Female foodies hash over culinary entrepreneurship

Four female culinary entrepreneurs sat down together Wednesday night as part of Open Restaurants Jerusalem, a food festival taking place November 14-18, to discuss the realities of being a woman in the food world.

The four, Rama Ben Tzvi from Rama’s Kitchen, Tali Friedman from The Atelier of Tali Friedman, Dini Kasorla from Dwini Pita Bar and Yael Weiss Gadish of Bitemojo, couldn’t be more different.

Ben Tzvi is a former dancer who opened her famed country restaurant on a whim; Friedman is a trained chef who worked in major restaurant kitchens before opening her Mahane Yehuda atelier, or workshop, which can host as many as 28 meals a month; Kasorla was an administrator at Haaretz for 17 years before realizing her dream of opening a pita bar in the shuk; and Weiss and her husband run smartphone food tours.

They spoke about the dearth of female culinary entrepreneurs, and what each does in order to combine work and family life. “It’s hard with kids; there are physical and emotional challenges,” said Kasorla, who has three.

Ben Tzvi found a solution by first opening her restaurant on weekends and vacations, while Friedman said her brood of five learned to talk to her on the phone.

Weiss, a serial entrepreneur with four children under 11, said she has always worked hard to separate her work and home life. She regularly heads home early and expects her staff to do the same.

Those who work in the market spoke about its challenges and benefits. Kasorla said she was regularly asked if she had a male business partner and how she managed to lift the cases of beer in her shop.

“It’s hard, but I do it myself,” she said, laughing.

Friedman was a spokesperson for the market for a time, and opened her atelier, which is sandwiched on the second and third floors of one of the few buildings inside the market, just when the market was adding cafes and bars to its streets of fruit and vegetable stalls.

Her experiences of the market were different from others, and she’s benefited from the tight community of sellers and stall owners. At the same time, any whiff of terrorism or security challenges, like last year’s spate of stabbing attacks, shuts down business. Friedman recounted going from 28 bookings to three after the first stabbing attack last fall.

Still, she said, she works regularly with other chefs and restaurant owners to find ways and methods of boosting business.

“There’s a lot of cooperation here,” she said. “In Jerusalem, people put their egos aside and we help raise each other up.”