"We sleep in a shared bed, at 8:30 we are all in bed"
Just before boarding the plane to Thailand, Omer Miller talks about the decision and the reasons that led to it, as well as the shared sleeping of the whole family on mattresses, the points where there are still frictions in the family unit, and the huge economic price he paid this year to keep his truth. mako Eats - Rita Goldstein hosts the people responsible for everything tasty in Israel.
Omer Miller (47), married to Shiran Kedar (Shiranka) and father of 3, is a former chef and restaurateur. He was responsible for well-known restaurants such as "Hadar HaOchel" and "Shulchan" in Tel Aviv, as well as the "Susu & Sons" burger chain, which became a nationwide chain and was considered a resounding success. In 2024, he retired from the chain, and by 2025 all branches were closed. Today, Miller serves as a restaurant consultant, blogger, recipe developer, and successful social media influencer. In recent years, he has focused on content dealing with the ketogenic diet - which is abundant in meat, eggs, and animal fats and low in carbohydrates and sugar. He arrived at the ketogenic diet following an intestinal illness, and according to him, he found in it the balance he had been looking for for years. Recently, Miller, his wife, and their three children, Lucy, Moon, and Ray, moved to Koh Phangan in Thailand. The two decided on a year-long trip, during which the children will receive homeschooling and will not study formally. Like many of their moves, alongside praise, Miller and Kedar received quite a bit of criticism from followers on the subject.
On Life in Thailand
What is the story with Thailand? Why did you decide to fly for a year specifically now?
15 years ago, when I met Shiran, I told her that my dream is to take a year-long trip around the world. But you know how it is, I may constantly tell people that it is possible to live differently and take advantage of opportunities - but suddenly when it comes to me, I put it off all my life. In the last year, Shiran was really looking for an education system that fits our values and the children's, and then I told her 'Listen, there is an opportunity here. Let's fly for a year and be in homeschooling with the children'. And after a year? Will we stay only in Thailand or continue? I don't know yet what we will do. We are meanwhile recovering from the arrival and landing and in general from the new story. Until now it's amazing here. The children are happy, for them it is still a kind of trip.
And why did you keep it a secret?
There is some song running now on Instagram, which says in translation: 'Don't tell anyone your dreams, because there are people who might smile but want to see you down. Let the results of your actions speak'. That's it. I don't tell everything I want to do in life. I am an exposed figure, but I had a small dream that about this move I wouldn't have to talk ever. That I could be in Thailand for a year and return to Israel as if nothing happened. But I understand that I am exposed, and I also have a loyal audience of followers, and I don't hide things. So I tell things when it's convenient for me and when it suits me.
On Change and Family
You are very different from the Omer Miller of 10 years ago.
Yes, I was just thinking about it, that a decade ago we sat on the beach and you interviewed me. Before the twins, before everything. It was a completely different period. I won't forget that you and your partner told me 'The children enter our lives. We are just hosting them'. Where does this statement catch you today?
We didn't understand anything about life, that was the beauty. Even today I think we don't understand much about life, only that today we are much less arrogant. Yes, they joined our lives, but completely took them over. We are a group, we are a cult, the Miller cult. Yes, they completely changed our whole lives.
That same Omer Miller I met then, what would he say about you today?
I assume he would mock a little, as one who then thought he was devouring the world, and eating everything, and opening everything, and investing money, and sure he reached the top. Today I understand that it is far from that. Today I feel that I am on much higher and much more fascinating and much more exciting peaks.
What does your daily routine look like today as a father, when you no longer have to go out for services?
I don't go out at all. I go to sleep at 8:30. 8:30?! At 8:30 I am in bed, the world is dead. Nothing will help. And your children go to sleep? They go to sleep with me. We sleep in a shared bed, 8:30. Everyone at 8:30? Everyone. At 8:15 we get into bed, Shiran reads a story, we talk a little, say thanks, and at 8:30 lights out, so to speak. And we all faint and wake up in the morning. When? I wake up around 5:30, 5:00. I am the first to wake up. I go outside, go to the garden, exercise, do sports. Towards 7:00 the children wake up, and then the day begins. Whether it's filming, whether it's commercial collaborations, a lot of joint work with Shiran, filming digital courses that I started selling not long ago, keto groups that I manage endlessly.
On Nutrition and Principles
How many years have you been on this diet?
Six years. The moment Corona started roughly. I lost 30 kilos in the first half year of keto. Afterwards I already gained, lost, gained, lost. I am not some big strict person about maintaining weight, it doesn't interest me. But I feel much better, much stronger, much more alert, much more focused.
Do you break sometimes?
I go out of the diet 4-5 times a year, and I think it is important to do this thing, also on our physiological level but also on the mental level. I was always proud of the fact that I, despite the Crohn's and everything, look for the perfect bite. I think that when you enter this diet you need to be very careful about the first year, and after a year, when your situation improves, you can allow yourself these escapes. I am a bit cutting the branch I am sitting on, but the problem is that most people learn on Instagram how to do keto and don't do accurate keto, and then they hurt themselves. When you learn to do it accurately, you change your life completely.
Many people fight over these topics. You also manage quite a few struggles, for example when you upload a video with certain nutritional recommendations.
People are crazy in general, fighting like crazy! They think in terms of a cult. And there is also the other side, of people who tell you how do you eat such amounts of eggs. At the beginning of the way I would still manage discussions on the subject, today I really don't. I just say my truth and share my life and the life of my family. I don't force anyone, don't force you to eat fat now, and don't force you to stop eating carbohydrates. I do try to instill in people at home that much worse than what you put in your mouth, is the stress you live in. This stress bothers me more than the fights about my high cholesterol. By the way, I have LDL 88, very low compared to ketogenic.
Did you live in high stress?
I lived every day on 9,000. If today I go to sleep at 8:30 and wake up at 5:30, once I would go to sleep at 5:30 and wake up at 7:00 in the morning. Working like crazy, fighting with partners, fighting with my followers, fighting with my customers, fighting with food critics as you remember, fighting with you, fighting with everyone! And by the way, with great pleasure I would do it, I would do it with fun. But yes, in crazy stress, and all day sitting on the numbers and checking and feeding. At the peak of success, in quotation marks, I would feed 3,000-4,000 people a day. Hadar HaOchel, Shulchan, Susu, beaches.
Today you don't see it as success?
I don't see it as a failure, but it's another thing I checked off, and I am very proud of it. I am proud of each of my businesses. Hadar HaOchel is in my eyes one of the best restaurants that ever existed in Tel Aviv. Today many try to do in this style. But today my definitions of success are slightly different. I don't say this as criticism, it doesn't interest me, but when I see a parent whose life has not changed following the birth of his children, it is a bit sad for me for him. Because I think it is something that is like a fist that explodes, supposed to shock you. I started crying from the day I had children, I am much more of a crybaby. When October 7th arrived I sat at home for two days and cried.
Would you upload today a recipe that is not ketogenic at all?
I don't do it anymore. When they approach me now to do a TV show on Keshet, or to do consulting for restaurants, if it's not ketogenic, or at least doesn't meet my definitions for proper nutrition, I don't agree to take it. I canceled contracts of hundreds of thousands of shekels. I have a mission in what I do today. Two and a half-three years I haven't been doing it anymore.
On Dreams and Future
What don't they see there?
Come on, let's not play it, I try to broadcast as much credibility and as much authenticity as possible, but I will never show my children crying. Now, it's not that they don't cry. They are children, they cry thank God, but I won't show it. I won't put them in any embarrassing situation. I won't show fights between me and Shiran, but I will talk about these things. Whoever looks at Instagram and thinks 'Oh, Omer and Shiran, what a relationship, they never fight', brother, grow up.
What is your dream today?
There is no pleasure like saying to your child 'Ray, go to the coop and bring some eggs'. He just goes with a basket, collects eggs, he sees the chicken exactly laying, pak pak pak, he takes the egg. There is nothing more fun than that. This was the dream, that's how I saw my dream, that my children go and take the egg from the chicken, that they pick cucumber and tomato from our garden, that our whole garden is fruit trees, grapes and peaches and avocado. As long as I manage every evening to be with my children to see a sunset - I won the world.
