Crust and Crumb Teddy Louloudes
Teddy Louloudes, head baker of the Chiles Restaurant Group, holds an undergraduate degree in business from Florida State University, honed his skill with all things floury at the Culinary Institute of America, and came away from a year in New York City’s hard-knocks kitchens with a head full of knowledge backed by hands-on experience (with the burns and blisters to prove it).
However, he received his earliest restaurant education growing up around his family’s Bradenton pizzeria, Zorba’s Pizza. Watching his father shape scrap dough into a batch of complimentary garlic bread, or donate fresh pies to a school soccer match, Louloudes says he learned the value of authentic relationships.
“My dad brought in a lot of business because of his way with people,” Louloudes remembers. “He was a talker, and he was just a great people person. I think the one thing that I learned from my family’s restaurant was the relationship side of it, to go out of your way for others.”
Louloudes’s own career path resembles the rise of his remarkable ciabatta. A combination of his hardworking nature and mentors’ nurture made up the leavening ingredients for Louloudes’s journey from teenage busboy at the Sandbar—the eldest of the Chiles Group’s three sister restaurants—to managing the industrious micro-bakery that supplies all the baked goods to feed their 900,000 annual customers. Humble through and through, Louloudes describes his trajectory as something that “fell into place,” but it’s clear he demonstrated aptitude and drive early on. Ed Chiles, president and chairman of the Chiles Group, encouraged Louloudes’s foray into culinary school, then welcomed him back to the restaurants that had come to feel like home.
“I’d say we’re like a family-forward business; that’s really attractive to me,” Louloudes says. “When I left culinary school and worked around New York, I started missing where I’m from, and realizing how great of a place Anna Maria, Bradenton, and the Sarasota area really is. Ed showed me how much opportunity exists here, and I wanted to get involved. We’ve got so many things going on, but it’s so awesome to be a part of it.”
Even with operations cranked up to triple-restaurant volume levels, Louloudes continues to innovate and explore in his culinary craft. Augmenting the nutritional value of breads through probiotic processes and sprouting has been a pet project for some time, but lately Louloudes is focused on upping his “pie game” in time for the holidays. The Chiles Group restaurants are renowned for their key lime pies and blueberry cheesecakes, but soon Louloudes plans to apply his skills to essential Thanksgiving and Christmas pies such as pumpkin and peanut butter.
Quiz the expert on the key to the perfect pie crust, and Louloudes will tell you with characteristic humility, “I don’t think there’s any true secret. Just follow the way people have been making pies forever.” It takes very cold ingredients, very good butter, and a very fine instinct to know when all components are mixed just enough, but not overworked. Is that the change of the seasons in the air, or the smell of Louloudes’s fall desserts selling out by the dozens?
