Class Act Fine Dining Debuts in Bucktown With Speakeasy Bar Nightcap | Eater Chicago

"A new tasting-menu restaurant in Bucktown presents meals in a friendly, residential-like atmosphere around a 16-seat communal table that aims to remove barriers to enjoying fine dining and encourage mingling among parties. The opening menu, called “Growing Up,” is a 13-course meal served over three hours and is intended to touch on nostalgia; dinner costs $230 per person (compared with top-tier local tasting menus such as Oriole at $325, Smyth at $420, and Alinea at $325–$395, and newer entries like Feld at $195). Chef Nicolai Mlodinow hatched his dream cooking in dorms and bringing an apartment pop-up to the city; from afar the kitchen—with its marble counter facing the entrance—“looks like an apartment kitchen,” though it’s equipped with the gadgetry he hopes will allow the team to compete with Chicago’s top-tier restaurants, and he describes the culinary approach as modernist cuisine that taps into international influences. Personal details and chefly ethos thread through the concept: he wears sneakers showing off who his favorite player was growing up — a certain LA Laker who sported “a Mamba mentality,” and he even trained with ankle weights while cooking to build endurance, likening himself to the manga character Rock Lee. “The sense of connection and belonging is everything to me,” Mlodinow says. “Bringing people together to break bread... One of the courses, they literally tear bread together. That is why I cook.” A representative savory example on the opening menu is a tartlet with butter-poached shrimp flavored with Cajun seasoning and garam masala, which he says “reminds him of a blackened salmon dish his father cooked for him growing up: ‘When I look at it, when I taste it, I get all those flavors,’” and he’s deliberate about ingredient integrity (he says the thought of recklessly substituting uncured brisket for pastrami in a specific dish revolts him). There’s a subtle Nordic bent—“the use of flowers, for example”—and flowers are an intentional flavor element rather than decoration: “They’re very intentional, it’s not just with how pretty it is,” Mlodinow says. “These things actually have flavor.” Business partner Shreena Amin, who met Mlodinow as a guest at one of his dinners and who traveled with him for R&D in Copenhagen visiting Noma, the Alchemist, Jordnær, and Geranium, adds the mission-focus on sociability and narrative: “We want to be carving out our own space that is about connection and fun and whimsy and joy and the food always has to be incredible — it takes you somewhere and tells a story,” she says. “But what you’re going to take away and remember is who you sat next to, how you laugh together, that’s what makes you want to come back.” Guests convene in a welcome room to choose beverage pairings (nonalcoholic, standard, reserve, or cocktails) before sitting; reservations are handled via OpenTable." - Ashok Selvam