Rendering courtesy The Johnson Studio
For lauded Italian restaurateur Mario Iaccarino, opening Casa Don Alfonso at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis, is something of a homecoming.
Mario and his brother, Ernesto, grew up in the restaurant and hospitality business in Italy; in 1973, their parents, Alfonso and Livia, opened Don Alfonso 1890 in Sant'Agata, near Naples. Today, the two-starred Michelin restaurant remains a destination for diners from across Italy and the world for its focus on fresh, quality ingredients, and balance of traditional and contemporary cooking techniques and dishes.
“The Iaccarino family makes their guests feel completely at home in this luxurious restaurant situated in the heart of Sant’Agata,” states the Michelin Guide. “Enjoy creative cuisine made from top-quality ingredients, some grown on the premises.”
Long before the Iaccarinos were known as restaurateurs, though, the family were famous hoteliers. When Casa Don Alfonso opens at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis, in November, it will unite the past and future of the family businesses under one roof. It also marks the Iaccarino family’s first Don Alfonso restaurant in the U.S. (There is one other sister location in North America, Don Alfonso 1890, in Toronto).
“Don Alfonso has a long story,” Mario Iaccarino told SLM on a recent transatlantic call. “And this is a kind of coming back.”
The Chef
Courtesy Don Alfonso 1890
To further appreciate the significance of the forthcoming St. Louis area restaurant, Iaccarino shared more about his family’s past. In 1880, his paternal great-grandfather, Alfonso, left his home in Sant'Agata to move to the U.S. At the time, one of Alfonso’s aunts was living in Brooklyn, where she ran a small food shop. A decade later, in 1890, Alfonso returned to Sant'Agata and realized a longtime dream by opening The Hotel Iaccarino, which began a legacy that extended through four generations of his family.
“The United States gave my great-grandfather the chance to realize his dream, to open a hotel more than 120 years ago,” Iaccarino says. “And now we are going back to the United States. I feel very emotional, because the United States, in a certain way, permitted us to realize that dream. So the American dream is also very present in the Don Alfonso story. And now, for me to open the first restaurant in the United States, it's a huge [source] of pride. I [wish] my great-grandfather could see what we are realizing.”
The opportunity to open Casa Don Alfonso at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis, was also born of a personal connection and history. Iaccarino says he is friends with the owner of The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis, who has been a guest at Don Alfonso 1890 in Sant'Agata, and that their friendship led to conversations about opening an outpost at the luxury hotel in Clayton. Iaccarino has been working closely with the team at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis, traveling back and forth to the St. Louis area for more than a year to help open Casa Don Alfonso.
“It's an honor for me to arrive in St. Louis,” Iaccarino says. “It gives me the chance to live a different adventure compared to a New York adventure or Los Angeles adventure. I'm meeting a part of the world where I'm feeling so well. Everybody is so kind to me, and every time I come back home to Italy, my heart is truly full of happiness. I'm really happy to start this new adventure in St. Louis.”
Iaccarino is currently in Sant'Agata, navigating the challenges of running a restaurant during the pandemic, yet when Casa Don Alfonso at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis in November, he plans to visit St. Louis for the grand opening. In the meantime, he has continuously been in touch with the teams executing the interior design and menus for the restaurant. Unlike the flagship restaurant in Italy, Casa Don Alfonso will offer a more casual and rustic dining experience, including a menu that draws from traditions in Italy and throughout the Meditteranean.
Iaccarino’s brother, Ernesto, the celebrated chef at Don Alfonso 1890, who came up in the family restaurant working alongside his father, chef Alfonso, has developed the menu for Casa Don Alfonso at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis. Early menu items reflect favorite family recipes as well as dishes and flavors famous in the Campania region of Italy.
Chef de cuisine Sergio Chierego will be leading the kitchen in St. Louis and executing Ernesto’s menu, which features dishes such as Anti-Aging Soup, Sorrento-Style Gnocchi, Grandmother Titina’s Ziti, organic Neapolitan pizzas, and Fish Cartoccio.
Photos courtesy RJ Hartbeck
Before joining Casa Don Alfonso, Chierego, who hails from Cagliari, Italy, worked in restaurant kitchens across the world, including in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Saudi Arabia. He was most recently the chef de cuisine of Azzurro at The Ritz-Carlton, Riyadh, where he served a menu of modern Sardinian dishes. While Chierego leads the kitchen on-site at Casa Don Alfonso, general manager Alen Tanovic will manage operations in the dining room and front-of-house.
The Menu
Iaccarino says that while the menu at Casa Don Alfonso at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis, is designed to be approachable, that doesn’t mean it won’t reflect the traditions and cooking techniques famous in Naples. This includes the robust and historical ways that the food culture in Naples has been influenced by cultures from throughout Europe and the Meditteranean. Many of the menu items call back to Mario and Erenesto’s childhood, with some beloved recipes updated from those made by their grandmother.
“In the United States, we find macaroni and cheese, and it comes from a traditional [Italian] recipe,” Iaccarino says. “[It’s] what I was having when I was a child, what my grandmother was [cooking]. It was called macaroni au gratin, so macaroni with bechamel [sauce], because bechamel is part of the [French influence in Naples]. So what we present at Casa Don Alfonso in St. Louis is a grated macaroni cheese made with bechamel with extra-virgin olive oil, no butter. So we'll be [serving] traditional tastes, but in a very healthy way. And of course we [place] huge attention to the quality of the ingredients and to the freshness of the food.”
The drink selection at Casa Don Alfonso will feature just as many nods to Naples and the Meditteranean, Iaccarino says, including a wine list heavy with Italian and American vintages as well as a signature lemon liqueur made with citrus from Italy. Iaccarino is also proud of the Italian coffee that will be served at Casa Don Alfonso, which is made with beans sourced from a small artisan producer in Sorrento. “It’s a unique coffee blend, very different from the rest of the world, because it is smoking the [green] coffee [beans], not roasting them,” Iaccarino says.
Rendering courtesy The Johnson Studio
The open kitchen includes a wood-burning oven
The Atmosphere
The restaurant’s updated interior will also reflect the approachable yet traditional elements of the menu. Working closely with Atlanta-based architecture and interior design firm The Johnson Studio, Iaccarino and the team at The Ritz-Carlton, St. Louis are transforming the 140-seat dining room and bar with a lounge area and counter seating flanking the central open kitchen. “[Guests will be able to smell the tomato sauce arriving from the kitchen and see how the fresh pasta is made, because the kitchen is in the middle of the restaurant,” Iaccarino says.
Inspired by the lavender fields in Sant'Agata, Casa Don Alfonso will feature a soft, romantic lavender color palette accented by a cascading glass wisteria chandelier in the dining room and gorgeous hand-painted floral tiles by Italian ceramicist Giovanni de Maio in the open kitchen. The space also features dramatic arches and curves, nods to the iconic and converging Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
“The tiles come from a historical factory [in Italy], just behind the Amalfi Coast, and they represent an entire century of history in our region” Iaccarino says. “The second sign [of Naples], in terms of decor, I would say would be the copper. This is the material that we used to find in the Neapolitan kitchens. We have these two very important elements in terms of decor, so Casa Don Alfonso [will] be an emotional adventure in Neapolitan culture.”
Art featuring Mediterranean landscapes and shorelines, citrus fruit and florals by Italian artist Anna Russo will line the walls, as it does at the original family restaurant in Sant'Agata. These personal touches are important to the Iaccarino family, who take great pride in their legacy and this new chapter in St. Louis. In that spirit, guests at Casa Don Alfonso will also find Iaccarino family photos in the restaurant’s corridor.
This focus on preserving, sharing and growing the family business—a business built on hospitality for four generations—is at the heart of Casa Don Alfonso.
“We don't want to be a formal restaurant,” Iaccarino says. “We want to be a house where you will find the warmness of the people who are serving you, who are assisting you in all ways. And we are working also on a very specific hiring concept: We are going to hire people, who, after two minutes, will [have guests] falling in love with the Casa Don Alfonso concept. We want to give [guests] good food, but also happiness, in all senses.”
