Serah Cicek owns EATACO, a new restaurant in Northbrook, with her husband Kadir Cicek and their longtime friend and business partner Manny Gill. Cicek lives in Mount Prospect with her husband and two children, and is also a doctorate student at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
Q: How did you get started in the restaurant industry?
A: Growing up, my parents owned restaurants as well as (my husband’s) parents. We’re just foodie people … (My parents) used to own Goldie’s in Park Ridge. I was actually going to GBN at the time. I was helping out on the weekends or nights after school as much as I could.
Q: Did you go right into the service industry after high school or college?
A: While (my husband and I) were attending Rutgers, we owned a pizza restaurant in Philadelphia, and that’s kind of that’s what got us through college … an enabled us to move back out here so we can pursue our masters and doctoral (studies). We’re both Ph.D. students and we have two kids.
Q: How are you managing all of that?
A: It’s a lot of work. Now that the classes are done, the dissertation — we can kind of maneuver that as we need and our board members on our dissertation teams are pretty understanding of our situation. They’re lenient. We’re pressed for time, but not pressed for time to be done, like, tomorrow. So it works out.
Q: What do you do for fun?
A: Right now our fun time is the time we get to spend with our kids. As much as we can, we just try to make time for them, whether it’s me or him. We hardly get any off days together because one of us tries to be present (at the restaurant). But when we do, I would say that’s probably the best day of the week.
Q: Do you have any hobbies?
A: We will try to carve a little time for ourselves, too. I get up at five every morning and go to the gym, because everybody’s up, and be back in time for when the kids are ready to catch the bus and send them off to school. So not a lot of fun in terms of social life, but we make this fun, we enjoy the people we work with. (Co-owner) Manny (Gill) we consider a family member, and the kids come out here a lot.
Q: Do you have a life philosophy that you live by?
A: Lead by example, is one of the philosophies that I always take with me anywhere I go. Especially when you’re in an area where it’s community driven, and we have a lot of families that come in, we try to lead by example, even when my kids are here, that’s what I teach them. When you’re here you treat people with respect with class.
Q: Is there something in your life that you look forward to everyday or every week makes you happy?
A: We live for our kids. As long as we know we’re giving them their future, as long as they’re respectful of themselves, their family and their community and that I’ll send them off to get a good education. That’s the goal. That was actually one of the main reasons we even pursued our Ph.D.s, because we’re both first graduates in our family from college, period. And we just wanted to set the standards higher for our children. I’m not saying that they have to go for a Ph.D., but at least, if they were to think about that, maybe it’ll influence them in some way.
Q: What are you hoping to do with your degree?
A: For my ideal position, I would be able to be a college professor one day. We’ll see if that happens.
Q: When you’re really tired and you’ve had a bad day, what’s the comfort food you reach for?
A: Lately because I’m home so late: cereal. Kadir and I, because we’re (at the restaurant) every night, we eat Cheerios with almond milk and peanut butter powder. That has to be my comfort food at night if I’m feeling like I want to be guilty and I just want to eat.
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Q: What are you thankful for?
A: Health and family. What else is there to be thankful for? You can have all the money in the world and not be happy, not have people around you that make you happy … so my wealth is my health and family.