Il Ritorno: Gem of Tampa Bay’s Restaurant Scene
Source/Author: Kate Merritt, Director of Annual Fund & Alumni
March 22, 2016
It's Friday night in St. Pete, and you’re trying to decide where to go to dinner. As recently as five years ago you would have been limited to a few tired options, but today— well, today the dining scene is a bit more dynamic. In 2015 alone, nearly twenty new restaurants opened in downtown St Petersburg, offering everything from traditional German fare to gourmet tea sandwiches. The excitement in the city is palpable; it’s hard to scan your Facebook feed or chat with a friend without hearing about the newest restaurant opening or a new menu offering at a tried and true favorite.
And right in the middle of it all, on Central Avenue, you'll find Shorecrest alumnus David Benstock ’03, in his restaurant Il Ritorno.
In December 2013, David and his wife Erica opened Il Ritorno and began offering St. Petersburg a modern twist on traditional Italian cuisine. Word of David’s simple, but delicious offerings—short rib mezzaluna, pan-seared chicken breast, and white alba truffle risotto—quickly took Tampa Bay by storm, and Il Ritorno is now listed as one of the top restaurants in the area on multiple “foodie” lists.
In eighth grade, David came to Shorecrest from the Jewish Day School. The youngest of three children, David had a quiet Shorecrest career and planned on going to work for the family business—a uniform manufacturing company—after graduating from college. All through high school he worked as a busboy at Villa Gallace on Indian Rocks Beach. David recalls “I used to watch the cooks and think, ‘man, I’d love to be them someday.’ ”So when he went off to college to pursue business at Florida State University, he got a job manning the wok at a stir-fry restaurant. “I knew I didn't want to cook stir-fry forever, but I also knew that I really wanted to be in the kitchen,” he says.
After two years of college, David decided it was time to take a leap of faith. He went home to his family and told them he was going to leave college to go to culinary school. After some initial shock, they supported David‘s decision, and off he went to Johnson & Wales University in Denver, Colorado, to pursue a degree in culinary arts. David recalls, ”It was scary. I didn‘t know a single person. I didn‘t know if I was going to look stupid. I didn‘t know if they were going to ask me something that I wouldn‘t know how to do.” But right away, he started to feel comfortable. ”I knew pretty quickly that this was what I wanted to do.”
Colorado ended up being a land of opportunity for David. While in school, David drove two hours every weekend to Bachelor Gulch, Colorado, to work in the kitchen at the Ritz-Carlton. That experience helped him earn a coveted spot in the new Colorado branch of Wolfgang Puck’s acclaimed restaurant Spago. ”In my two years at Spago, I had the chance to really shine. It was a great opportunity to help open a restaurant—I learned so much in my time there.“ His efforts at Spago opened doors for him in New York City where he worked at acclaimed restaurants Jean-Georges and The Modern. When asked about New York, David laughs, “I would never want to live there again! I was making no money and living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn—and I don’t really love the New York vibe. But that restaurant scene there is ridiculous. It‘s just awesome. I‘d save every dollar I made so I could eat out.” He adds “If I could go anywhere in the world right now, that’s where I‘d go.”
After a stint in New York, David knew he wanted to travel more and experience the food scene abroad first-hand, so when an opportunity to work in Venice, Italy, presented itself, he jumped at the chance. “Italy really changed my style of cooking. It was there that I learned the importance of simplicity. You take something, toss it in olive oil with salt and pepper and then roast it in the oven. I really took on that concept of bringing out the pure, natural flavor of things in Italy.” After six months in Venice, David left Italy and spent another six months traveling around Spain and delving into Spanish cuisine, before moving to Miami to work at Scarpetta at Fontainebleau as the senior sous chef.
Miami was a turning point for David. Shortly after moving there, he met his wife Erica, and they were soon married. Together, they started working toward the ultimate goal of opening their own restaurant. ”I‘ve been a lot of places in the last ten years, but it had always been my dream to come back to St. Pete and open a restaurant. But for many years, St. Pete wasn’t really the kind of place to open a restaurant— when I was here as a kid, there was nothing here.“ But around the time David and Erica started to really think about where they would like to open their own place, St. Pete was undergoing a major renaissance. “In 2012, we came to visit family and someone brought us downtown. We hadn’t realized that downtown had built up and we were blown away by what was happening. Within three weeks of that visit I gave my notice at Scarpetta and we moved back and started the process of opening the restaurant.” A year later, Il Ritorno opened its doors.
David‘s face lights up as he recalls that opening day, ”Throughout my career I‘d been told ‘This is how you have to make it…this is the dish you‘re making today.‘ And finally I was able to come up with my own creations.” That opening day has been the highlight of his career. “I saw everyone eating my food and people were saying, ‘This is amazing!’ Watching people really enjoy eating MY food was like being on a cloud.”
David is sure to share credit for his success with his wife Erica, who runs the front of house, and his three-man kitchen crew. David’s easygoing demeanor may not align with the stereotype of the overaggressive chef barking orders to his team. “I‘m a pretty laid-back guy,” he laughs, “but in the kitchen you have to be strict—you have to demand perfection. So I’m not as nice in the kitchen as I am in the real world.” Even though he may be strict in the kitchen, the smile on his face as he talks about his team clearly shows how much he loves working with them. “My crew is made up of guys who have never cooked in their lives and I brought them in, put a knife in their hand and taught them how to cook—how to do my food. They came in not knowing how to cook rice and now they can cook thirty day-aged New York strips, They‘re cooking foie gras and octopus. And it‘s really neat to see that transition.” He adds, “When we first opened, I wanted to do everything myself. Now I can step back, and leave the line and just watch my crew—that‘s really rewarding.”
David doesn‘t just foster relationships with his kitchen crew; he also spends time growing relationships with other local businesses. “As much as we can, we try to support local businesses,” he says. “All our beer on tap is local, we try to get produce from local farms, we serve Kahwa coffee, which is a local company, and our tea comes from Hooker Tea on Beach Drive.“ From the moment David moved back to St. Petersburg, he knew that spotlighting local products and businesses was going to be central to what he wanted to do as a chef. “The Saturday Morning Market, websites like ilovetheburg.com-—right away we felt that local vibe and I knew that I wanted that to be part of what we did here.”
Clearly what David is doing at Il Ritorno has struck a chord with folks. Read the reviews on any food review site and you‘ll see phrases like ”This is where I would go for my last meal!“ and ”To say we were blown away by our dining experience does not even begin to explain it!“ But for David, it‘s not all about reading glowing reviews and creating mouthwatering plates. ”I‘ve been surprised at how much a restaurant breaks!” David laughs. “In our two years open we’ve dealt with flooding, air conditioning problems, and we‘ve gone through four refrigerators.”
When asked how he achieves balance, “I’m still trying to figure that out,” he says with a smile. “There is a misconception [that chefs] are all crazy, drug-addicted, party people. And you do find some of those people, but most chefs are really focused. I‘ve got bigger things to worry about than that kind of stuff.” That bigger thing is David‘s one-and-a-half year-old son Ethan. ”He‘s so much fun right now. I love hanging out with him, and he loves being at the restaurant. He eats everything here! He eats our short rib mezzaluna. He eats truffles.“ Will little Ethan follow Dad into the culinary world? “We‘ll see,” David laughs. “You’ll see him in the dish pit in a few years…we‘ll start him there and see where it goes.”
Apart from watching Ethan grow, what does the future hold for David and his wife? That‘s not quite clear yet. ”I‘m not sure where life is going to take us,” he says. “We‘ve talked about opening more restaurants in this area or by the beach. We've also thought about branching out and doing catering more, which we’ve started doing a little bit in the last few months. At some point, I would love two or three restaurants about this size.” But David adds that he‘s not limiting himself to just Italian cuisine. ”I would definitely explore different styles. The great thing about cooking is that once you learn the basics—the techniques, the seasoning, the layering of flavors—you can use that in any cuisine.”
At 30, David has experienced success that 15-year-old David never imagined. “If you told me I would be running my own restaurant, I just would have laughed. I always figured I would be working in the family business.” But it‘s clear David is thrilled to be where he is now. “If you think about it, being a chef is really not that great: you work weekends; you work long hours; you work every night; you work holidays; and within a moment’s notice you can be called in on any day at any time. So you really have to LOVE what you do.”
According to those who have tasted David’s delectable culinary creations—his love of food and his love of the ingredients shines through. “I bring to my food everything I‘ve learned and experienced in the last ten years of my career. I‘m not making purely traditional Italian cuisine. You might see some Asian influences in there or French influences or Spanish influences. It‘s really just my journey on a plate.”
Il Ritorno is located at 449 Central Avenue in St. Pete and online at www.ilritornodowntown.com. This story is excerpted from the Winter 2016 edition of "Shorecrest Magazine". View the full magazine here.
And right in the middle of it all, on Central Avenue, you'll find Shorecrest alumnus David Benstock ’03, in his restaurant Il Ritorno.
In December 2013, David and his wife Erica opened Il Ritorno and began offering St. Petersburg a modern twist on traditional Italian cuisine. Word of David’s simple, but delicious offerings—short rib mezzaluna, pan-seared chicken breast, and white alba truffle risotto—quickly took Tampa Bay by storm, and Il Ritorno is now listed as one of the top restaurants in the area on multiple “foodie” lists.
In eighth grade, David came to Shorecrest from the Jewish Day School. The youngest of three children, David had a quiet Shorecrest career and planned on going to work for the family business—a uniform manufacturing company—after graduating from college. All through high school he worked as a busboy at Villa Gallace on Indian Rocks Beach. David recalls “I used to watch the cooks and think, ‘man, I’d love to be them someday.’ ”So when he went off to college to pursue business at Florida State University, he got a job manning the wok at a stir-fry restaurant. “I knew I didn't want to cook stir-fry forever, but I also knew that I really wanted to be in the kitchen,” he says.
After two years of college, David decided it was time to take a leap of faith. He went home to his family and told them he was going to leave college to go to culinary school. After some initial shock, they supported David‘s decision, and off he went to Johnson & Wales University in Denver, Colorado, to pursue a degree in culinary arts. David recalls, ”It was scary. I didn‘t know a single person. I didn‘t know if I was going to look stupid. I didn‘t know if they were going to ask me something that I wouldn‘t know how to do.” But right away, he started to feel comfortable. ”I knew pretty quickly that this was what I wanted to do.”
Colorado ended up being a land of opportunity for David. While in school, David drove two hours every weekend to Bachelor Gulch, Colorado, to work in the kitchen at the Ritz-Carlton. That experience helped him earn a coveted spot in the new Colorado branch of Wolfgang Puck’s acclaimed restaurant Spago. ”In my two years at Spago, I had the chance to really shine. It was a great opportunity to help open a restaurant—I learned so much in my time there.“ His efforts at Spago opened doors for him in New York City where he worked at acclaimed restaurants Jean-Georges and The Modern. When asked about New York, David laughs, “I would never want to live there again! I was making no money and living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn—and I don’t really love the New York vibe. But that restaurant scene there is ridiculous. It‘s just awesome. I‘d save every dollar I made so I could eat out.” He adds “If I could go anywhere in the world right now, that’s where I‘d go.”
After a stint in New York, David knew he wanted to travel more and experience the food scene abroad first-hand, so when an opportunity to work in Venice, Italy, presented itself, he jumped at the chance. “Italy really changed my style of cooking. It was there that I learned the importance of simplicity. You take something, toss it in olive oil with salt and pepper and then roast it in the oven. I really took on that concept of bringing out the pure, natural flavor of things in Italy.” After six months in Venice, David left Italy and spent another six months traveling around Spain and delving into Spanish cuisine, before moving to Miami to work at Scarpetta at Fontainebleau as the senior sous chef.
Miami was a turning point for David. Shortly after moving there, he met his wife Erica, and they were soon married. Together, they started working toward the ultimate goal of opening their own restaurant. ”I‘ve been a lot of places in the last ten years, but it had always been my dream to come back to St. Pete and open a restaurant. But for many years, St. Pete wasn’t really the kind of place to open a restaurant— when I was here as a kid, there was nothing here.“ But around the time David and Erica started to really think about where they would like to open their own place, St. Pete was undergoing a major renaissance. “In 2012, we came to visit family and someone brought us downtown. We hadn’t realized that downtown had built up and we were blown away by what was happening. Within three weeks of that visit I gave my notice at Scarpetta and we moved back and started the process of opening the restaurant.” A year later, Il Ritorno opened its doors.
David‘s face lights up as he recalls that opening day, ”Throughout my career I‘d been told ‘This is how you have to make it…this is the dish you‘re making today.‘ And finally I was able to come up with my own creations.” That opening day has been the highlight of his career. “I saw everyone eating my food and people were saying, ‘This is amazing!’ Watching people really enjoy eating MY food was like being on a cloud.”
David is sure to share credit for his success with his wife Erica, who runs the front of house, and his three-man kitchen crew. David’s easygoing demeanor may not align with the stereotype of the overaggressive chef barking orders to his team. “I‘m a pretty laid-back guy,” he laughs, “but in the kitchen you have to be strict—you have to demand perfection. So I’m not as nice in the kitchen as I am in the real world.” Even though he may be strict in the kitchen, the smile on his face as he talks about his team clearly shows how much he loves working with them. “My crew is made up of guys who have never cooked in their lives and I brought them in, put a knife in their hand and taught them how to cook—how to do my food. They came in not knowing how to cook rice and now they can cook thirty day-aged New York strips, They‘re cooking foie gras and octopus. And it‘s really neat to see that transition.” He adds, “When we first opened, I wanted to do everything myself. Now I can step back, and leave the line and just watch my crew—that‘s really rewarding.”
David doesn‘t just foster relationships with his kitchen crew; he also spends time growing relationships with other local businesses. “As much as we can, we try to support local businesses,” he says. “All our beer on tap is local, we try to get produce from local farms, we serve Kahwa coffee, which is a local company, and our tea comes from Hooker Tea on Beach Drive.“ From the moment David moved back to St. Petersburg, he knew that spotlighting local products and businesses was going to be central to what he wanted to do as a chef. “The Saturday Morning Market, websites like ilovetheburg.com-—right away we felt that local vibe and I knew that I wanted that to be part of what we did here.”
Clearly what David is doing at Il Ritorno has struck a chord with folks. Read the reviews on any food review site and you‘ll see phrases like ”This is where I would go for my last meal!“ and ”To say we were blown away by our dining experience does not even begin to explain it!“ But for David, it‘s not all about reading glowing reviews and creating mouthwatering plates. ”I‘ve been surprised at how much a restaurant breaks!” David laughs. “In our two years open we’ve dealt with flooding, air conditioning problems, and we‘ve gone through four refrigerators.”
When asked how he achieves balance, “I’m still trying to figure that out,” he says with a smile. “There is a misconception [that chefs] are all crazy, drug-addicted, party people. And you do find some of those people, but most chefs are really focused. I‘ve got bigger things to worry about than that kind of stuff.” That bigger thing is David‘s one-and-a-half year-old son Ethan. ”He‘s so much fun right now. I love hanging out with him, and he loves being at the restaurant. He eats everything here! He eats our short rib mezzaluna. He eats truffles.“ Will little Ethan follow Dad into the culinary world? “We‘ll see,” David laughs. “You’ll see him in the dish pit in a few years…we‘ll start him there and see where it goes.”
Apart from watching Ethan grow, what does the future hold for David and his wife? That‘s not quite clear yet. ”I‘m not sure where life is going to take us,” he says. “We‘ve talked about opening more restaurants in this area or by the beach. We've also thought about branching out and doing catering more, which we’ve started doing a little bit in the last few months. At some point, I would love two or three restaurants about this size.” But David adds that he‘s not limiting himself to just Italian cuisine. ”I would definitely explore different styles. The great thing about cooking is that once you learn the basics—the techniques, the seasoning, the layering of flavors—you can use that in any cuisine.”
At 30, David has experienced success that 15-year-old David never imagined. “If you told me I would be running my own restaurant, I just would have laughed. I always figured I would be working in the family business.” But it‘s clear David is thrilled to be where he is now. “If you think about it, being a chef is really not that great: you work weekends; you work long hours; you work every night; you work holidays; and within a moment’s notice you can be called in on any day at any time. So you really have to LOVE what you do.”
According to those who have tasted David’s delectable culinary creations—his love of food and his love of the ingredients shines through. “I bring to my food everything I‘ve learned and experienced in the last ten years of my career. I‘m not making purely traditional Italian cuisine. You might see some Asian influences in there or French influences or Spanish influences. It‘s really just my journey on a plate.”
Il Ritorno is located at 449 Central Avenue in St. Pete and online at www.ilritornodowntown.com. This story is excerpted from the Winter 2016 edition of "Shorecrest Magazine". View the full magazine here.
