When you live in a little big town, you come to realize there are some people, places and things that are just synonymous with Wilton, like… pizza and Parlor and Tim LaBant. Born and raised in our cozy community, one can’t help but feel immediately at home talking to LaBant in his “sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name,” your daughter’s name and maybe even the life advice you didn’t realize you needed-style restaurant.
Getting a table at Parlor on a weekend night is kinda like unexpectedly being first in the Miller-Driscoll School pick up line, but even if you have to wait, it’s worth reasoning for the seasonings and spices and correct temperature of the water… seriously there’s no better pie from here to however far you drive.
Lesley Kirschner caught up with this family man for a slice of life in the kitchen, what it means to make something out of nothing and the importance of acceptance, failure and starting over where you are. Sometimes the simplest path is the one right in front of you.
1. What was “growing up Wilton” like for you and how did your childhood experience shape the way you and your lovely wife, Julia have raised your own kids today?
Tim LaBant: If you grow up in a small town like Wilton, you come through Pop Warner … sports, all the stuff that kids still do today. I don’t know if it’s because I grew up in the 80s … that Gen X period … all that freedom we had on a bicycle or in the woods or whatever, but it was a good time to grow up. I try to raise my own kids with as much of that spirit of roaming free and doing their own thing and making mistakes as I can.
There was a lot of pressure pre-Covid for kids to get into their sport pre-sixth grade, to be sort of ‘locked in’; like, if you’re in lacrosse then you’re not doing baseball. Whereas when I was a kid, you would do as many sports as you could.
There’s always going to be kids who are more or less gifted but I know I would love to see as many kids go as long as they can in different sports even if they’re good in some things and not great in others. It’s more about community and the lessons that you learn and the movement for your body. The longer you can do that, the better; whether it’s competitive or not competitive, it doesn’t matter. I think that’s the important thing — not trying to be great, not trying to get a college scholarship. For us, it wasn’t like that; that wasn’t the thing we were trying to accomplish.
We just try to raise our kids that same way we were raised.
Did you play sports as a kid? Are you a sporty family?
LaBant: Definitely. We have four kids, two are in college. We wanted them to do sports but however little or much they wanted. When the kids are younger, there’s always going to be ‘I don’t want to go to soccer this weekend’ and us saying, ‘Okay, but you’re part of the team.’ You have to try without twisting screws. Every kid is different. One of my kids was on the Nationals Team for the Wahoos and the other one was running track and you get to this point where, ‘If you want to continue, great,’ but there’s all these other avenues not leading to burnout-ville … less competitive stuff that might (or might not) be for you.
My younger son did a pick-up game at Allen’s Meadow during soccer season. There’s 30 kids and they just divvy them up and play for an hour and the ball keeps going out of bounds and they just keep playing.
Our younger son liked adrenaline sports — skateboarding, mountain biking, skiing. Any kind of passion, any kind of movement. Last year I took him to Moab and we did a bike packing trip. We put tents on our bikes and rode like 50 miles. We camped out. There’s always a limit and I tend to push … everybody’s comfort level; and everybody breaks down at some point but I try not to do that … I think all my kids have positive memories. I always like to let the kids have some say. We don’t have to climb Mount Everest. It’s possible. But we can just chill or fish or kick the hacky sack around. I try not to get anybody upset.
2. Parenting is hard, pizza helps — it satisfies multiple food groups and, as cheesy as it sounds, it always delivers, satisfying even the kneadiest of children in the hangriest of moments. What led you to the dough?
LaBant: I think it started out going to Roberta’s in New York and I was like, ‘Wow, this is a fine dining experience in a ratty environment for 20 bucks.’ Then the chef in me was just curious. I started exploring more and, oh my God, there’s this whole world of stuff I didn’t even know was possible. And then I was like, ‘Alright, I’m gonna try this at home.’ And the chef in me was like, ‘I get the gist of this and I’m just gonna kinda throw it together,’ and it was horrible — like a train wreck so many times.
Freestyling doesn’t really work with pizza, so you have to tighten up the recipe and actually follow the steps — and it still kind of sucked. I kept tightening the screws and finally got something that was like pizza but not what I wanted. The more you do it, [the more] you’re memorizing techniques, trying other techniques, seeing what folding the dough does or warming up the environment does or using a different flour does. You’re gaining all of these tools and there’s a million different variables to pizza.
Were you watching a lot of YouTube videos in the beginning, for instruction?
LaBant: Mostly Google … yeah, videos. It’s easiest to go to someone who has it nailed and wrote an entire book on it, like Ken Forkish. He’s a bread baker. He wrote a book I was really into. There’s a lot of different people like that who wrote books and not that I wanted to make their pizza, but I needed to learn enough about the techniques to manipulate the tools. You have to have the tools before you can use them. So that’s what took time.
But after all that, you can make a pizza and you can say, ‘I want my pizza to be X, Y, Z.’ You have a ‘unicorn pizza’ in your brain — chewy, crispy, whatever it is. They’re all so different.
I love all of the different styles of pizza. But I had one envisioned in my head that I hadn’t tasted, the kind I want to make. And even now, it’s always a challenge. The environment is changing. The tomatoes are changing. Everything is always changing so it’s just micro-adjustments. I mean, the recipe is the recipe, right? But there’s variables, so you might tweak parts of the recipe, like the main one — the temperature of the water that goes into it. That’s the number one ingredient because we’re fermenting the dough for 48 to 72 hours, so it’s a three day waiting window. And so if the dough comes out of the mixer five degrees warmer over the course of three days, it either proofs too soon or not soon enough. So it’s constantly fine tuning and teaching and watching …
3. As someone who’s epicurious but gets very overwhelmed in the kitchen, feels a certain pressure to perform and sometimes serves cereal for dinner, what advice would you give to those with culinary challenges on keeping it simple?
LaBant: Kids have short memories; like goldfish.
There’s a kid who works here. He’s never made a pizza before and he was like, ‘Can I make a pizza?” And he makes it and he tries it and then he’s like ‘Ohhh.’ And I’m like, ‘It’s your first pizza.’
As someone who’s made tens of hundreds of pizzas, forgive yourself. I sometimes mess up 10 pizzas a night. Don’t get hung up on the mess ups. It’s like when you’re grilling and you burn a steak and before you can throw the steak in the garbage, there’s another steak on the grill and someone will still probably eat that steak. You can’t sit there and cry about it. It’s just, ‘out with the old and start over‘ — keep going.
But a lot of the time there’s that pressure at home and you only have so many things, but if you cook the same food, the same meal for your kids every day, using all of the same ingredients and same equipment, you’ll get good at it, yeah? But when you’re changing up meals, there’s so many variables, there’s a lot more variables to try to control.
Yeah, I don’t have great frustration tolerance.
LaBant: Yeah, but it’s like with writing … if I write something and have terrible spelling and terrible punctuation or misspell it, and then I’m like, ‘I stink at writing!’ I give up. But if I have to work through it, I become a better speller. You gotta keep your failures. But kids are pretty easy, what kids want. Once, one of my kids told me they like the square pizza on pizza day at school better than my pizza. Or my son wants to go out for pizza and he’s like ‘Let’s go to Riko’s!’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah. Let’s go to Riko’s. Let’s check it out!’ Whatever it is, there’s no shame when you have children. You just have to laugh.
4. If you had an hour to yourself, what would you do with it?
LaBant: If I had an hour to myself, I’m getting on my bike, going into the woods…just riding as far away as I can.
Do you feel about biking how your sister [Kristin Partenza] feels about running?
LaBant: Probably. Granted, I don’t have the greatest track record. I got myself into a wreck a year and change ago. I wrecked myself. I went around the bend. I was in South Salem going a little too fast … way down into the ravine and I broke my face … my neck, my elbow, I punctured a lung … the helmet cracked in half. I was in the hospital for a month. I was feeling so grateful that I came through it, that I had my family, friends, the team … everybody in Wilton there to cheer me on. But it was a lot and I felt bad. I felt for my wife and my family taking care of me and then dealing with me when I wanted to go for a bike ride again. But it’s still kind of a blur in my mind, for sure. It’s just human nature. You hit the delete button. Maybe if I remembered more, I wouldn’t want to bike again.
5. I would venture to say that food-ing (not unlike farming) often gets glamorized and romanticized, sometimes (but not always) leading to disenchantment. What would you say some of the biggest challenges are in running a restaurant that everyday patrons might take for granted?
LaBant: There’s tons of television shows, magazines and websites dedicated to food, which is great. It’s cool. But you go on any website and tell people you’re thinking of opening a restaurant and ask, ‘What are some things that I should maybe consider?’ The first thing you get is: ‘Don’t do it!”
Some restaurants fail. There were people, especially in the beginning, who told me, ‘If you can do anything else, go do it,’ and I’m not sure if I would disagree with that. If you could be passionate about something else … But for me, I was obsessed with it.
Then I got in and I learned from the bottom up and my obsession continued and I was like, after doing all that dirty work and the hard stuff and the crazy chef stuff, I was still smitten with that food part of the service.
But yeah, it’s a super challenging business to try to maintain profitability. It’s razor thin. And there’s so many people coming at you with different expenses.
You get squeezed from every angle. There’s no good answers so you just take the hand you’re dealt and then you just change what you can change. You try to figure out how to save money on the things you can save money on and that’s a pretty simple formula. We don’t have tablecloths and no one complains but we have linen napkins. We used to have pizza boxes with little tuxedos and then Covid hit and I was like. ‘Okay, I’m spending 25-grand a year on pizza boxes and people like it but if I take it away, I can leave the pizza at the same price, the same quality … all of the same ingredients if I ditch the fancy box.’
You strip away the things you have to strip away and prioritize the things you have to prioritize. Like, instead of calling somebody to fix the ice machine, you watch a YouTube video and then spend the next five hours sorting it out, and then you’re better off. Or maybe instead of having name brand wine, you get the wine from your next door neighbor — same grapes, same wine, just without the fancy label. If you can hit the same quality and find somebody that isn’t able to market theirs … l mean, are you just trying to maintain the product? Maintain the price? Hopefully maintain the profit.
That’s a lot. How do you find balance in your life?
LaBant: Being 51 now and sending my first son off to college two or three years ago, he’s a Junior now … I was like, ‘Oh my God. He’s gone…’ and I’d spent so many years not at home for dinner because of the restaurant.
When I’m here I can make the place better, and when I’m not here, it’s not the same. So I’m trying to be here in the hours when it’s most important, and then also be at home during the most important times. I think everybody struggles with that. You know when you can do better in your career and you know when you can do better at home; and sometimes you feel like you’re failing at both. It’s kind of normal, inner (adult) guilt … guilt and feelings and I don’t know. Living close to the restaurant, being open six days versus seven, not being open for lunch … all of those … quirky things help me.
Are your own kids in Parlor a lot? Are they a part of it?
LaBant: My son … I felt desperate when he left [for college]. He was in here three or four days a week; and then my daughter was working in here. She was making pizza and he was a server and their friends would come in, and it was the best feeling ever. And then my younger kids would come in and eat and that was all a moment, a rare moment … For a hot second, it actually met expectations. And it was so much fun watching them. That’s a time I will carry with me forever. I mean for me, I hope they dig it [the restaurant]. It’s cool but it’s also a tool for them to use. They get to meet and see a lot of people. This is like the opposite of monoculture here … like the more variation you have in races, religions, orientations, the more everybody is going to be on their toes and be more empathetic. It’s a cool thing.
6. What did you want to be when you grew up?
LaBant: I don’t think I had that until I was in college and I was a senior and we had to pick our major. I just didn’t find that thing I was super interested in but by the end, I was kind of into cooking. I enjoyed it.
I would have loved to be like a … professional snowboarder but I wasn’t coordinated or daring enough. After college, I moved to Colorado. I worked in a restaurant at night and I snowboarded all day and that’s kind of what started that. I lived in my little apartment with Julie for like three years and then I came back and got a real job. I worked in computer sales as a sales guy. I’m not a sales guy but I loved the people I worked for. I loved the company. I just wasn’t good at it and I didn’t have the desire to be good at it. I was working hard at trying to get better but I was feeling like there were all these other people who were really natural at it and I was just sort of like, Why are we in this room talking about this stuff? I just wanted to go to sleep.
I needed more activity and to move. I needed a job where there was a problem (somebody’s hungry) and I have the solution: I make the food and they eat it; and the full loop, the full circle is complete and it’s pretty straightforward. There’s a beginning, an end and it all happens within an hour.
Sales was like, maybe we’ll buy your computer, and you work on trying to sell that computer for eight months and then they’re like so… We decided not to buy it. And yeah, some people are really good at it but I’m more… ‘Have a good day.’ That’s not a salesperson.
7. Do you have any advice for young people?
LaBant: All that stuff you learned in Kindergarten will take you a long way … sharing, being kind, compassionate. Throw yourself into something. If you can find the passion, find a passion. Find something that you’re into maybe. Be honest with yourself. Listen. The whole world is about more, better, faster…which is kinda sad. It’s kind of in a state of falling apart. But it’s also about accepting things for how they are, right?