Crazy Fish Chris LaRocca grew up in the restaurant business. His parents owned LaRocca's Restaurant at 9845 West Florissant in the '60s, the restaurant moving to 12900 New Halls Ferry Road in the '70s. "I began working in restaurants by default," LaRocca said. "You start washing dishes, you bus tables, you cook and you move all throughout the restaurant." As an 18-year-old in 1975, LaRocca bought a little company called The Candle Man, which supplied tapers to area restaurants. He quickly turned it into a completive enterprise with more than 70 accounts. "That was my first taste of business," he recalled. LaRocca later moved to Washington, D.C., where he owned and operated a restaurant in the theater district. In 1982, he was hired by General Mills to work in the Casa Gallardo and El Torrito restaurant chains. The company brought him to St. Louis where he was regional manager in charge of 24 restaurants. In his travels for General Mills, LaRocca found that diners in other areas of the country were being offered all sorts of interesting combinations of foods. He found this imagination lacking in St. Louis restaurants. So with four young children in tow, he decided to open his own restaurant to help St Louisans "step over the edge" in their eating habits.
LaRocca thought Clayton was a "cool place" and
looked at a building at 15 North Meramec, but walked away from a
deal because of the building's long, narrow shape. He finally came
back to the location and was able to reconfigure the space
to include seating for 90 in the dining room and 36 in the bar area.
"It was truly a family project," LaRocca recalled. "I tore the panels off the ceiling and repainted it. My sister-in-law did the artwork that hangs on the wall. My wife, father-in-law, brother and cousins all helped. It took seven weeks to rehab the building." LaRocca went to 22 banks seeking financing, but having no track record as a business owner, he had trouble getting a loan. Finally, he was approved for an SBA loan, but then was notified that the SBA funding had dried up. "I opened on a shoestring," LaRocca said. "I was paying rent checks out of my personal checkbook." LaRocca opened his new restaurant in October of 1993. He was originally going to name it Pescado Loco. "Our concept was for a straight Mexican seafood restaurant, but we decided we didn’t want to be pigeonholed. We thought it was too ethnic and would be too hard for people to pronounce and remember. We still liked the name, though, so we just translated it."
LaRocca dubbed his new restaurant Crazy Fish
Fresh Grill.
Most of the dishes served at Crazy Fish couldn't be found anywhere else, or at least not in the form offered at LaRocca's quirky new restaurant. "We go to pains to be different," he proclaimed. "I've tried to bring a new concept to St Louis to fill a void that St. Louisans didn't know they had." The idea, he said, was to "take easily recognizable things and make them unique."
Menu items included
Maryland Crab Cakes with Jalapeño cream, Rain Forest Tilapia,
Shrimp and Voodoo Pasta Salad, Coho salmon, roasted tomato
chicken and pepper pasta,
pork tenderloin with papaya sauce and chipotle chicken with
Jamaican shrimp. The meat loaf was made of bison and served with
pieces standing on end, with corn confetti shooting out of them.
Grilled vegetables, corn relishes and home-made pastas adorned the plates. A vegetable staple was crazy corn – corn on the cob dipped in a spicy mayonnaise and rolled in grated Parmesan cheese. Dishes were created using multi-colored rice, corn husks covered with black bean relish and a trio of squirt bottles containing spicy sauces. The preparation required an artist's touch and assured that nothing would look ordinary when delivered to the table. The signature dessert was the Edible Bag – white and dark chocolate shaped to look like a paper sack. It was filled with a mousse and topped with fresh fruit.
The diners at Crazy Fish surrounded an
exposed exhibition kitchen featuring a Missouri oak and hickory
wood-burning broiler, freshly squeezed juices to order, homemade
lemonade, soft drinks served in bottles and low fat yogurt shakes.
In July of 1998, LaRocca partnered with John Goodman, Bill Frisella, Bob Lenzen and Tom Mullen to open a second Crazy Fish Fresh Grill in West County. The 7,200-square-foot building at 16125 Chesterfield Parkway South, on the outskirts of Chesterfield Mall, had formerly housed Yen Ching's West County outpost. The Chesterfield Crazy Fish was much larger than the original in Clayton. It seated more than 150 diners, and in warmer weather, there was outdoor seating, overlooking a rocky waterfall. Both restaurants featured the same menu.
The new restaurant
had a beautiful underwater theme décor, with olive walls and
ceilings, aqua tabletops, purple octagonal bread plates and tropical multicolored carpeting. There were matching fish prints
on the walls and a whimsical metal sculpture and mosaic in the
entryway.
Chris LaRocca was on the top of his game. In addition to his two Crazy Fish restaurants, he had opened multiple Wrap Rage and Tomatillo Mexican Grill locations throughout the area. In early 2000, LaRocca was named 1999 Restaurateur of the Year by the Greater St. Louis Restaurant Association. And then things fell apart. In the spring of 2002, LaRocca's partners in the Chesterfield Crazy Fish took issue with his "management style." They took over full ownership of the West County restaurant, renaming it Aqua Vin. In addition to claiming LaRocca's restaurant, they also lured away his longtime chef, Dave Rook. LaRocca reacted by opening a Crazy Fish on the first floor of the newly remodeled West County Center, next to Famous-Barr. He also took a partner at his Clayton location – Mike Johnson, who had been the owner and chef of the closed Cafe Mira. But early in 2003, LaRocca sold his original Crazy Fish restaurant to Johnson, who reopened the space as Figaro. Then in June of 2003, less than a year after its debut, LaRocca closed the Crazy Fish in West County Center. "After extensive research of similar restaurants in similar malls, Crazy Fish should have been the perfect fit," he lamented. "The lack of major tenants, combined with 9/11, resulted in a young, female demographic – which nobody expected. Unfortunately, it was also not our customer." * * * * * Chris LaRocca was 9 years old, washing dishes in his father’s restaurant, when he got his first raise – from 25 cents to 50 cents a day. Ecstatic with the 100-percent increase, he realized early on that restaurant guys have to settle for percentages, rather than dollars, plus the thrill of hitting the occasional home run – which he did with Crazy Fish.
Chris LaRocca stayed in the game . . . with
Sage, Triumph, Kota Wood Fired Grill, EdgeWild and Crushed Red.
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