{Chef Chris Lee competes during Taste of St. Louis Chef Battle Royale in September 2013. Lee is a two-time Chef Battle Royale champion.}
Chefs Vito Racanelli Jr. and Chris Lee have joined forces to form a new company called Mustard Seed. The new venture will be the parent company to Racanelli’s Italian restaurant Mad Tomato in Clayton and future culinary endeavors for the business partners and longtime friends.
“We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” Racanelli said. “Chris wanted to do something different. He’s never owned his own place.” Add to that Racanelli’s desire for help running Mad Tomato and other various projects, and Racanelli said it was a logical partnership.
Until April 9, Lee was the banquet room chef at River City Casino. Prior to that, he was executive chef for In Good Company, which owns Café Ventana, Sanctuaria, Diablitos and Hendricks BBQ.
{From left, chef Vito Racanelli Jr. and Sauce publisher Allyson Mace emcee the Taste of St. Louis Chef Battle Royale in September 2013.}
The pair will first focus “on getting Mad Tomato where we want it,” Racanelli said, adding that Lee has been in the kitchen for the last week and a half, tweaking dishes and getting familiar with the restaurant. Mad Tomato will roll out a new menu May 10 with dishes that combine Lee’s classical French training and refined culinary skills with Racanelli’s own rustic style.
Lee said he hopes to improve Mad Tomato’s existing favorites, without expanding it to excess, especially since the kitchen at Mad Tomato is not large. “The menu’s going to have to be simple in a way that meshes with the size kitchen we have,” Lee said.
He said he will focus on entrees and desserts, stemming from his French culinary training under chefs Marcel Keraval at Café de France and the late Jean Claude Guilloussou at L’Auberge Bretonne. He added that his eclectic background running kitchens for Kirk’s American Bistro, Hendricks and River City Casino will also influence his vision for the menu at Mad Tomato.
“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I’ve always been doing it for someone else,” said Lee, who is eager for more latitude in a kitchen he co-owns. “I’m pretty excited about working with Vito. (He) is definitely a little more extroverted than I am … but coupled with someone who can strengthen the back of the house – we make a good pair.”
Sauce managing editor Garrett Faulkner contributed to this report.
-photos by Ligaya Figueras
This article appears in May 2014.