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ST. LOUIS STANDARDS
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ICONIC PEOPLE, PLACES & DISHES T H A T A N C H O R S T L’ S F O O D S C E N E
A Fond Farewell Balducci’s closed suddenly after nearly 50 years, but its longtime owner has no regrets Written by
CHERYL BAEHR
R
ick Balducci learned a lot about the restaurant business from his father. Though not a restaurateur himself, the elder Balducci owned a wine distribution company that sold to restaurants, grocery and liquor stores, and he would often take his son along with him on sales calls and deliveries. Even at the dinner table, where his father made a point to not dwell on work all that much, Balducci could not help but pick up bits and pieces about the industry here and there. However, there was one lesson from his father that Balducci failed to learn. “Numerous times, I remember him telling me, ‘Son, don’t ever go into the restaurant business.’ He told me the hours were lousy, you had to work nights and weekends, and it was disastrous for relationships,” Balducci recalls. “So, what did I do? Got into the restaurant business.” For 46 years, Balducci refused to heed his father’s words and loved just about every minute of it. As the founder of the Maryland Heights Italian restaurant Balducci’s, he dedicated the better part of his life to creating not just a place to eat, but a place to make memories. The impact he’s had over the years on the lives of his diners and employees is not lost on him as he bids farewell to the restaurant, a victim of pandemic circumstances that made operating the nearly five-decade-old eatery impossible. Balducci announced his restaurant’s closure on October 17, citing an inability to find staff as the reason for its demise. He admits the past few weeks have been bittersweet. On the one hand, saying goodbye to a significant piece of his life’s work is di cult, and he feels the pain not only of his own situation but of the numerous other
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RIVERFRONT TIMES
The initial vision for Balducci’s was to create a wine festival-like environment with booths themed individually for wine regions around the globe. Inscriptions in the wood include descriptions of wines, labels and facts about the region. | ANDY PAULISSEN mom-and-pop restaurants like his that are suffering under the weight of the same challenges. However, the outpouring of thanks and support he’s received from the community — whether it’s longtime guests telling stories of how they met their significant others at the restaurant or former employees reaching out to let him know how much working for him impacted their lives — has warmed his soul and made him realize just how much Balducci’s meant to many in his community. ven after the di culties of the past year and a half — and the last few months in particular — Balducci is glad he failed to heed his father’s advice. In his defense, he could not have acted any other way; the industry was in his DNA in one way, shape or form, traced all the way back to late nineteenth century Italy. His great-grandparents carried those food and beverage traditions with them when they immigrated to the United States in 1906, working in the grocery, tavern and wine business, and they passed that knowledge to their son, Balducci’s father, who developed a passion for wine and opened Balducci Wine Company in 1946. If Balducci’s passion for wine and restaurants came from his father, it was fostered by one of his college business professors at Kansas State University. There on a football scholarship, Balducci had the re-
NOVEMBER 17-23, 2021
riverfronttimes.com
Carol Balducci, Rick Balducci, chef Larry Miller, manager Joanie Balducci Shinall. | ANDY PAULISSEN alization that he wanted to go into business for himself, even if he did not yet know what that would look like. He’d start to color in that outline when he returned to St. Louis following his service as a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War. “Luckily, I got home safe and sound, and when I got home, I didn’t know what to do,” Balducci says. “My dad asked me, ‘Why don’t I start selling wine?’ So I did that, then took a trip to Europe and fell in love with the wine business. But I also realized that I didn’t want to do what he did and sell wholesale. I wanted to do retail and be creative with décor
and menus — basically doing exactly what he told me not to do.” Determined to learn all he could about the hospitality industry, Balducci took a job as a bartender at the then-popular nightclub and lounge the Red Onion while developing his own vision for the kind of restaurant he wanted to open. Soon, he started scouting locations and with his business partners Dave and Steve Bour settled on a small basement spot in Maryland Heights on Bennington Place. They did not have much money, so they built as much as they could themselves and opened in 1976. About a year later, he bought out
