People to watch: Gerard Craft

Each year Restaurant Hospitality runs a list of new faces (and sometimes old hands) who are doing things worth talking about. Many restaurant people fit the bill, and we only have so much space in the magazine. So we decided to spotlight some of them online. This is the first in a regular series of "people to watch" profiles.

Tomato, corn and basil pizza, left, and a pie topped with Brussels sprouts

After bouncing around kitchens in Utah, New Jersey and Southern California, Gerard Craft settled in St. Louis eight years ago at the age of 25. Since then he’s created a growing portfolio of concepts with a modern Midwestern focus: Niche, Taste by Niche and Brasserie by Niche. Last fall he took a slight detour to open his latest, Pastaria, where he presents authentically inspired Italian food in a family-friendly, unpretentious manner. We recently spoke with Craft about this newest idea and his quest for the perfect pizza dough.

RH: What was the thinking behind Pastaria?

Craft: It’s a big, open restaurant, family style, with a rustic Italian focus. We wanted to elevate the idea of a family-style restaurant, so we took it a step further and made it a from-scratch restaurant.

RH: Why did you choose Italian?

Craft: Italians are so welcoming to children and very family-oriented. That’s one of the things I loved about it. When I was there, if I brought my daughter with me, the chefs would take her into the kitchen.

Orange Salad

Some of the dishes are authentic, while some are not. It’s really all about simple ingredients and good execution.

RH: What do you sell in the retail area within the restaurant?

We have a couple of refrigerated cases filled with salumi from local and national providers, mozzarella, fresh pasta, lasagna to go, things like that. There’s also a gelato counter. And we’re looking at selling items like local honey and olive oil that we import from Abruzzo. It’s kind of a work in process.

RH: Other than the family focus, is there any other Italian quality that you incorporated into the concept?

Craft: There’s definitely a welcoming philosophy. We want people to feel warm and comfy, to feel like they are eating in someone’s home, that they don’t need to dress up and impress anybody, just to have good, solid food that makes them smile. That’s really what it’s become.

RH: Does the open floor plan result in a communal experience for many of your guests?

Craft: It does. We also have one long community table with about 18 seats, which is packed. People dine at the kitchen counter table and at the bar, too.

Serving locally inspired Italian cuisine

Craft tosses a pizza as Adam Alnether, executive chef and partner, looks on.

RH: Before you opened you sent pizza peels to old friends, mentors and colleagues who have inspired you. Now those peels provide some of the wall art. Who has signed some of them, and how did they inspire you?

Craft: Peter Reinhart is one. He has a website for pizza fanatics called pizzaquest.com. I was fortunate enough to meet him a few years back when he came to St. Louis, and I have e-mailed him a lot of questions about pizza doughs and ovens.

Danny Meyer is another one. He is the god of hospitality, he knows so much about number one, what being a Midwesterner is all about, and number two, caring about your guests and their experience. His is definitely the model to follow.

Local chefs also signed a number of the peels. We wanted to show that even the chefs in our city inspire us and keep us going every day.

Fresh pasta at Pastaria

RH: You like to use what’s available locally, but in this case did you try to bring in ingredients from Italy as well?

Craft: Most of what we use is American except for the olive oil. Even our pizza flour is from Kansas. I like good ingredients. That sounds like “well, duh,” but it’s not always that simple. I like flavor. If it’s a carrot I want it to taste sweet and earthy. If it’s an onion I want it to be really fresh and if it’s a red onion I want that slight burn along with the sweetness. I want pure, fresh flavors. Obviously it’s more complicated than that.

RH: You reportedly spent two years tinkering with your pizza dough. What were you doing?

I think I went into it a little cocky. We bought a pizza oven for the backyard to do testing, and I didn’t like the results, so I tried other things, and I didn’t like them, either. I had a very specific goal in mind when I started, but attaining that ended up being a whole different story. I wound up trying lot of different flours until I found the perfect texture. It’s more about the texture than the ingredients. If Italian flour had worked better, I would have used that. At the end of the day I don’t believe in doing local just to do local, I believe in doing things to be the best.

I went through all the Italian flours and tons of American flours. It just so happened that some flours from Kansas turned out to be the best and yielded the perfect texture: a little crispy on the bottom but a soft chew underneath, not hard crispy but light crispy. Some pizzas can taste almost old when you get to the crust. It took a long time and a lot of tweaking of the flour, hydration rate and yeast levels. Fortunately we have good friends who are bakers down the street, and they were extremely helpful.

RH: You work with about 100 local farmers—how did you develop such a network?

Craft: It’s from years of going to farmers’ markets and meeting this farmer and that farmer. Now we’ve even got a guy who is a middleman for farmers—he sends out a list of what all the farms have. It took years of cooking food and going to the farms and markets, searching for something better.

We’re working on a program to raise all our own beef. A good friend has partnered with us. There is amazing pork all over Missouri, and amazing vegetables as well. There are a few local wineries that I think are very good. The region is just getting tapped and there are wine makers who are getting it and producing good stuff, wine that I want to drink.

RH: How did you end up settling in St. Louis?

Craft: I went online and found some real estate and said let’s go check this out. I went to school in Salt Lake and I didn’t want to go home to the east coast. I wanted to be part of something building. I think I’ve been fortunate enough to be in the right place at the right time.