Editor's note: This story originally published in 2015.
> I went to culinary school. Two years. I hated every second of it.
> I had one boyfriend called Phil. Then I had another boyfriend called Phil. Then I left Phil No. 2 and went to Israel and met Phil No. 3, my husband. Three is my lucky number.
> Phil had a fridge. It was all about his fridge.
> I worked in a potato sorting factory in winter in England. I was never as low as I was then. It was like, “Good potato, bad potato, stone.” I remember putting my glove on like Laverne and Shirley. It was the worst job I ever had.
People are also reading…
> I worked all over and then we had our first Internet bar in Jerusalem. It was in the mid-1990s and all the rage. You could email Mommy and Daddy. We had a fax machine, and we would have a line of people ready to fax. Then we sold it to someone who killed it.
> I am not the brightest chick in the world maybe, but I can cook, so I can go anywhere without knowing the language.
> When I came to Tulsa I had no green card. I discovered Ross Dress for Less and T.J. Maxx.
And Big Lots. And Tuesday Morning. Phil said I could live anywhere in America, and I said anywhere where those stores were.
> I didn’t know about the Kaiser name until the year before I got here. I was in a magazine shop and there was an English magazine called Forbes. That is how I found out. Phil never told me about his dad (George Kaiser). It’s a low-key family. I never knew a thing. What we have done, we have done on our own.
> Tulsa has just as many insane and interesting people as anywhere else.
> We opened Laffa because I am very, very homesick. Israel is my home, not England, because it’s where I did my growing up.
> My mother single-handedly ran a bed and breakfast. My father is a physicist. My mom writes local history books. Terribly boring. My dad writes about polymers. Terribly boring. I wanted to be like them but not them. They wanted to keep young and have a good time.
> Our motto in our house was “do it and like it.” My mother had to suck it up all the time when she grew up. So I was told to suck it up all the time.
> I grew up in a bed and breakfast. I had to be quiet all the time in my own house.
> I came from a village with 500 people and three pubs. So when I came and got carded when I first came to America, I couldn’t believe it. I said I had been drinking since I was 10. Professionally. How dare you? When we couldn’t sleep, we would get home brew. There were no pills.
> I hated the rules of cooking. That is why Cosmo and Laffa have the type of twisted food that they do. Why should I just have chicken salad? Why not put curry in it? I don’t want to be told what to do. I am probably unhireable at this point.
> One of my first twists when it came to food was when I had to make something to get a chef job in Jerusalem. I made a Middle Eastern spaghetti bolognese with feta, lamb, roasted red peppers and cumin. They ate it and told me I was hired. I remember thinking, “I can totally do this.”
> Failure is not an option. You just think about how to improve it. We don’t give up. I have my mom and dad in the back of my mind saying, “Work harder.” And I’m glad for that. Very glad for that.
> I don’t think I had a superpower before I met Phil. I don’t think he had a superpower before he met me. I don’t think either of us could do it on our own.
> They talk a lot about grit. Saw a TED Talk about it. I am addicted to TED Talks. Grit might be the most important thing. You may not always have it. Sometimes you can get grit later when you have sobered up or grown up, and you may not get it when you are young. But it can be developed. There can be this a-ha moment when you say, “I am doing this. I can do this. No, I will do this.” That is when you have grit.
> I imagined this success. I didn’t work so hard to not invest in myself. I deserve this because I work hard.
> I have fired people for not tasting food. Because they didn’t like eggs. You are in the wrong bloody job. You are going to have to taste that liver. It’s not all about you. It’s rarely about you in this job.
> They always say I am Gordon Ramsey’s little sister because of my swearing.
> A Winenic? It’s like a picnic but with wine.
