By - Interview Eliza Ridgeway

Stijepo Savinovic is the head chef and owner of Restaurant Ragusa on Main Street.

The Town Crier features local chefs in the monthly “Food & Wine” section. This month we profile Restaurant Ragusa owner Stijepo Savinovic.

Name: Stijepo “Steve” Savinovic.

Age: 52.

Restaurant: Head chef and owner of Restaurant Ragusa in Los Altos.

Background: Savinovic opened his first restaurant in Germany at age 24. “I finished school in the kitchen and restaurant business in Croatia. We had communism in the 1970s, and when I met my (future) wife in Germany, I decided to open a restaurant there.”

The couple returned to Croatia and ran a restaurant there until the first Yugoslavian war began in 1991. Savinovic closed his business and served as a soldier for four years during the wars against Serbia and later, Bosnia.

“I was a sergeant major. The enemy occupied the restaurant and there were bombings. I was fighting to get the restaurant back.”

A successful steakhouse in Austria came next for the Savinovic family, but it closed when mad cow disease rippled through Western Europe in the mid-’90s.

Savinovic followed his college-bound children to the United States and opened Ragusa on Main Street in 2002. “We came here and the Iraq war started,” Savinovic said, as he described the long story of countries, wars and disasters his family has seen.

Philosophy: “You have to make a good plate to get a customer back again. You have to have a good relationship, like a family, with your customers.” Savinovic and four children all have worked in the business and they recently opened the Monte Carlo restaurant and nightclub on Castro Street in Mountain View.

Favorite Food: Chilean sea bass. “We have bass in Croatia, but not like the Chilean kind.”

Specialties: “We work with vegetables, garlic and fish in Croatian cooking and with a lot of lamb, rotisserie style.” The menu at Ragusa includes a few Croatian dishes, including Savinovic’s signature goulash, as well as Mediterranean cuisine.