Restaurateur Gabriele Ruggieri pursues Italian restaurant concepts in Cape Girardeau and beyond

Monday, December 18, 2023 ~ Updated 8:42 PM

Gabriele Ruggieri is the owner of the restaurants Speck Pizza and Street Food and Pasta + Sauce in Cape Girardeau. Born in Italy, he now lives in Cape Girardeau via London, Sidney, Morocco, Disney and The Four Seasons.

Photo by Aaron Eisenhauer

Gabriele Ruggieri, owner of the restaurants Speck Pizza and Street Food, as well as Pasta + Sauce, in Cape Girardeau, says he is always chasing his next dream. It’s the entrepreneurial mentality to continue improving and seeking what is missing that has pulled him through playing professional soccer, working in eight countries and founding four restaurants, as well as a myriad of other pursuits he has set his mind to and achieved.

“I always had this kind of mentality: I want something, I need to get it, I want something, I need to get it. The idea always of what can I do more? What can I do better?” Ruggieri says. “I guess if you are not chasing something, luck will never kiss you, right?”

Early Life

Ruggieri first tasted what it felt like for that a dream to come true at five years old. Born in Milan in January 1985, he lived with his mother and father in a 90-unit apartment complex built for postal workers. His parents had moved the year before from Sicily, Italy, in the southern part of the country to the northern city of Milan to find work; this apartment complex is where Ruggieri made his best friends. His mother got a job working as a secretary and assistant for an insurance company; his father got a job with the post office.

Ruggieri says all of his friends had a sibling, and he begged his parents to have another child, so he could have a sibling, too. Specifically, he wanted a brother, and he wanted to name him Sergio.

When Ruggieri was six years old, Sergio was born. Having this dream come true started a pattern for Ruggieri of pursuing what he wanted with determination.

So, from there, he continued to go after his dreams: He wanted to be in the same grade at school as his friends, but they were all a year older than him. So, he convinced his mother to go to the school and persuade the teacher to let Ruggieri take a test to show he had mastered the first grade content. The teacher agreed; Ruggieri studied, learned the material, passed the test and started school in the second grade with his friends.

His next dream: As a young boy, he wanted to play soccer professionally, and so he pushed himself in training. From ages 13 to 17, he played on a professional team.

The young Gabriele Ruggieri (right) stands with his hand on his dad Salvatore Ruggieri's shoulder while his younger brother Sergio Ruggieri kisses his dad's cheek to celebrate his birthday in Milan. As a boy, Gabriele sometimes went with his dad while he delivered mail as a postman, which inspired the concept of his restaurant Speck Pizza + Street Food in Cape Girardeau.

Photo submitted by Gabriele Ruggieri

Around the age of 17, Ruggieri wanted to make more money; his parents had divorced when he was 10 years old, and his mother supported him and his brother on one income. So, in the early 2000s, he set his sights on what he wanted next: To work at Foot Locker, the company that had first brought the shoe brand Nike to Italy. He worked there as a sales associate until he finished high school.

Traveling the World

At age 18, Ruggieri’s dad passed away, and feeling the pain from this loss, he wanted to get out of the place he had grown up in. He quit playing soccer, and following in the footsteps of his Uncle Roberto, whom he describes as his inspiration, he decided to do seasonal hospitality work in resorts.

This work took him to Türkiye, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Sardinia, where he worked in guest relations at resorts, speaking Italian with Italian guests.

After working in these places, he says he began to feel something was missing, and he felt the desire to continue chasing that elusive something that has called to him throughout his life. He decided he wanted to learn to speak English, so he could become a citizen of the world and get better jobs. He and his friend moved to London, where Ruggieri folded pizza boxes and did dishes at a pizzeria and then worked as a server at an Italian restaurant.

When he decided he didn’t like the gray weather in London, he packed his bag again and moved to Sydney by himself, where he lived and worked for nearly a year until his working holiday visa ran out.

Coming to the U.S.

Then, a friend told him about an opportunity at an Italian restaurant at Disney World’s Epcot in Orlando, Fla.; Ruggieri applied and was accepted into the program. It was in this way that he first came to the United States to pursue the American Dream in October 2010, with only $2,000 and the promise of a job.

While working at Epcot, Ruggieri met his ex-wife Casey Bauer, who is originally from Cape Girardeau. After getting married and living briefly in Miami, Fla., and Australia, where they went so Ruggieri could learn from friends about the business of opening a restaurant, they moved to Cape Girardeau in 2012.

At this point, Ruggieri says he didn’t know what he wanted to do, so he worked at various restaurants in the area, learning to cook different types of food. After losing his job managing a restaurant, he didn’t know what to do next.

While spending time in St. Louis, he met his ex-business partner Giannicola Colucci at a Whole Foods Market. At the time, Colucci was the head chef at the restaurant at the St. Louis Four Seasons, and he connected Ruggieri with the food and beverage director at the restaurant, where Ruggieri then got a job. During this time, Ruggieri also opened a wholesale business in St. Louis, Gabriel’s Gourmet, importing Italian foods and selling them to restaurants. Through this business, he realized he loved being an entrepreneur.

Then, Ruggieri decided to open his own restaurant, Gabriel’s Food + Wine, in downtown Cape Girardeau, which had been his long-held dream, in 2017. In 2018, he also opened a Gabriel’s Gourmet in the store next door to the restaurant and began hosting cooking classes for people to learn how to make pasta.

Developing his brands

With the business running well, Ruggieri began dreaming of a second restaurant concept that would focus on pizza and street food. His father’s dream had always been to open a restaurant, and Ruggieri wanted to incorporate into his next endeavor his time spent on the Italian streets delivering mail with his dad.

So, he did: With gray and yellow colors meant to evoke the color palette of the road, Speck Pizza + Street Food in downtown Cape Girardeau offers a range of pizza, gelato and other traditional Italian street foods at an affordable price. Ruggieri does all of this with authentic, Italian-imported ingredients and his custom-built wood-fire stove, which he designed to be the focal point of his restaurant, made from parts crafted in Italy and assembled in Sonoma County, Calif.

Gabriele Ruggieri poses for a photo with members of his family while his brother and mother visit from Italy before Speck Pizza + Street Food opened in downtown Cape Girardeau. Pictured, from left to right, are Gabriele's brother Sergio Ruggieri, Gabriele's son Lorenzo Ruggieri, Gabriele, and Gabriele's mother Rita Viola.

Photo by Aaron Eisenhauer

While experiencing success with Speck, however, Ruggieri faced setbacks with other endeavors: He opened and closed Le Bistro, which served high-end French cuisine. In addition, Gabriel’s Food + Wine wasn’t performing at the same level as Speck, so Ruggieri decided to close Gabriel’s Food + Wine in order to create a different concept similar to Speck that served pasta.

“In all of the success, there is also failure, but I don’t think success can come without failure,” Ruggieri says. “I think you have to fail a few times before you feel very successful.”

With the failure, though, came new life: After returning to Cape Girardeau from his annual trip to Italy to visit his family, he opened Pasta + Sauce in September 2023. This restaurant is a fun, family-friendly, affordable option for authentic Italian cuisine in Cape Girardeau.

Training his team and treating them well is extremely important to Ruggieri; they are an integral part of his restaurant concepts, which emphasize the Italian hospitality he grew up with.

“My team is the first customer that I have, because I have to sell myself, my vision, to them,” Ruggieri says. “And then, they have to sell their commitment to the customer, and through that, we create together the final product that is our pizza and pasta.”

Looking to the future

Ruggieri says his commitment to Cape Girardeau is to be the first one trying concepts like the ones he’s created and then to build up others, teaching and providing them with the skills and contacts they need to go out and create their own restaurants and businesses. As he’s grown as a restaurateur, he says he’s realized it’s about seeing the team succeed, and helping the Cape Girardeau community to become better. It’s his way of giving to a place that has helped him so much.

“Cape Girardeau is the place that gave me back the best of myself,” Ruggieri says. “This is the place where I have succeeded: I have had all my training here and opened four restaurants. I got married here. My son was born here. I bought my first house and my first building for my business here. It’s where I’ve worked to grow. I never did that in any other city, but I wouldn’t have done all of this if I didn’t have the experience that I had of working in other places behind me, and the support of family, friends and whoever gives me the right word at the right moment.”

Ruggieri says the key to creating a successful brand is paying attention to “every single detail” to engage the guest. Excited about these two brands he’s created, his next dream is developing opportunities to expand them into other markets.

“There is life, and that can take you to different dreams and in different directions,” Ruggieri says. “Having the energy to wake up every morning and having the same commitment every day — this is how I achieve the dream that is next.”