Shopping bag.

In Laila Gohar’s world (now a shoppable world with her newly launched Gohar World) tomatoes hang from the ceiling, towering pyramids of langoustine compete for attention against mortadella sausages the length of a king-size bed, and butter arrives in the shape of an outstretched hand or a pair of floating lips. “Food has always been a language that I can communicate in,” says the genre-defying, conceptual cook-slash-designer-slash-artist, who can also be found as @lailacooks on Instagram.

“For me, it all comes from a strong sense of fantasy. I use my imagination to create all sorts of outlandish scenarios outside of every day norms. Convincing people that they need a two-meter-long sausage at an event can be hard—and I never really know how we’re going to pull anything off—but with the right imagination it generally always works out in the end.” In Gohar’s world, “ideas are always first,” and practical matters of execution come much later.

By her own admission, she’s never “had much time for the conventional way of doing things, anyway.” Born and raised in Egypt, she studied in Miami after high school, before moving to New York City a decade ago. Home today is a whimsically furnished flat in downtown Manhattan, which she shares with her husband, Omar Sosa, (one of the co-founders of interiors magazine, Apartamento) and a giant PVC foot. The couple are known for hosting intimate weekly dinner parties for a close-knit circle of friends—a diverse group of creative nomads including former Semaine tastemakers Ana Kras and the designer, Maryam Nassir Zadeh.

Gohar’s natural flair for hosting is at the root of her inimitable success. Back in Miami she started cooking for some friends who owned an art gallery. “No one in my environment was saying to be a cook, so I never really considered it as a career at the time. I thought I had to get a ‘serious’ job,” she recalls. In New York, she worked as a recipe tester and food journalist, before starting a now defunct supper club and catering business, called Sunday Suppers. Business was booming, and soon requests for large scale food experiences from Facebook, Tiffany & Co., and LVMH began to roll in.

The otherworldly nature of Gohar’s cooking style and avant-garde presentation was unparalleled, and the audience—plus her clients—were immediately hooked. Six-foot-tall marshmallow mountains and dehydrated fruit leathers hanging from towel rods are, it turns out, hard not to love. Gohar has distilled her magic formula for throwing the perfect dinner party at home (hint: an overflowing bar helps), and the unexpected foods that will always have her heart. Growing up in Egypt shaped her interest in food: “ I always say that I feel more Mediterranean than anything else. That way of life, the ingredients that I’m drawn to—it defines who I am and what I cook.” The ephemeral quality of creating draws Gohar to food, “We all need to eat so there’s a simplicity to it in that sense also…..A concept that might have been in the back of my mind for years and took months to bring to life can be gone in a few minutes. There’s kind of a beauty to it.”

It’s not all flames and magic, though, Gohar stresses that cooking is work, as much as it is art; “The majority of my time is spent researching and coming up with ideas. The concepting period is more than half of the work.” Gohar’s frantic schedule is smoothed out during the summer, every summer, when she and her partner spend six weeks sailing in the Mediterranean with friends: “My life is either full throttle or I’m doing nothing at all.”
Drawn on her favourite foods, simplicity is a main trait of each: “I eat really simply when I’m alone. I like quite plain, primitive foods. Right now I’m in a bean phase. I especially love different types of heirloom ones from a brand called Rancho Gordo.” From the halls of high fashion to her chic kitchen, Gohar still has her soft spot for greasy, messy hangover food— hot dogs are in my top five most favorite foods ever.”

By Elsa de Berker for Semaine.
Photography by Ana Kras.