From Hillel Dinners to Gourmet Cooking: Nicolai Mlodinow’s Class Act Journey
Born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Pasadena, Nicolai Mlodinow grew up in a food-centered family. Both his parents cooked, and they encouraged Mlodinow to learn to make both sweet and savory foods for himself. By the time he got to college at San Diego State University, Mlodinow preferred cooking at home to going out to eat, but it wasn’t until his sophomore year that cooking for others became a central part of his life.
“I was living in an apartment on campus, and one of my roommates smelled what I was cooking,” Mlodinow recalled. “He was like, ‘What if I just gave you a swipe of my food hall money, and you made some for me?’”
That roommate dinner turned into a campus sensation. Mlodinow began regularly hosting dinner parties in his apartment — not just cooking for friends, but often sharing meals with people he’d never met before.
Stories about Mlodinow’s cooking spread through campus, all the way over to SDSU Hillel, where Mlodinow had been involved since his first year, attending programs and Shabbat dinners. So when Hillel reached out to ask him if he’d consider cooking a Shabbat dinner for the community, he embraced the challenge.
Pulling from his experience growing up eating multicultural food in South Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, which has the largest Chinese population outside of China, Mlodinow designed a Chinese-Ashkenazi-Jewish fusion menu. Offerings included egg drop matzah ball soup and red boiled chicken, a traditional Chinese preparation that Mlodinow tweaked with Israeli seasonings and spices.
“I grew up going to places where no one spoke English, so when we ordered food we would just point to what we wanted — and it was awesome, because that’s how you actually learn someone else’s flavors, their spirit, their culture, because there’s no other form of communication,” he said. “And I thought that fit so well with Hillel’s mission of bringing people together from all walks of life.”
The first dinner was a huge success, and started Mlodinow on a new stage of his culinary journey. He ended up running Hillel Shabbat dinners every other week throughout the rest of his college career, and when he graduated and went into marketing, he missed those Shabbat dinners so much that he went back to hosting dinner parties in his apartment — a tiny studio in Chicago.
“I would invite some friends over and cook them this giant meal with 50 different inspirations,” he said. “It was so much fun. And then one day, one of them came up to me and said, ‘Hey, you’re clearly really passionate about this. You’re clearly working very hard at this. If you ever decide you really want to be a professional chef, let me know.”
Mlodinow took him up on his offer, and embarked on a culinary journey that would take him through internships, kitchen stints, and learning experiences at six Michelin-starred restaurants, including Temporis, where he trained under chef Troy Jorge.
“He really mentored me,” Mlodinow said. “He took a chance on me. I wasn’t expecting someone to care that much.”
Mlodinow had kept up his day job while building his skills in and out of different professional kitchens, starting up a healthcare tech company. But two and a half years ago, Mlodinow took his culinary ventures full-time, partnering with Shreena, a foodie and tech entrepreneur who became central to helping create and actualize Mlodinow’s restaurant concept, Class Act.
“The opening menu is a 13-course tasting menu around the theme of growing up,” Mlodinow explained. “It’s fine dining, avant garde-style cuisine, but based around extremely nostalgic foods I had growing up.”
Cooking for Hillel is part of that nostalgia.
“Dinners for Shabbat are always family-style, right?” he said. “We’re literally breaking bread, passing things around together, and connecting through food. It’s the idea that food is a language that I can use to explain my culture, my values, and beliefs to someone else — they don’t have to be Jewish, or have any idea about our food, to experience it and come away feeling like you speak my language.”
“It’s a form of communication,” he added. “And it’s a beautiful one, because everyone universally understands it, as soon as they’re born.”
Class Act’s brick-and-mortar location is slated to open this summer in Bucktown, a vibrant neighborhood north of downtown Chicago — quite a journey from Mlodinow’s college apartment. He’s had to give up a lot to make his career bloom, from missing friends’ birthday parties to having to ask his brother to hold his wedding on a Tuesday so he could attend, but as far as Mlodinow’s concerned, it’s all been worth it.
Asked what advice he’d give today’s Hillel students thinking of taking a similar path, Mlodinow’s answer is simple:
“What Hillel really taught me, and what’s now the entire core of my restaurant, is that food can be more than just something that tastes good,” Mlodinow told Hillel International. “It’s a form of communication, and connection. If you’re in the thick of it, remember why you started. And if you’re just starting, let your passion lead the way. You can worry about the other things later.”