‘It’s a family affair’: Tievoli Pizza Bar in Palatine training next generation while expanding to second location
A second-generation pizzaiolo is passing on what he’s learned over a 35-year career to the third generation at Tievoli Pizza Bar in Palatine as they prepare to expand the family-owned brand.
Giovanni Labbate and his wife, Adrianna, opened the artisanal pizza shop at 44 W. Palatine Road on Valentine’s Day in 2023. (If you’ve dined there and you find yourself saying “I love it,” you might just be reading Tievoli backward.)
“My whole family works here ― my wife, my sons, my sons’ girlfriends,” Giovanni Labbate said. “It’s a family affair.”
As he teaches his family the pizza business, Giovanni, a member of the U.S. Pizza Team who has competed in the world championship in Italy, is teaching them the ropes in the world of pizza competitions as well.
He and his son Rocco, 21, recently returned from the California Pizza Challenge with four first-place wins and a second-place finish between the two of them.
In Rocco’s first competition experience, he took home first place for “pizza in a pan” as well as “fastest box folder.” His dad won first place in “largest dough stretcher” and “fastest pizza maker” as well as second in the gluten-free pizza category.
“It was a little surreal. Like it didn’t really sink in until a little bit after,” Rocco said. “It was pretty big for me.”
Next month the two will be joined by Nico, Rocco’s older brother, as they compete at Pizza Expo Columbus in Ohio.
“We’re just getting greedy,” Giovanni said. “We want to take it all.”
Labbate said his kids have grown up in restaurants just like he did. Though he didn’t force them to join, giving them a choice between college and the family business.
“You have to love what you’re doing,” he said. “If you don’t love this, then don’t do it.
“I did go to college, and I ended up being in the restaurant business anyway because I love to cook and that’s what I wanted to do.”
Giovanni said now that Rocco is 21, it was time for him to take the next steps.
“This is his future and this is what he wants to do,” Giovanni said. “So we thought it was time to get him competing to help him evolve and maybe do something that I’ve never done.”
Giovanni said he learned early on that competitions are about more than winning.
“Seeing what other people were doing as far as dough fermentation, toppings, innovations, it really pushed me to to do more, to be a step ahead of everybody else,” he said. “In any business, if you’re not learning, then you’re done.”
Some of those innovations have found their way to Tievoli, like being one of the first shops to use hot honey on pizza.
“Now that’s everywhere,” he said. “You always want to be a step ahead of the next trend and give people new things so they don’t get bored.”
While he embraces innovation, Labbate says the good, quality ingredients like San Marzano tomatoes and mozzarella di bufala and classic techniques, including a 72-hour dough fermentation, are the key to their New York-style pizzas.
The pizzeria also offers gluten-free dough using Caputo gluten-free flour imported from Naples, Italy, making a product that looks, tastes and feels like a traditional pizza. Last year they expanded the menu lineup to include a Detroit-style pizza ― a thick, chewy, rectangular pan pizza with caramelized cheese edges and crispy corners.
In addition to the Palatine restaurant, a food truck and a burgeoning catering business, the Labbate family plans to open a second Tievoli Pizza Bar in Bloomingdale by the end of the year.
The new shop will take over a space long occupied by Pizzeria Antica at 119 W. Lake St.
“Our goal is to do another one maybe next year, and the next year after that. And just kind of grow to get to three to four locations,” he said. “Then hopefully either franchise or we keep growing it as a company.”
Either way, he looks forward to passing it on to the next generation.
“It means a lot for me to have them take the reins and to eventually take over,” he said. “Our kids are the future of Tievoli.”
rwest@dailyherald.com