Stuff to eat. Mostly around St. Louis.
An Interview with Dave Stine and Stephanie Abbajay
Presented by Stag Beer
Dave stine is an enigma. A modern day paul bunyan. a lawyer. an amazing home cook. a prolific drinker. And the woodworker behind david stine furniture.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of meeting dave, here’s his story in a nutshell: he was born and raised outside of Alton, Illinois on his family’s land. they were dairy farmers. dairy farming was less than enjoyable, to say the least. his grandfather and father taught him woodworking. he went to college at penn state, then George washington university law school. being a lawyer was also less than enjoyable. this led to him leaving law behind, becoming the lawless woodworker he is today.
all of his tables—which can be found at many of your favorite restaurants, like Elmwood, louie, Balkan Treat box, Sardella, rockwell, The Tenderloin room, and more—are made from wood he has harvested from dead trees on his own land.
his partner in the business is his wife, Stephanie abbajay. I sat down with them over a farm lunch of pork, potatoes, pickles, and stag to discuss business, life, and steak.
Dave Stine: I’ve been selling stuff that I’ve made, grown, bred, or harvested my whole life. That’s the way I grew up. Raising cattle, showing the cattle at 4-H, then selling the cattle.
Stephanie Abbajay: Success, I think, was when Dave didn’t have to go to his law job. It was being able to not do what he didn’t want to do, and only do what he wanted to. It was never financial.
D.S.: The overall goal was to do woodworking and to work for myself, but more importantly doing our own designs and finding customers for those. Staying in our lane.
S.A.: Our view of success has always been being independent. Not being beholden to other people’s interests. It’s never been based on money. It’s picking and choosing what we want to do.
D.S.: The power of no. Being able to say no to things is very powerful. Being in the driver’s seat of what you do everyday is all about being able to say no to things you don’t want to do.
If someone wanted me to build a house for them, I could, but I’m not going to do that.
D.S.: Our house is littered with pieces of furniture that just don’t work. But they’re all for sale!
S.A.: I see Dave as a craftsman with the soul of an artist. When he was able to do only what he wanted to do, he was an artist. Every single piece was one-of-a-kind.
D.S.: I struggled for years with people saying I was an artist, or that my furniture was art. I started playing around with functional art, sculptural art. I don’t know.
S.A.: We basically have two businesses. The artistic side: the one-of-a-kind Dave Stine-vision pieces. Then there’s the commercial side: we can do 10 of these tables and they will all look the same. It’s the perfect articulation of how you need to be in a business: you can be an artist, but you can also create a product that can be reproduced.
D.S.: The stuff we do for Gioia’s, they aren’t artistic tables, but the art in that is my relationship with Alex, figuring out what looks good in that space, what Gioia’s means to people, and what physical items I can help him build that reinforce the whole idea of the brand. There’s some kind of art in that.
D.S.: The artistic skill in that big table is understanding what that thing could be. But then you have to set aside your own ego and let that table be whatever it should be. You have to show restraint. You have to know when to stop. People want to take a table like that, gouge out a bunch of shit, pour in epoxy, and really put their stamp on it. I get that. It’s tempting. It’s why people carve their names into trees. I think it’s much more interesting to find the right piece of lumber for that person and work within that parameter.
“Put something down for 24 hours and look at it with fresh eyes. ”
D.S.: Yeah, I’m competitive. In my lane. I don’t want or need to build every table in the world. But I should have the right of first refusal. That only seems fair (laughs). No one is more competitive than Stephanie.
S.A.: I let other people win sometimes.
D.S.: Which says how competitive you are! You LET them win.
D.S.: Twenty years ago, no. Now, yes. Almost every woodworker will take a live edge job now.
D.S.: We’ve had issues with tables in various places from time to time. They call, I stop what I’m doing, then I go address the issue and fix it. I give everyone the same warranty: it’ll be great, and if it’s not, call me.
If I’m dead, you’re out of luck.
“I love it when the tables look used and beaten up. I think stuff looks better that way. ”
D.S.: Teaching woodworking to my guys is as important to me as it is to them. If they’re really interested, I’m really interested in sharing. I’ve learned just as much from them as they’ve learned from me. There are things we do much differently now than we did before Eli started 7 years ago. We find better ways that work.
D.S.: You always want your kid to at least be proud of you and understand what you’re doing. If they’re interested enough to work with you or want to take over, that would be amazing. It’s taken a lot to build this toehold, and it’d be great if someone could take it over, but people gotta do their own thing too.
S.A.: A bar, a nightclub, and a restaurant. We sold the nightclub first. We only had it for two years, but we sold it when it was super hot. Then we opened the restaurant. We sold that when we moved to St. Louis. I didn’t sell the bar until 2010.
The hours. When you’re in your 20s, it’s fun to stay up until 5am and then jump on the back of your husband’s Harley and go have breakfast. Then you get married and have kids. You get to the restaurant at 3pm, doors open at 5pm, and then that Tuesday night just yawns in front of you and you’d rather be at home with your family. Add on people calling off or not showing up...no thanks.
I don’t mind putting 100% of myself into something. I actually prefer that. But I do want to not have to worry about it constantly. With a nightclub or a restaurant, you’re always worrying.
D.S.: We sold the restaurant and broke even. Which puts us ahead of about 80% of other restaurant owners.
D.S.: Stephanie’s red raspberry jam is my favorite. Or maybe it’s the blackberry jam. Close second are my mom’s sweet pickles—you can’t find them anywhere else, because they’re such a pain to make. And the sauerkraut we make. The pickled eggs in beet juice. I don’t know. I’m German. I love pickles.
“There’s nothing better than having a freezer full of meat.”
D.S.: I really miss having fresh milk. You can’t even describe to people the difference. Unpasteurized, straight from the tap.
D.S.: Mixed color fingerling potatoes from Mom’s garden. A 2-inch thick steak. Roasted asparagus. Stag. No TV. Just the fireplace.
SA: When we moved out here from DC, I brought 10 cases of my favorite beer from the East Coast. I was like, there’s no way I’m going to find good beer out there. I’m not drinking crappy local beer. When I got through all my beer, I tried a Stag and fell in love with it. I love Stag.
DS: If you don’t like Stag, you don’t like beer. Growing up, all the people around here drank Stag. Steak Taters And Gravy. Saint Ag. Our family friend used to have great sayings. He’d always say, “you know the thing I love about Stag? You can drink a case of it every night and still go to work the next day!”
I don’t care at all about the cans. Just don’t change the gold color or the recipe.
“It’s the local beer. It tastes like home. ”
