Last Monday, September 30, The Milpitas Beat was on hand for the ribbon-cutting at Dina’s Delish Cooking (761 Superior Road), a new Micro Enterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MEHKO) founded by Milpitas resident Dina Nadler-Serber. MEHKOs are not walk-in kitchens, but you can pre-order Dina’s Delish Cooking for your family and/or events here.
Before launching the business, Dina didn’t know you could sell food from your home: “I go to people’s houses to cook,” she told The Beat in an interview. “I do home cooking at people’s houses. I go to synagogues, and I’m known at several synagogues in the Bay Area for knowing how to do kosher cooking. And I really wanted to cook from my own home…”
It was in 2019 when MEHKOs took the U.S. by storm. Fortunately for Dina, the Santa Clara County Department of Health does allow them, though she had to undergo a rigorous permitting process. “They don’t want you to do more than your home kitchen can allow,” she explained. This means Dina’s Delish Cooking is limited to being open 3 days a week, and can serve no more than 30 meals a day, which means no more than 90 meals a week.
Moreover, as part of the application process, she had to cite and file extremely specific portion sizes, based on weight and quart size. “You have to be very, very thorough,” she said. And: “Anything you sell has to be cooked fresh that day.” Her family can eat the leftovers (and based on her kids’ rave reviews of her food, that shouldn’t be an issue), but she can’t sell them.
Speaking of Dina’s family, they’re allowed to help, as anybody in the home over age 14 with a food handler card is permitted to pitch in. This means her husband Avi is part of the team, as well as their oldest son Charles (17), who happens to have a food handler card from his kitchen job at Golfland.
As for what’s on the menu: “I cook what I grew up eating. So a lot of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish-style food.” This means deli sandwiches; it means pastrami and turkey breast. The day of the ribbon-cutting, Dina was cooking in a NY-style theme. She also ate vegan for many years, and is thus versed in cooking vegan meals. And some desserts are on the menu, also, including challah bread and vegan chocolate cake. (Although baked goods aren’t her kitchen’s leading options, Dina said, “If somebody asks then I can do it.”)
Dina grew up in Sheepshead Bay, in Brooklyn. It was there where her mother and grandmother taught her how to cook. Her mother, she shared, couldn’t limit her cooking to just their family of six. “She would cook for an army,” Dina smiled.
Dina never had any formal training, but she’s never lacked for cooking jobs, either. “I used to be a cook at a camp,” she shared. And before starting up Dina’s Delish Cooking, she’d been a volunteer cook at her synagogue in Fremont, where the other members loved her food and encouraged her to make more of it.
“There isn’t anybody that’s doing kosher cooking here,” said Dina, meaning the San Francisco Bay Area. She cited one spot in Oakland, and another small place in San Jose, but still, she was feeling the lack.
Asked how it is to be Jewish in the Bay Area, Dina said, “It’s hard. When we lived in New York, everybody knew about everybody else’s religion and holidays and everything. [Here], going into a lot of stores around Hanukkah, you can’t find candles. So I’m also trying to show people about my culture, my food.”
Above all, Dina’s Delish Cooking is about trying to bring people together. “Food is just my love language,” Dina said. “It’s how I connect to everything. It’s how I connect to people. It’s how I connect to religion. It’s how I connect to groups…It’s how I talk to people.”
Beaming, she said, “It just makes me so happy to watch people eat my food.”
