Local restaurateur pays homage to his teachers with Red and Moe's
by Sierra Angell, posted Nov. 9, 2011
Tom Rippeto is the owner of Red and Moe’s Pizzeria located on Ninth Street in Columbia. The Pizzeria opened less than two years ago, but that wasn’t the first time that 67-year-old Tom had made and served pizza from a restaurant. Tom has been around the restaurant and pizza business most of his life.
“I may not look like much of a cook,” Tom said. “But I have been around pizza operations since I was 13 years old.”
After going door to door in search of a job, Tom became a dishwasher at The Pizza House located on north Ninth Street. At the time, Tom didn’t even know what pizza was.
“I was so relieved to have a job and so intrigued by the two guys who ran the place, I didn't think to ask,” Tom said.
The owners of the Pizza House quickly became more than just employers to Tom.
“These guys had a dramatic impact on my life and my never-ending love for pizza,” Tom said. “They helped raise me. They taught me about thin and crispy pizza, and probably saved my life more than once.”
Over the next 15 years, Paul “Red” Castle and Roland “Moe” Beland also gave Tom his love of pizza. Eventually, Tom stopped working at The Pizza House, but he kept making his favorite thin crust pizza.
Eventually, Tom got married and had two daughters. When his daughters, Terri and Lee, were starting school, the family moved from Columbia to Centralia.
“I loved Centralia,” Tom said. “We were very happy there.”
While living in Centralia, Tom opened his own pizza place for a short time. Rip’s Pizza House was open for about two years. After finishing school for the day, Terri and Lee always came to the pizza place and Tom looked after them.
“I’d pay the girls 50 cents an hour to wash the dishes,” Tom said. “But the rule was they had to wash all the dishes in one hour. It might take them two, but I only paid them for one.”
Terri recalled stories about her father’s rules at the restaurant.
“I had to get everything done in one hour,” she said. “My sister and I had to pay for our own soda, too.”
She also recalled the few memories she had from Rip’s Pizza House as a young girl.
“In the fourth grade, I wrote a paper about how to open a pizzeria,” she said, “I made a list of everything you’d need — a bathroom, stapler, dough machine — everything. My Dad still has the paper.
“Dad had one employee, his name was Denny Miller,” Terri continued. “I remember standing next to Denny while he was slicing peperoni. I would just stand there next to him eating what he’d sliced.”
After closing Rip’s Pizza House, Tom still made pizza for his two daughters and their friends.
“He made it all the time,” Terri said, “Anytime there was a party or gathering, he was making pizza.”
When Terri finished her senior year at Centralia High School, she began pursuing a degree in art. Eventually, Terri left art school and began working at The Country Club of Missouri. During that time, Tom moved back to Columbia.
“As I was leaving school,” Terri said. “I remember my roommate asking me what I was going to do. Very clearly, I remember telling her, ‘I’m not sure exactly, but someday, I’m going to open a restaurant with my Dad.’”
Eventually, Terri’s job at the country club led to a trip to California where she traveled up and down the west coast visiting all kinds of restaurants and wineries. Terri then enrolled in school in California to become a chef.
Terri gave her father credit for her interest in the restaurant business.
“In the restaurant business, there are people that move naturally and people that don’t,” she said, “Those that don’t can become good, but they have to work really hard at it. It always came very naturally to me. Not to say that I don’t work hard, because I do. But it was always natural for me. I’m guessing that would be his influence.”
After completing her training in chef school Terri continued to work in restaurants in Seattle and Denver. Terri didn’t have to go to chef school to learn to make her father’s pizza, however.
“I probably learned to make it through osmosis,” she said. “He really did make it all the time.”
In 1989, Tom bought the building on Ninth Street where Red and Moe’s Pizzeria is located today.
“I was 44 years old and full of life,” Tom said. “The building was a mess so I started gutting it by myself. After I’d been working for a while, Terri came home and saw the building for the first time. ‘Dad,’ she said, ‘this would be perfect for the restaurant I’ve been imagining.’ So I told her, ‘Great, I’ll keep working on it then.’”
Between Thanksgiving that year and the opening the next spring, Tom and Terri took a father-daughter trip to Italy. They spent three weeks backpacking around the country, eating and collecting things to decorate their restaurant.
“I remember buying a vase this big and we had to buy an extra suitcase just to get it home,” Tom said, holding his arms about three feet apart. “We set the vision for the restaurant; it was to be a northern Italian cuisine.”
They named their first restaurant Trattoria StradaNova.
“In Italian, el resturante means a fancy restaurant,” Tom said. “Trattoria is more of a casual dining place. Strada means, to sit on, and nova means nine. Literally, the name reads: casual dining on Ninth Street.”
Their Italian cuisine and atmosphere became one of Columbia’s most loved restaurants. Terri and her father had started a restaurant together, just like she had told her roommate upon starting college.
“Tratorria StadaNova was the only place in Columbia where I would take business clients,” said Columbia businesswoman, Nancy Heimann. “At that time, it was one of Columbia’s best restaurants.”
Of course, Tom’s pizza was included on the menu at Trattoria StradaNova.
“We serve the same pizza that Red and Moe taught me how to make at Trattoria, and today we’re serving it at Red and Moe’s,” Tom said. “Both of my restaurants used a brick oven, too.”
In 1994, Tom and Terri sold Trattoria StradaNova. During that time, Terri moved to Denver and Tom took a corporate job out of state. Tom and Terri worked separately for a while, but opening restaurants together seemed to be a natural fit for the pair. In 1997, Terri was ready to open a second restaurant in Denver. This time, Tom wasn’t the one-man construction crew.
“I was still working,” Tom said. “So, I made lots of weekend or three-day trips out to Denver to help her get things started. This time, we hired a construction crew.”
Terri and Tom’s restaurant in Denver is called Poteger, which means an outdoor kitchen and garden. This time, using a French word to name their restaurant, Tom and Terri also refined their vision for their second restaurant. As the head chef, Terri develops and changes the menu with each season, so she is able to use and serve fresh and seasonal produce. With this change, Terri also began shopping locally for as many of her foods as possible.
Ahead of the trend, Tom and Terri have been serving seasonal and local food at their Denver restaurant long before many people had heard those words in conversations about food.
Tom and Terri have developed a network of relationships because they buy directly from farmers. One thing they enjoy about this relationship is supporting the farmer who raised the food they purchase, without the complexities of marketing and packaging.
“At Trattoria StradaNova we did not serve local food only, but we did use local vendors and suppliers whenever we could,” Tom said. “That’s just our nature, small and independent.”
Tom and Terri carried over the local and seasonal vision to the Pizzeria on Ninth Street. The menu at Red and Moe’s Pizzeria changes seasonally, just like Potager.
“There is risk in doing that, in a town like Columbia where most places don’t have seasonal menus,” Tom said. “People don’t like to be confused. Sometimes, what’s truly in season doesn’t always match up with what the customer wants.”
From a business perspective, Tom and Terri realize their seasonal menu makes their restaurants unique.
“I have to be a niche,” Tom said. “I can’t go head to head with Domino’s or Shakespeare’s. The traditional pizza never goes away — it’s my favorite, too. That’s the same pizza I learned how to make fifty years ago.”
Of course, he learned to make the traditional pizza from Red and Moe.
“When it came time to name my pizzeria, it was obvious that this was my chance to honor my two mentors,” Tom said. “They are no longer alive, but I think they would be happy with their namesake pizzeria.”
It is sweet that Tom had the chance to honor his two mentors, but there is another part of this great story. The Pizza house, where Tom found his first job at age thirteen, was located just two doors north of where Tom’s pizzeria is today.
“I feel like Red and Moe’s pizza has come full circle,” Tom said. “Nearly 50 years later their memory and their great crust are both back on north Ninth Street.”
The Pizza House was the very first pizzeria in Columbia.
“So, I guess you could say I got in on the ground floor of the pizza revolution,” Tom said.
Today, Tom and Terri are both managing restaurants and the two have been partners for more than 20 restaurants.
“You know, I think for Terri and I, it all started back in Centralia though, at Rip’s Pizza Place,” Tom said. “That’s where she got her first taste of the restaurant business.”
Throughout all of the restaurants Tom and Terri have opened together and the 20 years they’ve been in business, the pizza has been the same.
“It’s always been my personal goal to open a pizzeria,” Tom said. “Terri helped me set the vision of the local and sustainable part, but it’s the same pizza we still serve today at Poteger and what we served at Trattoria StradaNova. That’s the same pizza I learned how to make from Red and Moe.”
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