Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Cary McDowell
Before opening The Crossing with Jimmy Fiala, then launching Revival and settling in at Winslow’s Home, Cary McDowell worked for (or hobnobbed with) the best chefs in the country, among them Daniel Boulud, André Soltner, Christian Bertrand, and Wolfgang Puck. More recently, the 52-year-old chef has kept Chris Sommers’ Pi restaurants on a steady path, where his fatherly guidance and mentoring abilities have become as important as his vast culinary skills.
After opening Pi+Rico a year ago in Glendale, you recently moved a mile west, into the former Kirkwood Brewhouse. I look at it as a bigger, better version of what the Kirkwood Pi was: indoor bar, outdoor patio and bar, plenty of seating. We never wanted to close that location but had to mainly due to parking issues. At this one, we have almost unlimited parking for our employees and customers. And I inherited a smoker, so I plan to have ribs on the menu, dusted with Rico spice—something I created using chile peppers, lime, and salt, among other things.
To generalize, Pi+Rico is mainly pizza combined with Mexican. I didn’t want to get into The Cheesecake Factory’s lane of trying to be everything to everybody, but these were two popular genres that we knew we did well. And as a parent and a guy who loves culinary diversity, offering two things under one roof made sense. It’s a solid concept, and what we offer is different than anything else. In the same way I formulated the ‘ZZA pizza to be oval, I formulated the quesadillas to be narrow—we call them machetes. Practically, you can get more of those shapes in the oven or on a griddle. In the fast casual food business, it’s all about throughput.
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Pi is best known for its deep-dish pizza, but you say the thin-crust is different as well. How so? It’s a different dough formulation, without giving too much away. The crust has more of a snap to it, while the crust at ‘ZZA has a few of the qualities of Neapolitan-style pizza, with more of a tug and chew to it, but also an airiness.
Now that you moved Pi+Rico into a larger space, what will become of the previous location in Glendale? The jury’s still out. It could be a taqueria, and it’s a great place for a ’ZZA.
Pi Pizzeria opened on March 14, 2007, also known as “pi day,” and caught on quickly here. How about the stores in other cities? The one a few blocks from the White House in Washington, DC does very well and will do better once people start to travel again. In Cincinnati, the neighborhood never grew the way we thought it would, plus we had an opportunity to flip that real estate to the owners of Wahlburgers, who wanted a chance to compete with the Lachey brothers of Lachey’s Sports Bar and Grill fame. That said, we still have plans to do something else in Cincinnati. If I’m going to drive 5 hours to get great food, I go there. Not Chicago and not Nashville. Cincinnati. My favorite Italian restaurant ever—and I’ve been to a few—is there, called Sotto.
How about the store in South Beach? Too much, too fast there, I’d say, plus I think we misjudged the potential of that market, which was more transient and seasonal than we thought. Plus, we were right next door to an upscale nightclub—servicing the people standing in line was a built-in market, right?—but it didn’t turn out that way.
And there are Pi locations abroad, too. We now have nine franchised stores in Iraq. They keep opening, so we know they’re doing well. No pork toppings, though; it’s all halal.
With many restaurants being short-staffed these days, how do you get more people into the industry? I got into this business, latched on, and fought like hell to cobble myself a pretty nice career. If young people do well right now and don’t get too worried about the next thing, things tend to present themselves. Without a ton of credentials, you can make a great name for yourself and become wealthy in the process. Had I focused on stacking dollars, I probably could have—I had the tools. That’s the gift of the industry. Our GM at the Pi store in DC started as a cook there, became the best kitchen manager we ever had, and is now the strongest front of the house manager in our company.
What’s the solution to the current rising labor and cost of goods problem? What it’s always been, in my opinion. We’re all in the same boat, so the key is to provide value with the experience at whatever price point you find yourself in. People are now becoming aware that things cost more, but no matter the climate, good always wins. To succeed in the future, we all just have to be very good at what we do. That little dinner party we throw every night has to be perfect, every night.
Let's back up to pre-pandemic times. When did you first get into the business? After graduating high school in Pine Bluff, [Arkansas], my family moved to Little Rock, and I went to college in Shreveport [Louisiana]. I wanted to be a writer. My first kitchen experience was washing dishes at a place called Cheers—but not that Cheers. It was there I learned you had to hand-patty burgers for them to be any good. At the time, all the restaurants in Little Rock supported each other and elevated each other. I never forgot that and do the same thing to this day. Then I started cooking to impress girls.
How did you begin working for Daniel Boulud? When I was in Little Rock, I was told that to rise through the ranks, you had to write letters to chefs in France or in New York. I wrote a letter to André Soltner at Lutèce, whose best friend, Christian Bertrand, was opening his own place. André called me Monday and said, “Can you be here Friday?” I drove to New York City, and on my first night, my car got stolen with all my life’s stuff in it, so I was in the big city with literally nothing. Instead of reporting to work, I went to the police precinct to report my car being stolen. After that, I didn’t think I’d even have a job, but it all worked out.
Boulud's restaurants are highly regarded to this day. Back in Little Rock, Hillary Clinton’s best friend’s daughter was my girlfriend. We broke up, Bill got elected, and I went to cook in New York City for Daniel Boulud. When the Clintons came to the restaurant and called me by my first name, Daniel’s head snapped around, and I ascended a few rungs up his mental ladder. My parents didn’t buy into my career until they came to New York and saw that Julia Child was dining at Daniel Boulud’s restaurant, just like they were.
Did you go to culinary school? While working at Bertrand and Lutèce, I was told that most people don’t make it in the fancier French kitchens, and I might want to have a back-up plan, which for me was enrolling in the CIA [Culinary Institute of America] in Hyde Park. I was working at Lutèce and at Bertrand, and went to school during the week. It was a crazy triangle. When Boulud found out I’d been working with [Christian Bertrand] for a year, he hired me on the spot. It’s no different today here. If I know that someone has worked for Kevin Nashan for a bunch of years, that’s all I need to know.
What’s your opinion of cooking schools? One reason they proliferated like crazy when they did was because they were tied to government subsidies. The problem was a severe lack of qualified instructors. In some cases, the person teaching French cuisine had never been unable to hold down a job in the private sector cooking French cuisine. At the CIA, it took years to qualify to become an instructor. Same was true at the New England Culinary Institute and Johnson & Wales, which arguably has produced more named culinarians than the CIA. Enrolling in a culinary school with high quality, learned instructors is 50 percent of the reason to do so. The other 50 percent is the connections that you make and can develop while there. The opportunity to open a door and be properly exposed to a new career path is what I think you pay for in a culinary school.
Is 2022 a good time to go to a culinary school? Yes, more than ever. And going further, I think we’ve entered a trade economy. What I studied in culinary school, starting as an apprentice, was the trade of fine dining and the craft of French cooking and service. The world needs more tradesmen in general, more plumbers and carpenters and painters.
How was it working alongside Boulud? I was on the ground when the place opened. We were the first restaurant in America to use All-Clad cookware. I felt an actor in the right time at the right place, who had been given the right role. There were four American kids working in that kitchen. Then they wanted someone who was good with pasta and a guy from Spiaggia shows up by the name of Jimmy Fiala. He and I met at Daniel and bonded quickly. We started up Feast and Fêtes for Daniel, where we’d pack up a meal, jump in a cab, and cook it up in people’s homes. Jimmy and I worked together there for two years.
What was your takeaway from working in New York? When I was there, I was able to identify and work with not so much the named chefs, but the doers, the guys that made these French restaurants in New York what they became. I learned a lot from them, both culinarily and culturally. We understood each other, generationally. I grew up in a loving family, very close to my grandparents. Most of them did, too, growing up in the French countryside. I could connect those dots. A lot of the other American kids couldn’t identify with that. My dad was a priest, for example, so Sunday suppers were a big part of growing up.
When did you and Jim Fiala open The Crossing? After working in New York, we worked at—and then ran—the kitchen at an exclusive resort in Puerto Rico. Jimmy met a woman from St. Louis, announced he was marrying her and was moving there, and I decided to join him. We ended up making a deal at Mineo’s Primavera in Clayton, which was The Lettuce Leaf before that, and that’s where we opened The Crossing.
The Crossing was—and still is—a special place. It was a dream come true for us, and really it was just an extension of what we were doing at Daniel. It was literally a crossing of Italian cuisine—which was Jimmy’s forte—and French—which was mine. I was exclusively French, well, or Southern. We cooked for who we thought our customers were going to be—and ended up being—people who had traveled around the world and were familiar with both cuisines.
Do you have any advice for a young chef? Throughout my career, I have surrounded myself with excellence, starting back in Little Rock with Cheers. The food we did there was excellent, in its way. So I encourage everyone—no matter the business or trade—to do the same. Then you discover that there are different levels of excellence in different contexts. I tell young people that I didn’t have a plan, but that’s what kept me on track. I just knew I had to work hard today and if I was around the right people, that an opportunity would present itself. If you look at the essence of a trade, in any industry, it’s still the same thing.
Can you sum up a few of your prior stops?
The Crossing: If a place is still going strong with the same format after almost 25 years, the concept has to be solid. When I go to eat there now, a lot of the food I still recognize, and it’ll still be damn good.
LiLuMa: Appropriately named after Jimmy’s and my kids—Lily, Luke, and Mary. I was more proud of that place than any I’ve been involved with. The location was perfect. The staff was of the highest caliber: Ken Concepcion went on to work for Wolfgang Puck; Derek Bryant, whose father was Don Bryant of Bryant Family Vineyard, was a bartender…
Wolfgang Puck Enterprises: I was hired to be Wolf’s corporate regional chef for the Midwest and I went to Spago to learn everything there was to know about Wolfgang Puck Catering. We did gigs in celebrities’ homes. We built a makeshift restaurant in a field on Charles Schwab’s ranch. And it was all hands on deck for the Oscars party every year… I brought all of that knowledge back here and oversaw the food service at the Saint Louis Art Museum, as well as other venues.
Revival: My daughter was getting older and I was traveling so much working for Wolf that I wanted to spend more time here. It was a way for me to relive King Louie’s. The place was just sitting there, and that didn’t sit well with me. Matt McGuire is one of my closest and dearest friends. I met my wife there. Working with Charlie Downs, Chris Bork, and Christina Machamer—who had taped and won Hell’s Kitchen, but we couldn’t tell anybody yet—translated to the place being a powerhouse. We did things there that became fashionable several years after, like the Southern-style picnic chicken, that we cooked up and then served cold, and practiced convivial, yet professional service.
Clarksville Station: While I was at Revival, I helped Nathalie Pettus with her restaurant, bakery, and store in Clarksville, as well as her B&B’s. I was only able to do that because Chris [Bork] was a shining star at Revival.
Winslow’s Home: There had been a number of chefs who left their mark there—including Ben Poremba, who was the first; Carrie Whitcraft, who landed on the RFT's "Ones to Watch" list; and Mary Boehne, who went on to open Yolklore. Ann [owner Ann Lipton] and I seemed to have a similar vision for the place, part of which was to do crank out volume. I loved working on Winslow’s Farm and figuring what to do with all that bounty. Some of my very favorite cooks I ever worked with—refugees from Eritrea—worked there. I was very proud to have contributed there, too.
Gringo: Chris [Sommers] had just recruited me to help with Pi [Pizzeria] and Gringo, which had recently opened—and not with the intended results. The solution there was to not overthink things, to get back to basics, which we did. Gringo was built for speed and volume, which means having adequate staff and customers. Part of Pi and Gringo’s success was due to our food and beverage director, Coby Arzola, a young industry vet who’s also one of the best guys I’ve ever worked with. And at Chuy’s Fajitas & Margaritas, he figured out a way to get his dad back in the business.
’ZZA Pizza + Salad: The products were good, but in retrospect, I suppose our location choices weren’t the best. The Skinker store was proof of concept for us, the prototype for the store in suburban Austin, and it’s doing great. In our locations, parking was abysmal, so pickup wasn’t easy. I feel ’ZZAs will work in any market in the right location.
Pi Pizzeria: By bringing a different idea for pizza crust from the West Coast to St. Louis, Chris provided a solid alternative to St. Louis–style pizza and created a multi-store, mini empire in the process.
Pi+Rico: We loved Gringo so much, we wanted to keep it alive and did just that when we combined it with Pi at the little freestander in Glendale. We also wanted to keep the teams we’d assembled at Gringo and Pi downtown when it paused, so that was part of it, too. We just wanted to keep everyone working.
You said that becoming the corporate chef for Pi Pizzeria gave you the opportunity to work closely with more young chefs. How so? As an apprentice, I was given all of the culinary tools and core competencies that I could ever use, and I was given them freely. There was no holding back. They said, “We’re giving you this because somebody gave it to me, so you have to give it to somebody else.” I always remembered that—almost to the point that I get anxious about it. If I’m not showing somebody how to do something, I’m not holding up my half of the bargain. I promised some older guys that I would do it. It’s a job that I owe. At Pi, one of my guys has been in pizza his entire life and he’s moving to another restaurant. Where some chefs would spend less time with a guy that’s leaving, I’m spending more. I want him to have all the tools necessary to be great at that next job because it’s a reflection on our company.
A noble approach. As the pandemic subsides, are there other lessons to be learned? I look at the pandemic as a bit of a reset. It’s helping suss out some of the people who probably shouldn’t be in the industry—to eliminate some of the noise—and also helping get more money to those who choose to stay in it. When Chris opened Pi in 2008, there weren’t nearly as many places for cooks that were eager. Pi was a place where young cooks could learn and have fun in a busy restaurant. Even though it was mainly pizza, you still could learn core competencies. There was a certain currency there—of connection and knowledge—that wasn’t money. To get that currency, you have to put the work in. Now, there are so many more places in St. Louis to get that kind of experience, and serious, dedicated workers have become fewer and further between. There are too many other places—both in and out of the industry—for them to go. I always loved the business. And I knew that if I put my head down and put the work in, I could make it work for me. I wasn’t just going to pivot into law school or the medical world. If I was me now, I’m not sure I would have ended up in the same place.
Where do you see yourself in five years? I feel called to work on a broader scale and be of service to more people, to touch more people. I’m not sure of the format, though. Whether it’s a private or corporate environment, I’m not sure. My next growth move is to figure all that out.
Will there ever be a McDowell’s Place? Maybe someday, in a romanticized, familial way along with my daughter, if she ever took to the industry. Then a McDowell’s Place would make more sense. But right now, there are a lot of things Chris and I can finally do as normalcy returns, a lot of potential growth.
How do you want to be remembered? I work in a tough industry and lived—and lived through—a lot of the crazy stuff that guys like [Anthony] Bourdain wrote books about. I’m not the guy who talks about being sober or the guy who talks about AA, but I am the guy who takes the phone call from somebody who is struggling and thinks that just because they’re in this industry, they have to do all of the stuff associated with it. “That part of it you don’t have to do,” I tell them, “and if you want an example, look at me.” I go home at night, I have a family, a mortgage. I don’t have to go out with my co-workers at night—and stay out with them all night—for them to like me. They don’t either. I can’t cure anybody, and I’m not a therapist. I tell them, “Here’s what I know, and here’s a person you can talk to further.” I contribute, but I’m also a connector.
