Katie Lee, the eponymous owner of Katie's Pizzeria Café (6611 Clayton Road, Clayton; 314-727-8585), is planning a new venture, Katie's Pizza and Pasta, and you can help her get it off the ground through the crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter.
"It's a little scary," Lee says of the Kickstarter effort, which should roll out later this week. "We've been working on it for months and months."
Update: (Wednesday, January 30, 10:20 a.m.) The Katie's Pizza & Pasta Kickstarter campaign went live yesterday evening.
Lee describes Katie's Pizza and Pasta as "an artisan Italian restaurant with an open kitchen, a wood-burning oven [and] some cool new techniques with pasta." Diners will have full view not only of food being cooked to order, but also of such longer-term projects as pasta hanging to dry and meats being cured in-house.
"It's all going to be on display for everyone to see while they're eating."
Lee has yet to finalize the project's Kickstarter goal. However, she is quick to point out that her new restaurant has independent investors and isn't dependent on the crowdsourcing campaign's success. "We're trying to gain awareness."
"We don't want this to be a charity," she adds. "It's a loan. So when you back the restaurant, we're giving equal or more back."
Among the rewards for backing Katie's Pizza and Pasta will be pre-opening dinners, private parties, a cooking class with Lee and even a chance to cook on the restaurant's line.
"There's a lot of really creative rewards," Lee says. "We're not just asking for money."
