Sunday Lunch with restaurateur Phil Stefani
"Things are a little hectic," restaurateur Phil Stefani announces as he arrives, more than 30 minutes late, for lunch at Riva, the Navy Pier jewel in his many-venued crown.
He's spent the last couple of hours taking care of a last-minute crisis at the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau, where his tenure as chairman is coming to an end, and he's got a flight to catch this evening so he can attend, as the guest of Sen. Dick Durbin, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's speech to a joint session of Congress.
If this is fairly heady stuff for a baker's son whose first job, delivering the track sheet to the neighborhood barbershop, paid 25 cents a day, Stefani doesn't seem the least bit fazed. He has, after all, famously slept in the Lincoln bedroom as a guest of the Clinton White House.
'I just wanted to go to Rome'
Despite close connections to Illinois politicians of both parties, Stefani says with pride that he has never asked for a political favor and that he cultivates friendships with "interesting people," not just the powerful. And, while Stefani often picks up checks for his friends, he says that former President Bill Clinton, who has dined at a number of Stefani restaurants and occasionally orders take-out, regularly pays his own tab.
As for his own political ambitions, he says, "It's better to be a politician's friend than a politician."
Stefani, 55, keeps his cell phone and the electronic key to his Land Rover close at hand as he settles in to a window-side table with a stunning view of the lake. The restaurant, which doesn't draw much of a lunch crowd in the offseason, is quiet and nearly empty.
He orders a bottle of Cakebread Chardonnay and some appetizers: Ahi tuna, served sashimi-style; fried calamari and sliced tomatoes with fresh mozzarella.
There are deep tan lines in the creases of Stefani's broad face, evidence that he has spent much of this year in warm, sunny places, from a vacation in Hawaii to his usual monthly food and trend-spotting visits to Italy.
Trips to Italy have long been part of Stefani's life -- his parents were immigrants, and much of his extended family remains there -- but the style of his travel has changed a bit over the years.
He was a sophomore at the University of Illinois when he and some enterprising friends decided to organize a spring break tour of Rome.
"I'm 19," he says, letting loose a big laugh at the memory. "So, hey, let's charter a plane."
His buddies all pitched in $200 for Stefani to make an initial trip, over the winter holidays, and scout out, in those pre-Internet days, a decent hotel.
He started at the Excelsior and worked his way though pretty much every hotel in Rome, mostly getting laughed out of the lobby when he proposed to book a large block of rooms for a group of American college kids with no money down. He was heading back to the airport, utterly defeated, "knowing I've got to go back and I've just wasted all our money," when he spotted an apartment building under construction.
With nothing to lose, he stopped at the site, found the owner and negotiated a $35-per-person rate to fill the place for a week.
"I got home and it was, 'OK, we got a hotel. Now we just gotta get a plane,'" he says. "So, you know, I'm a kid: I walk in to TWA and sign up for a charter."
Eventually, the trip, which the group advertised on posters around campus, grew to 250 students, enough to fill two flights.
"We filled up two airplanes," he says now, still relishing the memory, "and we didn't know anything about anything. I was 19. I just wanted to go to Rome on spring break."
'What if I sell everything?'
Stefani's own kids, now both college students themselves, are, unsurprisingly, a little less entrepreneurial.
Daughter Gina is a junior at Loyola, majoring in psychology, "whatever that means," quips Stefani. And son Anthony is a freshman at Arizona State.
"My son's asking me as a freshman, 'Why do I have to go to school? I know what I want to do ... go into the restaurant business,'" Stefani says. "So I have to say to him, 'Well, what if I sell everything by the time you're done?' I always tell him, 'Everything's for sale except for you and Gina. So what else would you do if there weren't any restaurants?'"
Thinking on the question, Anthony told his father he might like to be a sports agent.
"Great," Stefani says with real enthusiasm, having scored a parental victory. "Now he's gotta stick it out all the way through law school."
'I'm just interested in the food'
Despite the Rolex on his wrist, Stefani projects an intensely regular guy image. Like the menus at his restaurants, he eschews pretense.
So, when I mention some of the new darlings of the Chicago restaurant scene, like Grant Achatz's Alinea, he chuckles and replies, "So far, everyone I know who's been there has told me how many courses they had and how much it cost, but they don't really mention the food. I'm not interested in how many courses or how much it cost. I'm just interested in the food."
And, though he expresses admiration for Rich Melman's Lettuce Entertain You empire of "concept" restaurants, he says of his own holdings, which include Tuscany, Tavern on Rush and 437 Rush, "The only concept I knew was doing good food."
He happily finishes his second order of tuna and the remainder of his wine.
"I've had a good run," he says.
