After 30 years at Minneapolis restaurants, Riebel and partners will reopen re-envisioned version of The Lexington in St. Paul

By Jenny Handke/Murphy News Service

Chef Jack Riebel stood in what used to be a main dining room of The Lexington, but now was a total wreck. Some tables were covered in black linen cloths, chairs were stacked and scattered throughout the room and bar stools were flipped upside down on tables.

But amid the mess was his vision. After cooking in Minneapolis for 30 years, Riebel is coming home.

A year ago Riebel, 48, announced the return to his hometown of St. Paul in a partnership with Josh Thoma and Kevin Fitzgerald of Smack Shack for the revival of St. Paul’s iconic restaurant, The Lexington, where he is the executive chef and partner. And even though he wasn’t heading the reconstruction, a $1.5 million job that the team hired an architecture firm to do, on this day it was clear he could describe the plans in meticulous details without pause.

I met Jack at the Lexington in early December to get a sense of the construction and progress so far. He led me to a room just off the entrance to the left. Here he held the floor plan of the new Lexington and showed me a vision board for the new Lexington with pictures of a very 1960’s super club mood with modern fixtures and classic furniture. He knew exactly where each piece was supposed to go, pointing at images on the board and describing precisely where they would end up after the renovation.

“We want this to be your traditional supper club theme,” Riebel said as he showed me around one of the bars. “It’s gonna be like Old Fashioneds, up Martinis, up Manhattans, like your classic 50’s cocktail lounge, but very user friendly, simple, well-done drinks.”

This month, Riebel, Thoma and Fitzgerald plan on opening what will be an Italian restaurant in downtown Minneapolis, Il Foro. Riebel will be the restaurant’s director of culinary operations. Before Il Foro, it was The Forum, and before The Forum it was Goodfellows. As a nod to the space that previously housed it, Il Foro is Italian for The Forum. So not only is he coming back to the space he worked in for 10 years in downtown Minneapolis, he’s coming back to St. Paul, his hometown, within a year that he’s opening two other restaurants, the second being Paddy Shack inside the Half Time Rec in St. Paul that opened in October 2014.

Thoma says he and Fitzgerald leapt at the chance to recruit Riebel for The Lexington when they heard he was leaving Butcher and the Boar as executive chef in 2013.

Working in restaurants for the past 30 years has shaped Riebel into one of the cities most recognized names, not just for his passion for food but for his compulsion to work, a trait that will surely manifest itself in the food and atmosphere of The Lexington.

I worked with Chef Jack at Butcher and The Boar as a wait assist and as an expediter. A wait assist helps servers clear and reset tables and helps with the overall flow of a diner’s experience. An expediter is the person who essentially facilitates the direction of all of the food that comes from the cooks to the guests. They make sure all the dishes are correct and go to the right place. I found it hard to imagine the place without Riebel when he announced he was leaving. He’s a natural leader and even though he may not have intended to be a manager beyond the kitchen, he often stepped outside his duties as head chef to make sure that the restaurant was operating at top capacity.

Once, he stopped what he was cooking and corrected me on how I was wiping down a table. Other times, while I was expediting and handing food off to my co-workers to deliver it to their guests, Riebel would kind of crack a smile and ask, “What happens when you send out a dirty plate?” I would say, “You get fired.”

Working with Riebel is stressful for everyone, not just newbies.

Colin Stumbras, one of Riebel’s best friends, said working with Riebel is intense, but it’s always a learning experience. They met about eight years ago when they worked together at The Dakota, the downtown restaurant-venue that seats about 150 guests all at once for a show. At the time, Stumbras was a wait assist and had never worked closely with Riebel until one night when Riebel called him up and told him to come in to expedite. Stumbras had zero training or experience in expediting. But after that night, he expedited for three more years with Riebel cooking in the kitchen.

“There were moments where I would have to tell him that something wasn’t good enough or he was missing something,” Stumbras said. “But I always have enjoyed working for Jack. But it’s challenging because he is a very hard-working chef and he’s got extremely high standards. He does not hold your hand or sugarcoat anything.”

But Riebel’s motivations are not to shame anyone into performance — at least according to his mother, Joan Riebel. She said her son is so intrinsically motivated and hardworking and he expects his peers to be the same. But above all, she said, he wants to make people happy.

“I remember when the Butcher and the Boar first opened and I was standing by the wood grill and we were looking into the dining room, just the two of us,” she said. “He looked at me and said, ‘Just look, mom. Everybody seems so happy and they’re just having a good time. Just exactly what I wanted to have happen.’” She said.

For Riebel, though, his primary concern beyond the food is that his cooks are continually learning, which is his largest takeaway from culinary school and working under chefs who prefer to run their kitchens in quite the opposite way.

His first line cook job was at Goodfellows.  “They were like, ‘So we’re gonna call you ‘monkey face’ or ‘dick head’ for the first six months, which one do you want?’” Another time he was sent home because he didn’t cut the asparagus evenly.

Now that he has mastered the art of cutting vegetables and running a successful kitchen, Riebel said his teaching style is the result of wanting to help shape younger peoples’ skills without the borderline abusive environment.

At The Lexington, Riebel envisions bringing in cooks to share his practices and recipes, and staff who are passionate about bringing new life to the space. Guests can expect delicious classic American fare tailored to suit the environment of the restaurant.

“He’s a brilliant chef,” Thoma said. “You watch his numbers, you watch his labor … That’s the kinda guy you want to be a partner with.”

The two worked together at La Belle Vie while it was in Stillwater, so he’s familiar with Riebel’s habit of getting engrossed in projects.

“Once he gets something in his sights he doesn’t stop,” he said. “Sometimes I think he’s too hard working. He wants to get in there and do it all himself.”

Reporter Jenny Handke is studying journalism at the University of Minnesota.