Pizzeria Tivoli is well-known for its wood-fired pizzas. Less well known is the fact that the restaurant pays homage to its namesake, a town in Italy. The pizzas have such names as Villa Adrianna, Castel Madama, and Villa D’Este.
When Janez Kanlic escaped from his village at the start of the Bosnian war, in 1990, he was displaced to Italy, where he lived with cousins. “In Tivoli, I learned to make great pizza,” he says.
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In 1994, he moved here with the first wave of Bosnian immigrants. He found a job at Talayna’s in Chesterfield, where he worked for five years.
He met his wife, Mindy, in Bosnia. “Mindy is from Croatia. We married, and she later moved to St. Louis,” he says. “She’s a professor of English, but she couldn’t find work, so we decided to open a restaurant.” Today, the couple and their twin sons live above their South City pizzeria.
“When the war happened, my life changed overnight,” he recalls. “We think about going back, but when I visit, I always want to come back to St. Louis.”
