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It’s no secret that a handful of chefs in St. Louis have become somewhat famous—both locally and now nationally... and not to take anything away from them—that attention is well-earned and well-deserved. St. Louis’ culinary star would not be rising without their efforts.
But there are other players in the game, less heralded, less visible, perhaps, but no less talented. Chefs who deserve more plaudits than they receive.
Chris Lee (left) is one of those chefs.
After a 10-day tease on Facebook, it was announced today that he has partnered up with local boniface and culinary veteran Vito Racanelli. Together, they plan to take Racanelli’s Mad Tomato to the next level as well as entertain prospects for the future.
Lee has been on board at Mad Tomato for the last two weeks, learning and tweaking the restaurant’s signature dishes as well as adding his own creations. The target date for the Chris Lee-influenced spring menu is May 10, the date of Mad Tomato’s three–year anniversary.
He'll have a hard time improving upon Sam Racanelli's pizza (right). Vito's oldest brother, one of the city's premier pizzaiolos and co-founder of Racanelli's Pizza, currently tends--and will continue to tend--the hybrid pizza oven at Mad Tomato.
No one is more excited about the partnership than Vito Racanelli (below), citing Lee's technical talents and adding he “took a cue from the A-B playbook and realized I had to hire experts better than myself—like Chris Lee--to prosper and grow.”
To that end, he also hired Aaron Duncan as Director of Marketing, who's responsible for “overseeing, developing, and managing the strategic marketing initiatives for branding, Internet marketing, advertising, social media, events and other marketing avenues for Mad Tomato." Why is this significant? In our opinion, because most restaurants turn a blind eye that such a person is even necessary. We’d argue that there’s no more necessary job in a restaurant today.
For those not familiar with Lee, he apprenticed with Marcel Keraval at Café de France and Jean Claude Guillossou at L’Auberge Bretonne. In an interview with SLM in 2008, Lee said he respected the latter so much, “I cut off my topknot just to work for him.”
In 2008, Lee joined forces with Dr. Gurpreet Padda and Ami Grimes SLM's Q&A here), owners of In Good Company LLC, an entrepreneurial duo with more restaurant ideas than Rich Melman. Over the next five years, the trio opened Sanctuaria, Café Ventana, Diablito’s Cantina, Hendricks BBQ, and resurrected Chuy Arzola’s (now closed). A year ago, Lee left In Good Company to lend a skilled hand at the ever-expanding River City Casino, where he served as executive chef for the casino’s new banquet and event center, as well as “roundsman,” the chef equivalent of “utility man,” a position that requires deep skills, skills evidenced in Lee’s significant and frequent awards in local chef’s competitions. In the last three years, he’s won the multi-day Chef’s Battle Royale (below) at the Budweiser Taste of St. Louis twice (as well as placed second), and also scored a win at the Crystal Cajun Cook-Off in 2011 (earning additional medals in both 2010 and 2012). No other local chef can boast that kind of bling...and you’d never hear about it from the mild-mannered Lee.
Racanelli is the salesman, the marketer, the mouthpiece, and that’s why this is a good partnership in an "opposites attract" kind of way. Racanelli is looking forward to future growth, to be sure, citing the “huge number of opportunities here,” and realizing that he and Lee are "two big dogs in a small space.”
