There’s a new ownership team at Onesto Pizza & Trattoria. Neill Costello, Henry Arciniega, William Roth and Benet Schaeffer, the ownership team behind West End Grill & Pub, took ownership of the St. Louis Hills Italian eatery Aug. 1.
“We’ve been looking, not aggressively, but passively, at other opportunities,” Costello said. “We’ve done pretty well at West End Grill & Pub, and I think it’s just a natural outgrowth of that to expand the business.”
Roth has played hockey with former owner Craig Stenson for several years, and the owners regularly ate in each other’s restaurants. Stenson and chef Vito Racanelli opened Onesto in 2008 and ran the operation together until Racanelli left in January 2012 to devote more time to his now-shuttered Clayton eatery, Mad Tomato.
“Craig approached us and after a couple months of ironing out the details, we were able to get the deal done,” Costello said. “He liked what we were doing over here and when he decided to sell it, he kind of wanted us to be the ones to get it.”
The new team doesn’t plan to make major changes to the current Onesto operation, Costello said, noting that the menu and much of the staff will remain the same. Costello and Arciniega will continue to be the boots on the ground at West End, while Costello goes back and forth between the two.
This article appears in August 2015.