Giovanni Labbate, owner of Tievoli Pizza Bar in Palatine, stands in front of some of the pizza-making awards he has won. (Photos by Kevin Beese/Chronicle Media)

It is a stretch to say that Giovanni Labbate has been in a pizzeria all of his life.

There was the day he was born, after all.

“The day after I was born, my mom brought me into the pizzeria,” said the owner of Tievoli Pizza Bar in Palatine. “My father was in the business for 40 years.”

Labbate had thoughts of breaking from the family business, going to school to be a child psychologist.

“When I found out I was making less than I was making at the pizzeria, I kind of got discouraged and went back to the pizzeria,” Labbate said. “I didn’t want to do what my dad was doing, but I knew it was my passion, so I kind of fell right back into it.”

Lucky for Northwest Suburban pizza lovers, Labbate did. His Tievoli Pizza Bar is celebrating its second anniversary today.

Labbate, himself, will compete in April in the World Pizza Championship in Italy. He qualified for the competition by winning last year’s Real Secret Basket Face-Off in California for his plant-based “Sunset in Sonoma” pizza.

Picking up awards is nice, Labbate said, but the importance is in the recognition, not the hardware.

“We want to bring Tievoli to the next level and hopefully, eventually franchise,” he said. “I am known in the pizza industry, but I want to be known more from the public.

“I think we have something special. We have great pizza and I want people to know that. Having this New York artisan pizza here in Chicago is something different and I think people are liking it because they’re always getting the same thing everywhere else. Having something like this is a treat.”

Labbate said he doesn’t advertise his product as New York-style pizza.

Labbate prepares the dough before making a pizza.

“I say it’s more Italian artisan, but the base is New York-style pizza,” he noted. “My father was in the Bronx and migrated to Chicago eventually. (New York-style) is how we started. I wanted to go back to what he was doing and put a twist on it. Make it a little more upscale and here we are.”

Labbate said he does not get nervous in competitions and that the most stressful things can be just getting there with his gear and ingredients.

“TSA can be a pain in the ass, throwing things around and I’m like, ‘Oh, my god. (The bag) literally says, ‘Do not throw things around.’ They break stuff sometimes,” Labbate said.

He said one time Transportation Security Administration agents confiscated a $200 copper pot he used for oil. Labbate said he is still not sure why the pot was taken.

Labbate said public praise is better than any contest victory.

“The satisfaction is when people say, ‘This is really good,’” the entrepreneur said. “Seeing the affirmation from people that they love the pizza lets you know you’re doing something right.”

The restaurant’s name comes from a trip to a California vineyard and Tievoli wine.

“We had such a hard time coming up with a name, but finally my wife remembered that we had a wine in Oak Farm Vineyards in California,” Labbate said. “The wine said Tievoli — ‘I love it’ backwards — and I said, ‘I wonder if anybody’s got that name, so we researched it.

“We were shocked that nobody had a restaurant ‘Tievoli,’ so we trademarked the name, took it for the whole country and said, ‘Nobody’s going to take it now.’”

Tievoli started as a food truck business six years ago.

“That was our bread and butter,” Labbate said. “We really needed somewhere to go back to for preparing the truck and doing the dough. So, we’re like, ‘If we are going to pay someone a couple thousand dollars in rent to just do that, why don’t we open a storefront. Hopefully, we’ll make money. If not, we’re just lock the door and do prep.’”

Labbate said the storefront has worked out just fine and continues to grow.

The restaurant owner learned in 2016 that pizza-making competitions are held all around the country. He entered a contest in Chicago.

The Tievoli owner checks on a batch of Italian sausage.

“I didn’t win for pizza, but won for fastest pizza maker that day, and saw what people were doing and putting on pizza,” Labbate said. “It kind of sparked something in my mind and I said, ‘We could make something beautiful’ and started coming up with different creations and going to other competitions around the country.”

Being creative with his products gives Labbate a special feeling.

“I love making creative pizza, not just a regular cheese pizza,” he said. “I like doing something different, something people have never seen before.”

With the Palatine storefront, Labbate didn’t want to re-create his father’s pizzeria.

“My wife and I started thinking about it seven years ago. We wanted something a little more trendy than normal,” Labbate said. “My father always did the Italian flag everywhere. You knew it was Italy when you walked in.

“I was like, ‘That’s nice,’ but I wanted something different because that’s what everybody does.”

kbeese@chronicleillinois.com