Photograph by Catherine Viox
Paul Weckman and Emily Wolff and Anthony Sitek and Haley Nutter-Sitek met as freshmen in college (at the University of Kentucky and Johnson & Wales University, respectively). Now, the power couples own and operate restaurant groups on either side of the river. Weckman and Wolff in Covington, where they opened Otto’s in 2003, and over time added Larry’s, Frida 602, The Standard, and Mama’s on Main. The Siteks’ own Crown Restaurant Group, which started with Crown Republic Gastropub in June 2018. By summer, they expect to have seven open establishments, including Losanti, Crown Cantina, Rosie’s Italian, Five on Vine, and a second Losanti location in Columbus They discussed the joys—and frustrations—of running multiple restaurants with a spouse.
Wolff: We opened Otto’s at 22. Paul was in the kitchen. I’m an artist. I was front of the house, able to sell art off the walls. It was a very scrappy intro to the culinary world. Pre-social media, which was kind of an amazing time because the magic really happened by word of mouth. I feel like it’s a little bit missed today, now 22 years in the industry.
Weckman: We had twins on the way, and at 22, we decided to take a leap. That youthful energy and ignorance was fantastic, it really carried us through the beginning. It’s just evolved.
Sitek: Haley’s from here, I’m from New Jersey. I’m Sicilian and Polish. I have a degree in culinary arts/food service management with a minor in accounting and a minor in wellness/sustainability. I graduated about six months early and moved to Chicago. I grew up in New York. People were saying hi to me on the street when I was used to getting a finger. I was like, Oh, this could be great. People are nice. Who knew? But then I think it was the second February we were there. That negative-40-degree wind chill. I was like, what are we doing? My mentor was going to Miami and he’s like, Do you want to go? So, we ended up being in Miami for about three years. It was a cool place to live, but not friendly for kids.
Nutter-Sitek: Not financially friendly either.
Sitek: We got to talking and that’s how we opened Crown Republic. And we’ve done a restaurant a year since.
Nutter-Sitek: I actually had no intentions of going to culinary school. I wanted to go to University of Alabama. My goal was to marry a cowboy, but I was recruited to play tennis at Johnson & Wales. Anyway, long story short is he played soccer. So, we actually just became friends first. We ended up being in the same culinary labs together. Very quickly I realized I wasn’t cut out to be in the back of the house. I liked interacting with people more.
Nutter-Sitek: Now, we have three kids: 13, 9, and 4.
Wolff: We’ve got twins who are 22, a 16-year-old, 12-year-old, and a 9-year-old.
Weckman: Our twins are now full-grown adults, who live in New York by themselves. One of them texted me that there is a place for rent and said, Dad, a Mama’s would kill it here, and I was like Oh, my God! They’ve caught what we had.
Weckman: I started cooking like 8, 9, 10 years old. I was a chunky kid. I liked to eat so I liked to cook. Also with my mother coming from New York, my cultural existence really being rooted in New York, that includes food.
Sitek: My grandmother was from Calabria. My whole life I was just in the kitchen with her. During high school, there was a program that let me leave the second half of the day and go to a work study. I went to work in a kitchen, and I just loved it.
Weckman: I studied business and economics at UK. My third year in school I was working for Morgan Stanley doing an internship and realized that I really hated doing financial planning. I think that when I started to cook professionally, it was the first time I ever created an art. I could make food that looked as good as the picture, tastes good, and make people happy.
Photograph by Catherine Viox
Sitek: Think about what I could do if this walk-in was mine.
Weckman: Exactly. It’s a whole system that you can get excited about, until you have five. It’s a whole ’nother type of challenge to figure out how these five restaurants live and breathe together. It’s like a rush, right?
Sitek: Yeah, a hundred percent.
Weckman: Especially when you get into professional line cooking, after your first big shift, you’re like Oh my God, we got through that. And again, there’s an artistic component to it. I did this with my hands and my brain and my whole team.
Nutter-Sitek: My experience has been different. I didn’t even know food could be anything outside of Mrs. Dash. Again, I was born and raised in Cincinnati.
Wolff: I hear you. I grew up in Ft. Mitchell.
Nutter-Sitek: I wanted to learn flavor profiles. I was a theater kid, a performer. This was when Food Network was coming in. I thought, _I’ll go to culinary school, and I’ll be on Food Network. I’ll be the next Giada. But I was not used to fresh food. I didn’t know farm to table.
Wolff: For me, it’s how you feel when you walk into the restaurant. Our team putting the food out, I see their menus, I know it’s going to be a home run. But how do I make sure your experience is a home run? As somebody who loves historic buildings and loves creating art for spaces or just that intimacy that happens, that for me is the love affair with the restaurant. As a kid, I had a doll house and every little detail was perfect in it. I laugh because when my parents moved, I got this doll house and I look at it and it’s like, oh, there’s blue and white China on the wall. Really funny foreshadowing, but it’s genuine.
Wolff: At first, we opened our restaurant and lived upstairs for seven years. We fell in love with our community. We can walk to all our restaurants. I can walk my kids to school. It is a quality-of-life thing for us. I don’t want to be in a car, sitting in traffic. Time is so precious. Most of our team works in our community can walk to work, too.
Haley-Sitek: Kind of similar, but different, we’re in the bottom of a residential building. When you’re in a place where people live, you create regulars. We want to create a place with a small-town feel, in a sense that we knew everyone’s name, we knew their story. Losanti is a 10-minute walk away, but those regulars come to support us. But we live over by Kings Island. I don’t mind the drive because it’s a calm-before-the-storm coming in.
Photograph by Catherine Viox
Weckman: There are many days where I wish I had a 20-minute drive. The other side of our coin is they can ping me and I’m a hundred yards away at home.
Nutter-Sitek: I mean, the pinging never stops.
Sitek: And honestly to have a sustainable life, there needs to be layers to get to us.
Weckman: Right?
Wolff: I’m sure you all can relate to this. I have a hard line that we don’t talk about work at the table. While we’re here, we’re focusing on each other and the kids.
Nutter-Sitek: We made it a rule that we’ll do a family meal where we cook and get the kids involved. They set the table, we sit down. But again, he’s still in the thick of it. Most of the time he’s walking in when we’re finishing and I’m not making the kids eat at 8 o’clock. So again, it’s the balance and we’re still trying to work it out.
Weckman: Everything is challenging about owning restaurants, right? Essentially, you have to watch everything. Margins are so thin. But if you love it, you love it. If you’re the type of person…
Nutter-Sitek: That’s a glutton for punishment?
Weckman: If your mind is stimulated by the challenge of doing that puzzle every day and really pushing a team of people and pushing against odds, then sign up.
Wolff: And, from a front of the house perspective, are you willing to listen to public comments every day? As a perfectionist, it’s really hard. I mean thousands of people come through our doors, in your doors, and trying to make the masses happy is really hard.
Sitek: I would say over the last two years we’ve tried—it’s hard with the kids as you know—try to make time to date each other again.
Nutter-Sitek: Focus on the partnership outside of the business. Nice, babe, look at you.
Wolff: That’s funny because before this I was like, Babe, we need a date night. We need to get to some of their spots and be able to talk about it. And then I was like, That’s just going to be our 2025 goal. For us, Paul and I have wanted to have a retreat, something that is just ours. A reset spot. It’s been one year. We found a piece of property. I don’t know what’s going to happen with it, but I feel like it’s going to be a great tool for future success.
Weckman: My schooling is in agricultural economics and it’s a 180-acre farm. We always try to look at how can we be a little better? Can we produce a little better food? Can we do it more responsibly? Can we engage our crew to broaden their horizons.
Wolff: That’s where we would like to potentially run some cattle or bison.
Nutter-Sitek: Anthony could go hang out there and I can say I married a cowboy!
Weckman: This spring, swing over.
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