I stopped in to see Pi's Executive Chef Steve Caravelli (above) on Friday morning to get the lowdown on the posters in the restaurant's windows plugging "Meatless Mondays" (see below). I assumed the push at Pi was solely to encourage healthier eating ("Meatless Mondays" has its own wikipedia entry: look here), but there is more to it.
Steve said that the business model restaurant owner Chris Sommers and his partner, Frank Uible, have adopted is heavily weighted toward making Pi an ecologically sustainable restaurant. The Meatless Mondays' initiative (at the CWE location only at this point), is a step in that direction.
The newly-created Meatless Monday menu rolls out today, and will list among other choices, the "Western" and "Berkeley" pizza.
Once we finished discussing the initial reason for my visit, my ulterior motive for contacting Steve surfaced. I love getting behind the scene of almost anything–especially restaurants, and talking to chefs about their background and how they came to the restaurant business is high on the list.
Steve graduated from Mizzou with a degree in Journalism, and if there was any thought of the food business at all, it was writing about it, not working as a chef. But his father–who has a large cookbook collection and loves to prepare family meals—suggested that Steve might like working in the restaurant business. Father knew best and Steve apprenticed for some of the top chefs in St. Louis— Aiden Murphy at Old Warson Country Club, Larry Forgione at the late, great American Place (one of our favorite special occasion spots), Gerard Craft at Niche, Eric Brenner at Chez Leon and Moxy (another old favorite).
Steve has been at Pi for about six months. One of his first assignments as Corporate Chef was to help open Pi's Washington, D. C. location, District of Pi at 910 F St., N.W. He still travels to D.C. every month to tweak the menu. I asked Steve to compare the top selling crust in the CWE location to the District of Pi. Thin crust is more popular in D.C., where on a good day they sell 400 to 500 pizzas. In the CWE deep dish rules the day, and on a really good day here 300 to 400 pizzas are served. Anyway you slice it, that's a lot of pizza!
On the domestic front, when Steve has time off, he and his wife Cara and their two-year-old daughter enjoy spending time with both of their families, usually centered around a meal. Steve says that Cara, a graphic designer, whose online business is called "Clever Hands Press," does most of the cooking and makes a mean minestrone.
Pi, 400 N. Euclid, open 7 days a week, (314) 367-4000.