Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Aleksandar Jovanovic is so passionate about wine that he abandoned a career in naval architecture and marine engineering after landing a job with acclaimed chef Emeril Lagasse. The Cella family, owners of Truffles, later recruited him and jettisoned a modern Italian menu to allow Jovanovic and chef Brandon Benack to reinvent the restaurant. Truffles’ wine list just won its first international award, and Benack is spearheading Truffles Butchery, where meats will be dry-aged in a room lined with bricks of top-quality pink Himalayan salt.
Jovanovic…that’s an Irish name, isn’t it?I was born just outside of Belgrade, but historically, there is a historical connection between the Serbs and the Celts—a lot of the customs are similar… (Smiling) So actually, you’re not that far off.
But when people ask me where I’m from I usually say Yugoslavia, because that’s the country I remember. All the ugliness that came afterwards I tend to, well, ignore, as I had friends on all sides. I left Yugoslavia when I was 25.
What did you study in school?
Since Yugoslavia was one of the major ship-building countries in the world, I majored in naval architecture and marine engineering. But I was never into ships, really. I was the guy reading car magazines when everybody else was reading about ships. If I wasn’t into wine and restaurants, I’d be designing and racing cars.
Explain the move to this country.
The war was starting, and one way out was to transfer credits to another school. So initially, I was working here illegally—parking cars in front of Emeril’s—while I was putting myself through the University of New Orleans, one of few schools that taught my major. When I got my green card, Emeril offered me a job inside, in wine.
What was Emeril’s like?
I was there in its heyday—$15 million a year, 225 seats, 500 covers per night, celebrities everywhere—and it ran like a well-orchestrated ballet. There was a science to it. I was a busser then and worked my way up to wine director at Emeril’s Delmonico, one of his three restaurants in New Orleans. Before I became a sommelier, it occurred to me that not everyone could be a master shipbuilder, but even fewer would become a master sommelier or a successful restaurant entrepreneur. That was it—I was hooked.
What was the biggest takeaway from Emeril’s?
The pre-meal meetings, where the staff was informed and quizzed and pushed.
SugarFire's Mike Johnson worked there, too, and he told me the same the thing.
I was proud that after a time, they called me Dot.com because I got to be pretty quick with a decent answer. Tony Lott, my mentor and now director of operations for Emeril’s, ran those meetings like nobody I’ve ever seen. The man had magic. It was 5:30 p.m., there were 200 customers behind a curtain waiting to be seated, and 14 teams of three people each, awaiting our instructions from Tony, who was standing on a chair. It was like Mel Gibson in Braveheart—he’d get us so fired up, we’d be yelling and screaming. The customers had to be terrified. I still use some of with GM Tony Lott’s “Tony-ism’s.”
Let’s hear one…
One night, he was screaming about a plethorance of something or other, and we were screaming back. Right after the meeting, we asked each other, “What the hell is plethorance?” It didn’t matter.
Sounds like a unique individual.
He once asked us what was the most powerful tool in the business—the answer was knowledge. Tony would drill way down, for example, about say, shrimp. What family, what animal kingdom, the different types and from which waters… So by the time we hit the stage—and it was a stage—the staff was so confident about what it was serving that we could not fail to impress, in the eyes of anybody who came in. I attempt to do the same thing at Truffles—impart knowledge to the staff. And be righteous in the approach. The message gets through; I haven’t hired a server at Truffles in a year and a half.
Did you come to St. Louis directly from New Orleans?
After Hurricane Katrina, I spent five years in the Caribbean at The Pavilion Antigua. We won the AAA 5-Diamond Award in 2009, one of 18 freestanding restaurants in the U.S. to do so. The Caribbean was not known for fine service, so I was especially proud when we scored 5.1 in service when 5.0 was considered max.
And you eventually got a call from Hubert Keller, a master chef?
He flew me out to Vegas—where I didn’t really want to move—but I liked him, he liked me, and he told me about SLeeK, his steakhouse concept in St. Louis. Once I researched the quality of the public schools here, I was in—even though I’d never even visited. Keller is the hardest-working guy I’ve ever met, so genuine, the nicest guy…and he’s a great DJ.
You worked with Keller at SLeeK. What happened there?
The project was ill-fated. If you take a restaurant—in Paris, New York, here, anywhere—and put it next to a buffet restaurant where 200 people are in line for unlimited crab legs, and add in some casino noise and smoke, it doesn’t matter how good the food is or whose name is above the door. It’s not going to work.
That would be a hard restaurant to manage.
The casino privately announced early in my tenure that it would be pulling out, so for the next 10 months I was running a restaurant I knew would be closing. That said, January 2011, the last month SLeeK was open, was the best it had ever been. Credit the staff—who knew we were closing—for doing it right up until the final day. Four of them believed in me and followed me to Truffles.
What were the expectations when you got to Truffles?
It was an established restaurant that, in my opinion, was fatigued. It had never been chef-driven, and John Griffiths—who was a great chef, but an uncompromising one—was hired to lead a rather dramatic change that ended up being too dramatic, too brash. Many chefs don’t realize that compromise—in this case, playing to the desires of the neighborhood—is essential. The owners admitted the mistake, pressed the reset button, and we went in a different direction.
And what direction was that?
Our mission was to make the best steak possible, for example, because if you look at food that way, people will eventually come. Don’t tell me steak is easy—nothing is easy. And if it’s not the best, why are we serving it? Chef [Brandon Benack] and I ask ourselves that question literally every day. No dish gets onto the menu without a lot of scrutiny. We taste, we discuss, and we challenge each other on a daily basis.
How involved are the Cellas?
We meet every week. I’ve never worked for people who listen more to me or are more involved…and they have a whole world that they run. I’ve been given an opportunity to run this business as my own and a long enough leash to allow it to succeed.
How much harder is it taking over an existing restaurant than opening a new one?
We are very proud what the restaurant has accomplished since Chef B came on board. I guess we could have come up with some hip new name, and said “bicycles on the left, scooters on the right.” But we were content changing the game without changing the name. We do recognize the challenge of an established restaurant attracting people in their twenties and thirties, but we feel the quality of our product and our playful approach to service is capable of showing through to everyone and that eventually we’ll catch up. The moment that people open horizons, accept the unknown, and want to experience it is when they start to live. Older people will never be that adventuresome; they know what they like, and they’re fine with it. But when a younger person does not want to experience Dover sole just because it’s old-school, in my opinion, that’s worse.
Truffles has changed over the years. Describe the cuisine there today.
When Chef B came on board, the plan was not to reinvent the wheel, but apply a chef-driven “be the best” philosophy to the simple stuff: fried chicken, burgers, steak, fish, whatever.
I fondly remember his take on the lowly wedge salad, reinventing it with crawfish and a spicy remoulade.
Precisely. And examples like that were vindication we were heading in the right direction. Go ahead and change a classic dish, but it better be refreshing and better, or what’s the purpose? A lot of young chefs are trying too much to impress and lose sight of what the dish is supposed to be. So we challenged ourselves to accommodate all tastes. We took uncompromising in the other direction—Asian, Mexican, Floridian influences. There’s fusion, Creole, Midwest—call it Modern American, I guess, which now encompasses just about everything, which is fine, because as long as quality and passion are there, today’s customer doesn’t care what you do.
How will it—or does it need to—evolve?
Some places—like Galatoire’s in New Orleans—haven’t changed anything in 50 years, but that rarely happens. Evolution is necessary. Chef B, who was very uncompromising in the past, is now playing with novelties like liquid nitrogen. So you may experience something new and unexpected—like smoked salmon served on a brick of pink sea salt—but it’s not all new. We just want it to be memorable—and fun.
What else is new? Gang service, for instance. We deliver a table’s food exactly at the same time. It’s very effective and very impressive. We do gang-bussing, too, not quite as systematically, but it’s part of our philosophy. We’ll do a daily $5 lunch special—but you have to know the secret word, which you get from Facebook.
Your Wine Thursdays idea is fun, too.
Every Thursday, a different distributor brings by several different wines. Between 5 and 6 p.m., customers can taste, vote on, and even buy the featured wines. The winner gets put on the wine list next week—at its wholesale price—so it’s possible to experience a very good wine at like $3 a glass, or $12 a bottle.
Has the wine program evolved under your watch?
We already had an award-winning list, with 750 labels. Now it’s double that number—and 10,000 bottles in all. What I’ve been able to do is locate smaller producers, lesser-known varietals, uncompromising winemakers, unusual indigenous wine styles—all of that—and introduce them to this market.
Truffle’s wine list received several awards so far in 2014.
We’ve won several national “Best of Award of Excellence” awards, but just received our first international award, a three-star accolade in London-based The World of Fine Wine—its highest ranking. Guys like Michael Broadband—who may have the best wine palate ever, maybe better than [Robert] Parker—are behind that publication. And Clive Coates? Several of the true bards of the wine industry are involved with this project. More than 4,000 wine lists were reviewed, and only 92 from the U.S. got three stars. Keep in mind, we never applied for this; it was unsolicited. I was blown away to be honored, but more appreciative that they called out all the diversity on the list: the newcomers, the up and comers, even the guys that may never get recognized—but they’re special in their region. Even a smaller wine list can present all of these characters successfully, it can be comprehensive, and present what wine represents. This publication recognizes that, and I appreciate that they do.
Impressive.
We celebrated the award by discounting all bottles wine by 50 percent for two weeks in July to all industry peers and colleagues.
How did you authenticate that?
[Smiling.] The honor system. We wanted people to experience the wine list and celebrate this distinction with us, plus we knew that July is when many locals are gone and the industry folks are stuck here. Hey, I’m all for promotions that don’t hurt you. And even at that discount, we were making a little money. Percentages don’t pay bills; dollars pay bills.
How much wine do you taste in a week?
In some weeks, over a hundred labels.
Are there any new ways to market wine?
I am going to dedicate a page of the wine list to one exceptional wine—what makes it so special, why the story needs to be told, a wine that’s unusual but rarely seen, etcetera. The price does not dictate the excellence, so it could be a very affordable wine. There are plenty of wines on our expanded list that would qualify. This is something I’ve always wanted to do and now can do. And of course there’s the Coravin, which allows us to offer tastes of a rare or expensive wine at a relatively affordable price.
Any other marketing ideas in the works?
We have a private room in the back that I’d like to use for a tasting menu—beer-themed, wine-themed—maybe once a week, 16 to 20 people each time. We have such talent in the kitchen now, it would not stretch or strain us to do that.
And you hired chef Andrew Jennrich to help with Truffles Butchery.
He did a phenomenal job at Farmhaus and would love to open his own butchery, but he’s not yet in that position. Our project sets him up for his dream—and we get to benefit from his knowledge, talent, and passion. I’ve never known anyone who loves meat more than that guy. Is Andrew going to be at our butcher shop in five years? I hope not; I hope he has his own. Truffles is just a part of his evolution.
Who came up with the idea for Truffles Butchery?
The Cellas have been wanting to do some kind of retail at Truffles, but it was Chef B who came up with the butchery idea. He disappeared from any conversation for a while, emerged with this proposal, and they loved it. And the fact that we’ve spec’ed a room with walls made with pink Himalayan sea salt blocks—the best medium for dry-aging meat—is huge. It will be an amazing field day for Brandon and Andrew. To say we’ll have the best is presumptuous, but we hope to have some of the best quality cuts in the city.
The place is small—800 square feet, right?
And that’s good because besides selling prepared items and a-la-minute sandwiches, we’ll also have hot foods made next door, allowing us to do what most other butcher shops cannot. That’s the joker in our hand. We also want to bring back the personal relationship you used to have with your butcher shop, when they knew your name and the cuts you liked. It’s so small, it’s going to be as personal an experience as you can get.
Any outside seating in the works?
The butchery is a big project that expanded our ability to serve our guests. But we are also at a disadvantage by having not outside seating. So perhaps the next step could be something like that, to further tie both the places together. It would give us a new dimension, a new appeal.
Plus there’s action in the neighborhood.
Sweetology is attracting people, as will the big, state-of-the-art wellness facility that is moving into Busch’s Grove.
Can you relax when you go out to eat?
Absolutely. I’m neither a food snob nor a wine snob, and as full of pet peeves as I am in my own house, I’m the easiest person to have in yours. I just want to relax and enjoy somebody else’s work. I see things, but I don’t let them get in the way.
Anything else you want to talk about?
Cars?
