Motor Town Pizza engineers Detroit-style delight from pandemic necessity

Revel’s kitchen includes ranges with flattops and convection ovens. The ranges are the restaurant’s workhorses; the ovens are used sporadically. As the Revel team was throwing around ideas for ghost-kitchen concepts, pizza came up, and Lusky thought of Detroit-style. Not only can this pizza be baked in a standard oven, but it should be.

“All I had to do is get these pans,” Lusky says. “So I bought a couple pans, tried a couple recipes and just fell in love with it really quick.”

The restaurant • The Luskys opened their original restaurant, Athlete Eats, in 2014 on Cherokee Street in Benton Park West. The name was a nod to Simon’s role as a chef and nutritionist for the Cardinals and the couple’s sideline making prepared, health-focused meals for Blues players and other athletes.

In 2015, the Luskys rebranded Athlete Eats as Revel Kitchen. The following year, they opened the restaurant’s current location in Brentwood and closed the Cherokee Street storefront.

Revel’s Brentwood flagship has stayed busy with takeout and delivery during the pandemic, Simon says, but with its dining room shut down, its satellite location in Clayton closed until further notice and no catering business, revenue has declined about 50%.

Sitting in his empty dining room, Lusky says, he realized “this is the time. Like, hey, let’s start playing around with this. Let’s create another concept. Let’s create another brand.”