Like any successful restaurateur, chef Roberto Zanti has expanded, adapted, and pivoted over the years. Thirty-three years ago, he opened Zanti’s on Gravois Road in Affton, and renamed it Roberto’s in 2003. Thirteen years ago, he moved a few miles west, to a larger space in Concord Village, and Roberto’s Trattoria was born. Two years ago, he modified the concept, changed the name to Roberto’s Trattoria & Chophouse, and updated the decor. For decades, Roberto’s has proven to be a solid choice for consistent Italian food in St. Louis. Zanti says his overarching goal is “to do the impossible to make people happy.”
This spring, he says, the situation was looking impossible. He could either shutter the business or shift gears to a restaurant model that he never thought he’d see in his life. “In the past, the customers’ needs have driven my business decisions,” he says. “Not this time.”
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He prepared early for the social-distancing measures that he knew would deleteriously affect the restaurant industry. “I began looking into dividers early on, long before anybody saw them in grocery stores,” he says. He consulted Chris Courtwright from More for Less Remodeling (the company that remodeled the space) for ideas. Solid dividers were too confining, they thought, and glass was too heavy and potentially dangerous, so the duo settled on plexiglass.
Unfortunately, the price of a 4-by-8-foot sheet had risen “from $50 to $350 practically overnight,” Zanti says, so building dividers became an expensive undertaking. “Framed out, each one costs about $700, and I needed 13 of them,” Zanti says of the $10,000 project. “A friend joked, “’Hey, if it ends up being a bad idea, it’s no worse than having a bad night at the casino.’”
Zanti sees the transparent dividers as a necessary investment, one that he’s betting will pay off. He cites an old adage that “you need to spend money to make money,” as well as a recent saying that’s been gaining popularity: “A customer can never feel too safe.”
Guests will find one dining room at Roberto’s with tables generously spaced and the other with a respectable amount of tables separated by the moveable partitions.
“Keep in mind that if you end up with deuces at your four tops, which happens,” Zanti says, “you’ll need more tables to maintain [St. Louis County’s] 25 percent seating occupancy rule. Restaurants need to keep that number maxed in order to survive.”
The chef is pleased with the results. “Along with the added protection, they add some privacy to the dining experience, which is unusual,” he says.
And while solid dividers may have felt like dining in a work-cubicle environment, Roberto’s see-through arrangement opens up the space, “so there’s an element of people-watching in addition to that feeling of privacy,” he says. “And while I prefer a partitioned table to one that isn’t, everyone will form their own opinion, so we thought we’d present tables both ways.”
At the granite-topped bar, it’s a different story. Here, bar stools have been segregated into groups of two and four.
“The only other options were to space the stools 6 feet apart or remove them entirely,” he says, “neither of which appealed to me. This way, people can still watch a game and get something to eat.”
Zanti has taken additional extra steps to make customers and employees feel safe. He purchased HEPA air purifiers for each dining room and installed small micron air filters in all four HVAC units. “I’m a lung cancer survivor,” he said, “and some of our clientele is older. A lot of us out there appreciate things that others might regard as unnecessary.”
On May 5, after being closed for six weeks, Roberto’s opened for curbside pickup of a limited menu, as well as value-priced mix-and-match options ($60 for four people, $75 for six).
“The first few days have been very successful, despite our unfamiliarity,” Zanti says. “Long-term demand will dictate how we proceed.”
Roberto’s dining rooms and bar will reopen for dinner Tuesday through Saturday nights beginning May 18.
