Maternal figures indelibly make a culinary impact on our younger, impressionable selves—imprints like fingertip folds in a ball of freshly kneaded dough, memories around a kitchen counter or dining room table. Lucile certainly made an impression on her grandson Ryan Boeve, the owner of Lila and co-owner of its newly-opened sister restaurant, Lucile. “When I was a teenager growing up working in kitchens, she was always supportive of me by buying food like lobster, and challenging me, saying, ‘Here, cook for me,’” Boeve recalls. “It was great one-on-one time with her.” Boeve has leaned toward a vegan lifestyle for most of his life, experimenting as a young lad to find creative ways to utilize vegetables, nuts and grains for mainstream dishes.

A FLEET OF NATTY WINES LINE THE SHELVES OF LUCILE'S COZY, INTIMATE, ADULT-NIGHT-OUT HIDEAWAY. PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN.

“My grandmother must have inspired something in me in those formative teenage years, with her big garden of vegetables and herbs every summer and a pantry full of canned vegetables,” he says. And when it came to pizza, going out to pizza shops, “No cheese, please” was a common ordering tagline for him. “I’ve always had a hard time finding pizza I can eat, or I always have to just order a slice of marinara,” Boeve says. “So I thought, let’s see if I can do this. My mother always talked about having a little pizza place for herself, so that’s always been in the back of my mind.” 

HERE'S HOPING YOUR DATE WILL SHARE WITH YOU WHEN THEY ORDER THE TRUFFLED MUSHROOM AND YOU GET THE PESTO HEIRLOOM TOMATO. PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN

Call it another impression—one that would inspire a modern pizza place where vegans wouldn’t have to make menu adjustments, where the food would actually excel at catering to their eating habits. Boeve found culinary recognition and a loyal following at his first vegan-focused restaurant, Lila, and hopes Lucile will satisfy the same clean-eating customers—the ones looking to pack a party of antioxidants and nutrients into their daily dishes. The menu offers a variety of plant-based and gluten-free pizzas, pastas like fava bean tortellini and cauliflower rigatoni, and desserts like vegan tiramisu.

Boeve doesn’t dish up anything he can’t make from scratch either. The pasta, pizza dough, sauces, “cheeses” and “meats” are all made entirely in-house daily—with locally-sourced ingredients and organic produce from area farms such as Worden and Honeyside. “A lot of people want to eat cleaner today, so we’ve gotten pretty creative in the meats you usually find on pizzas,” Boeve says. “Our sausage is made of 100 percent sunflower seed protein and fennel. It actually tastes like sausage, but a lot cleaner with no animal fat coating or synthetic casing.” But, for those who crave that grease variable that makes it so sinfully satisfying, Boeve created a vegan fat from coconut oil to give a “greasy fill” to the sausage (and he will even drizzle it on top of the pizzas). Marinated, smoked mushrooms play an alias for bacon, while the “pepperoni” is made from a tofu mix (baked and dehydrated so it becomes a meaty crumble, as opposed to classic pepperoni circles). Meanwhile, cashews are the champion nut to cultivate the creamy, cheesy taste that acts as a substitute for common mozzarella.

PIZZA CHEF ALEX TOSSING UP SOME VEGAN MAGIC, PHOTO TAKEN BY WYATT KOSTYGAN.

Create your own pizza or order the Mushroom Walnut “Meatball” pizza—smothered in a flavorful tomato sauce, almond ricotta, fresh-picked basil and meatballs (made of grounded walnuts and mushrooms); or the Spicy Peppers pizza—encrusted with heat from shishito peppers, Calabrian chilies, red bell peppers and fermented jalapenos, baked with cashew black garlic cream and cashew mozzarella. The wine list, curated by Boeve, is almost all organic, with a focus on natural wines. The bottles are lined up along the main wall in a library-like bookshelf unit, backlit in cobalt blue. “I have always tried to promote organic and biodynamic farming, whether it’s food or wine. It’s something I truly believe in,” Boeve says. “I choose wines based on this principle but also consider what the guest would want to drink and ultimately enjoy. The challenge is finding wines from other wine regions besides Italy that work with what our menu is and still pair well with the food. I have been supporting Jolie-Laide lately, which is a great natural producer from California.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WYATT KOSTYGAN

As the wood-fired, plant-based pizzas do their thing in the blue mosaic-tiled Forno brick oven—situated in the dining portion of the restaurant instead of the kitchen—customers can longingly admire the chef making magic as they lighten a bottle of Dough pinot noir. The 800-square-foot space intimately seats 25 people at sleek wood-top tables. Brass pendant light fixtures hang from above, with white porcelain octagonal floor tiling below. “We didn’t want the design of the restaurant to compete with the food,” says Mark Baldwin, the co-owner of Lucile, as well as the designer and builder of both Lucile and Lila. Baldwin integrated an upscale yet comfortable vibe for a not-your-average pizza shop. “We took time in making sure the food colors were not in the design,” he says. “We wanted to create an adult pizza place—a place where you want to be and have food that you love.” SRQ

Lucile Pizza & Wine Bar, 1660 Main St., Sarasota, 941-330-0101, lucilesrq.com, @lucilesrq