Making Raving Fans

Peter Sclafani is rethinking restaurants in the Capital City

by

“Old man’s salads” were the words Peter Sclafani’s twenty-something-year-old daughter Katherine used to describe the chicken + caesar and grilled shrimp + caesar options intended for SoLou, the “Louisiana with a twist” restaurant he opened in spring 2021.

The replacements are much prettier. “Kat’s Salad” includes baby spinach, plump Gulf shrimp, and jewels of mango and tomato quivering beneath the lacework of feta. 

Sclafani doesn’t always understand the opinions of his daughter and her friends—“You guys really want to eat cauliflower?”—but SoLou is a restaurant designed for women. “I only know what I know,” said Sclafani, a third-generation, New Orleans-born chef. “I don’t know what I don’t know. Sometimes you need other people to show you what you don’t know.”

This mentality has served him from childhood, watching his father and his grandfather in the family restaurant, to his early days as a chef running kitchens in New Orleans East and the French Quarter. He relied on his purveyors for more than just ingredients: “I’d ask, ‘What’s Emeril buying?’ ‘Well, he’s buying these super expensive scallops.’ ‘So, what kind of scallops?’ ‘Dry scallops.’ I got my education by just being curious. ‘What’s a dry scallop?’ ‘Oh, you know how scallops are white? They bleach them in sodium tripolyphosphate. They blow up in size. You never get a good sear on a white scallop, you need a dry scallop. If you take a scallop that’s been soaked in tripoly and put it in a pan, it starts to weep. So, it steams, it never sears.’”

Sclafani moved to Baton Rouge in the late ‘90s, with his wife and infant son, for a can’t-miss proposition. A new restaurant would be opening at the outskirts of town, named for LSU’s popular football coach. A former football player would be greeting the tables, and a seasoned restaurateur was running the business. Sclafani was the New Orleans Italian chef who’d complete the picture. “Then Gerry DiNardo started losing,” said Sclafani, and the restaurant got the blame. “My wife and I wondered if we’d made a huge mistake.”

LSU fired DiNardo in November 1999, after seven straight losses, but Baton Rouge diners continued to visit the restaurant for the steak, just not the pigskin. Sclafani found a mentor in co-owner T.J. Moran, whose restaurant portfolio included T.J. Ribs and a number of Ruth’s Chris steakhouses. “He really taught me about the restaurant business: how to make money, about systems, consistency. He had this rule that once something was on the menu, you couldn’t touch it.” 

In the front of the house, former LSU offensive guard Ruffin Rodrigue—who passed away in late 2020—built the connection with customers. DiNardo left after a few years, and the restaurant’s name was changed to Ruffino’s. “Ruffin knew how to make everyone feel like his best friend. He remembered everyone’s names, their wives, their kids. He was really special in doing that,” said Sclafani.

Moran sold both the property and the operating company to Sclafani and Rodrigue in 2012. “We jumped at the chance,” said Sclafani.  “And I hate to say it—but we weren’t that smart. We didn’t put pen and paper to it, to see if we could afford to pay two notes. We were one month in and I realized: we will never pay this, we’re gonna go broke.”

Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves, a friend of Rodrigue’s, recommended the two hire Kathleen Wood, a consultant who could assuredly find profits for the frantic pair. She’d worked with P.F. Chang’s and Church’s Chicken as well as Raising Cane’s, where she’d both consulted and served as President/COO. She now worked with Walk-On’s, another Baton-Rouge-begun restaurant that was exploding nationally.  “Look, if she doesn’t make you ten times her fee, I’ll pay,” said Graves. “So, there’s no risk to you. Just hire her, and I’ll guarantee it.”

Wood filled the back office of Ruffino’s with whiteboards, demanding that Rodrigue and Sclafani distill their scattered business into a few words. “Every time I tried to say what I thought my food philosophy was, I could come up with something that made it not true,” said Sclafani. “‘Oh, we use all local … well, not really, I sell Copper River salmon, I sell scallops … okay, we’re just seasonal. Oh, I guess we’re not seasonal. I sell tomatoes year round.’” 

Hours went by without a clear food philosophy. They took a break. “Somewhere up here there’s a word that will embody what Ruffino’s is,” said Wood. “When we come back, we’re going to find out what that word is.”

“I’m the first one to come back,” said Sclafani. “I’m like, ‘All right Kathleen, I’m thinking about it. The word’s passion.’ She’s like, ‘Not the word I would have chosen for you.’ Ah, so I got that wrong too. Then Ruffin comes in a moment later, he just swings the doors open, ‘It’s passion!’” 

Beyond that, the group landed on “food with a story,” like the dry scallops or the Creole tomatoes Sclafani would drive to St. Bernard Parish to buy from Mr. Gallo. “So, we hired people with passion, and we told the story of our food. Our business grew by fifty percent, almost overnight. Everything picked up. It was utterly amazing. It was a great ride.”

A catering hall, a restaurant in Lafayette, two visits to the James Beard house, cookbooks, local and national television appearances, and awards followed for Ruffino’s and Sclafani. But after a few years, different visions for the restaurant drove Sclafani and Rodrigue to a mediator. “We decided we were better apart.” In 2017, Rodrigue bought Sclafani out of his stake, and Sclafani became a consultant to other restaurateurs. 

But clients didn’t always want to hear the lessons he’d learned, claiming their food costs were just right or cheaper ingredients slid by guests unnoticed. Then why were so many chairs empty? Sclafani would ask. “That part was tough for me—you meet with people, and it’s crystal clear what the problem is, but they don’t wanna admit it.”

Sclafani is most effective when he invests in the restaurants he knows he can help and makes the changes himself. In 2020, he founded Making Raving Fans Hospitality Group with Portobello’s owner Kiva Guidroz. The group opened SoLou in spring 2021 with Michael Boudreaux, of Juban’s Restaurant Group, and have gone on to renovate the group’s other restaurants, which include two Portobello’s locations, Juban’s, and P-Beau’s in Denham Springs (which will re-open this month). With Anthony Piazza, Sclafani also co-owns Phil’s Oyster Bar, a revival of the restaurant Piazza’s father Gus ran, to great local affection, until 2007.

Each transformation is different. For Juban’s, the many rooms of the labyrinthine restaurant have been given their own furnishings and feel, thanks to XDesign and DNA Workshop, with a uniform reverence for music, Louisiana, and—if you’ll note the oil portraits of Shaq and LSU Gymnastics coach D-D Breaux—Baton Rouge’s particular triumphs. “History loves company,” reads a sign on the front of the building. 

Gary Bergeron, manager of Adler’s jewelry store, has joined his friends for lunch at Juban’s every Friday for more than fifteen years. “We’d come for a great meal and great conversation.” The group relocated to Portobello’s when Juban’s closed in spring 2020. They’re happily back in the atrium now, claiming they followed Portobello’s general manager Kerry Kelley to her new post here. “The old restaurant was nice, but it needed to be updated. They’ve done a fabulous job,” said Bergeron, citing the ambiance and the variety.

Today the “Why” at Making Raving Fans is “To make someone’s day, every day.” This extends to the way “Community” centers operations at P-Beau’s. “Phamily” is the driving force at Phil’s. “The win for us—this is what a grand slam looks like at Phil’s—when somebody comes in, pulls Anthony over, and says, ‘Anthony, your dad would be so proud,’” said Sclafani. 

“It looks a little different, the menu’s a little different, so you’re excited about it and you see the future,” said Sclafani about refreshing old concepts, “but you don’t wanna give up conquered ground. You don’t wanna give up the past.”

SoLou, with its green velvet barstools; inviting, verdant patio; and neon feature wall that gets a lot of love on Instagram, is a concept he’d like to take up and down I-10. Do ladies love SoLou as planned? Just ask my two-year-old, who offered herself up for adoption because her real parents had never surprised her with cotton candy and chocolate sauce at the end of a meal.

At each of his restaurants—with a goal that he’s raised from ten to twenty by 2030—Sclafani values premium ingredients and prompt service, but he hopes it’ll take you at least ten minutes to walk to your table, “because you know everybody that’s in there.” 

makingravingfans.com