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Photo by Greg Rannells
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Mike Randolph owns three restaurants in St. Louis (The Good Pie, Half & Half, Little Country Gentleman), all of them quite different, all works in progress. SLM had questions about all three.
The Good Pie is slated to open in The Loop soon. Why did you choose to relocate--inside the Loop's Ginger Bistro, no less--and not just open a second location?
The location in Midtown wasn’t doing well. There’s development back on Locust, but it didn’t really stick in the area. We were arrogant kids who thought we could make pizza like Pappy’s made barbeque. But we didn’t realize the difference between selling during the day and at night.
What’s the progress report? Are there any changes?
We’re looking at a mid-January opening. We have a brand new oven, a beautiful hand-crank Italian slicer, more space, and we’ll always have one cask beer on tap. The menu’s been consolidated to 5-6 pizzas, and we’ll have new faces working there. We used to draw our staff from SLU but will probably now have more Wash U kids working for us.
What if Ginger Bistro were to close?
I never thought of that. With success, I’d be tempted to expand but don’t know what I’d do.
Little Country Gentleman is now a bit more intimate and recently an á la carte menu was introduced. Take us through that thought process.
We were resisting the inevitable for as long as we could. The tasting menus give us more control so the diner experiences the food as we think it should be experienced. But the tasting menu thing in St. Louis didn’t seem to be working. We still consider it a tasting menu because the size of the plates hasn’t changed—you can just get what you want now separately.
Half & Half (photograph at right by Kevin A. Roberts) is over two years old. The place always looks busy. Talk about where it started, where it is currently, and where it’s going.
It always was to me the way I thought I could make a dollar or two in this industry—that my take on breakfast would be a successful one. There didn’t seem to be any passion for food before 11 AM. We originally intended on doing more interesting cooking, for example, a 4-seat tasting menu at the breakfast bar near the kitchen. But then we realized that with our volume, we wouldn’t be able to do that. Our projections were 150 people on a Saturday, but we’re doing 400.
We’ve made some menu changes: we got rid of the cornbread because we weren’t making it ourselves and we figured we better do so or get rid of it. We also changed some of the salads to be conducive to a Clayton crowd and added a couple of burgers. We source the best coffee and bread in town, and someday I’d like to source eggs locally. Our eggs are cage free, but in order to source them locally, we’d have to charge more, and people are less willing to pay more for breakfast. In St. Louis, people don’t challenge where food comes from so much but we’re getting there.
Do you ever worry that when you make those kinds of statements about St. Louis, people will take offense?
No—I’m not bashing St. Louis. We have the best coffee scene—we blow Seattle out of the water—and an insane beer scene. We have 3 top-notch coffee houses here: Blueprint, Sump, and Comet. But as much as people are willing to go into Blueprint and Sump and spend $6 on a coffee, they’re not so willing to spend money on breakfast. There’s a disconnect there.
You referenced Seattle’s coffee scene. In a recent tweet, you mentioned that you returned from Seattle “disheartened,” that “this is what the food scene should aspire to be.” How so? Again, are you worried that your comments might be misunderstood?
I’m fortunate to have a great following in St. Louis for pizza and breakfast. And we try to control the dining experience with Little Country Gentleman.
When I came here 7 years ago, there were 2 or 3 cool restaurants in St. Louis. Now, we have 7-10 really cool restaurants that a core of people go to. And that’s good for all of us. But every community in Seattle had 7-10 great restaurants. You walk around and don’t see fast-food chains everywhere.
Seattle has a local branch of Eater.com. There are no reviews on Eater—just information about places. And it doesn’t take advertising, so that whole convoluted thing is out. I opened up a local publication in Seattle and it highlighted a little place that’s only open for a few hours each day. And that was one of the “hot” spots. It comes back to objectivity—just giving you the facts. We need to find a balance in recommending well-known and lesser-known places.
St. Louis would benefit from 10 new chefs coming to town and opening 10 new restaurants—a fresh influx of blood opening restaurants is what we need. Gerard [Craft] and Kevin [Nashan] and Josh [Galliano] bring so much talent to this town; it’s just a matter of time before they start opening their own places.
St. Louis is a great city for opening a restaurant. We should always aspire to be better. We need to push the scene farther. I want another breakfast place to open up near me—to push us—and I hope we do better. There’s another Neapolitan pizza place opening soon. I love that. If we want to grow the culinary scene in St. Louis, it doesn’t help to keep patting the millionaires on the back. Instead, we should diversify our coverage.
