot of promos. But it took a long time to air because of COVID, so I told myself that in the meantime I would film and upload some recipes.”
She was still in what she calls her “cutting” mode, so everything focused on low-calorie recipes: protein pancakes, protein chocolate cakes, light cheesecakes. She also listed nutritional values.
“I didn’t film myself, you didn’t hear me, just a photo of the recipe and text. Very quickly I reached 10,000 followers, and people were really making my recipes and writing that I helped them. Very quickly I also got approaches from brands that work with mega-influencers, like Shufersal and Ninja. I felt that something had opened up for me and I didn’t want to miss it. I told my parents I was postponing the degree by a year.”
How did they react?
“A heart attack,” she says. “No one in my family knew what an influencer or blogger was. But I said, ‘I’ll make a little money from it, fund my degree myself, what do you care?’”
After a successful year online, she herself changed. “I was very rigid. I ate only the recipes I made, no sugar, no fat, no this, no that. I couldn’t eat at my mother’s or my grandmother’s, certainly not sit outside and order a croissant. It took me time to understand that this was an ongoing disorder, an obsessive preoccupation with what is allowed and forbidden, and something completely unhealthy. I also understood that I was passing it on to my audience, that they would become like that too. I wanted to get rid of it, to make myself eat normal food, and that was a process.
“The cut came after October 7. I felt everyone wanted something comforting, light and quick, and I said, ‘That’s it, I’m not uploading low-calorie recipes anymore. What I want now is chocolate balls.’ The followers were shocked. Some left, and to this day there are people who ask when I’ll go back to recipes like before. But I won’t go back. I can’t eat them anymore. They don’t taste good to me. I recovered.”
And today the recipes are indulgent.
“I don’t think they’re indulgent,” she says. “Maybe some of them are excessive in terms of sugar, because I really do love sweets, but I don’t like heavy, over-the-top food. It’s not 5% white cheese, but to me it’s balanced.”
'You always have to be at the top'
Hota devotes three days a week to shooting content. “I work from morning sometimes until evening. I write, shoot, edit. I do everything myself and I learned everything myself,” she says.
She uploads videos twice a week, and more during the holidays. “The fact that I make a living from this is not obvious,” she says. “There are colleagues who have been in the field much longer than me and are very talented, and something there just doesn’t happen. They’ve been doing this for 10 years and don’t see a shekel. In the end, there are a lot of content creators and we are a small country. There aren’t a million budgets here.”
Do you know in advance which video will go crazy?
“I can say that people usually like the easier things more. The almond croissant exploded, for example, and it’s really easy. But there is also a focaccia that is not easy at all, hours of work, and it got about 2.5 million views, so there is no real rule. Going according to what works is a mistake. You lose yourself and then creation no longer has meaning. I just make what I like to eat, and usually it is very intuitive.”
Coral Hota and her husband
(Photo: Coral Hota Instagram)
But you are being measured all the time.
“True. You always have to be at the top so they’ll take you for a campaign. It is a world that operates with a great deal of competition. Recently, for example, I flew on vacation and did not film content in advance. I knew that meant there would be two weeks without recipes, so my exposure would drop and new followers wouldn’t join. Once, something like that would really run my life. Today I don’t give it that place, but it occupies me.”
How much of your personal life do you show?
“In the past two years, a lot. My agent explained to me that I had to speak to the camera. The first time took me hours. Today it’s easy for me. I show my day-to-day life, with Nir, pregnancy looks. Everything is in stories. The feed is only recipes.”
She is highly recognizable, with her nails and curls. “I think people recognize me first of all because of my voice. Everyone tells me it calms them, and children also really like listening to me. But yes, it’s also the nails and the curls. I’ve had nails since I was 18, not always this long. The nails are the one thing I get a lot of comments about, and not necessarily positive ones: that it’s not hygienic, that I look like a witch.”
What do you answer?
“Today I barely answer anymore, but I used to say that the food is not for sale, it’s for me and my husband, so for us it’s great. Besides, my nails are always the cleanest and most hygienic. I wash my hands before every action in the kitchen. So yes, with doughs it’s challenging, because it can get caught in the jachnun dough you’re opening and ruin everything, but I’m already pretty skilled. Now, for the birth, I plan to remove the point.”
I assume you did not go back to do the degree.
“No. At first it was very hard for my parents, but when they saw that I was succeeding and making a good living, they changed their approach and understood that this is a profession. Now they brag about me all day.”
The sushi boat is on the way
Until two years ago, Hota lived with her parents in Haifa. After marrying Nir Solomon, 33, owner of Mama, a company that imports home and kitchenware, she moved to Netanya. Perhaps it is no surprise that the way they met is also connected to her success as a food influencer.
“It was really at the beginning of my career, when I had about 30,000 followers. He wrote to me on Instagram, introduced himself as the marketing manager of Mama and offered a collaboration,” she recalls. “We spoke on the phone, and it was a wow conversation, to the point that I told myself, ‘Wow, maybe this is my husband,’ but we only talked about work. Then we got to prices.”
Are you good at talking about money?
“I always think I don’t value myself enough, but he says I gave him a killer price. He said at the time that he couldn’t do it, and I said, ‘It was nice meeting you and you’re a great person.’ Then he said, ‘Let’s meet, talk, and I’m sure we’ll reach an agreement.’ When I realized the offices were in Ashkelon, I said, ‘I’m going to visit my grandmother anyway, so fine, let’s meet.’ We met and, of course, he was willing to pay any price, and I also already understood that he was interested. We closed on two videos, and he made it conditional on coming to film with me at home. I told him I wasn’t willing, that no one interferes with my content, and he really insisted. In the end, it turned out that was his way of hitting on me.”
Where will you be in five years?
“I have no idea. I really want to work on a book, but that will probably happen only after the birth. I also want people to be able to taste food made by my hands in the coming year, maybe some kind of pop-up. I have a million fantasies, my own kitchen products, for example. Everything will happen, but I need to be 100% at peace with the product, so I’m not rushing.”
Have you already ordered a sushi boat for the delivery room?
“Yes, I asked a good friend to make one for me as a birth gift. But I’m more curious about what will happen afterward. I believe that in the first month I won’t upload videos, and after that my mother and Nir will help and I’ll return to it. I won’t be able to produce the quantities of content I produced before I was responsible for another small and cute thing, but it’s okay. It will be okay. We’ll learn it.”