Building the Valley: New Kensington couple offer elevated dining experiences at Jillian's Restaurant

Philip Call and Jillian Ludwiczak are happy to have diners spend quality time enjoying meals at their New Kensington restaurant. They’re not in any hurry to turn tables over.

And now, servers won’t have to waste any of that time explaining the restaurant’s name to customers, which was, thanks to state liquor laws, a bit confusing.

Call for Catering at Stella’s has become simply Jillian’s Restaurant now that the couple has the restaurant liquor license that building owner Stacey Mazzotta used for Stella’s Beer Barn.

The name adorns new green and white awnings on the building’s Freeport Street frontage.

“Jillian’s is a bit more eloquent and fits our brand more than ‘Phil’s,’ ” Call said. “It’s a great name. We both love her name.”

Call and Ludwiczak met while working at the former Stella’s Restaurant and plan to marry April 20.

They launched their catering business in December 2019, working out of Stella’s kitchen. They reopened the restaurant under what had been a mouthful of a name in October 2021.

So far, it has been a success.

“We’ve been growing every year at a great rate, and it doesn’t seem to be slowing down,” Ludwiczak said. “I doubted us. I was scared. But I couldn’t be happier.”

While they still offer catering, their focus has been moving more toward the restaurant, which Ludwiczak said was Call’s real dream.

“At least the last 15 years of my life, I’ve been working toward this,” Call said.

Their full bar features four martinis and craft cocktails. Their beers are exclusively from Allusion Brewing Co. in Vandergrift. Recent wine offerings hailed from California, France, Germany, Spain, Austria and Australia.

With the restaurant bearing his fiancee’s name, Call said he has elevated their food offerings. They include Japanese and Australian wagyu steaks, dry-aged beef, summer truffles, caviar and foie gras.

Of the foie gras, or duck liver, Call said, “It’s one of the most luxurious things you can eat.”

Their short menu changes weekly. It recently featured chicken marsala, wood-fired pork chop, halibut and summer seafood scampi.

“I try to be super seasonal,” Call said.

Rather than eating and running, diners are encouraged to spend the evening. Likewise, those looking for a quick bite may be disappointed, as it’s just Call in the kitchen and their focus is on quality, not volume.

“It will always come out the way the chef wanted it to,” Ludwiczak said. “I want people to feel like they had something special here.”

Call handles every aspect of their diners’ meals.

“I’m very passionate about what I put on a plate and what I allow to leave my kitchen,” he said.

Ludwiczak said she doubted that a “higher end” restaurant could work in New Kensington. Where there was once pizza, there is now a $125, 5-ounce Japanese wagyu filet.

But whether from Oakmont or the South Hills, they have found that people will travel for great food.

“People come and they seek it out,” she said. “He loves to be able to offer it in this area. It’s an experience.”

Another example — they’ve sold about 7,000 oysters since August 2022.

“I was thinking you could not sell oysters in New Ken,” Ludwiczak said. “I doubted it, but it works.”

Jillian’s Restaurant will be closed until Aug. 22.

Mazzotta plans to reopen Stella’s Beer Barn and is in the process of transferring a distributor license to New Kensington from Jablonsky Distributing in Greensburg. She didn’t have a timeline for when that would happen.

Letting go of her restaurant after 20 years was difficult, but Mazzotta said she wishes the young couple all the best.

“He’s a very talented chef. Everything is amazing. Their bar program is fantastic,” she said. “I think they can do great things there, and they’re willing to work hard for it. I think they’ll do well.”