Conscious Choice: Leona’s: Chicago’s ‘Conscious’ Pizza Joint

August 2004

Leona’s: Chicago’s ‘Conscious’ Pizza Joint

by Jessica Sectzer

The menu at Leona’s restaurants touts non-GMO tofu and “Psychedelic American” greens washed in filtered water. But don’t get the wrong idea. Leon Toia, owner of Leona’s, a longtime family-owned chain with 18 restaurants in the city and suburbs, doesn’t like the label of health food restaurant. Instead, he prefers to call it “a conscious pizza joint.”

Call it health food, call it conscious pizza, call it what you will. The reality is that Toia and company have revamped Leona’s gargantuan menu to feature more foods that are organic, filtered, free range and vegan.

The seeds of change were planted decades ago, when Toia, now 50, was personally confronted with cholesterol problems at the age of 24. He tried to combat it with health retreats, yoga and fasting. When he didn’t find those practices sufficient he turned his attention to his everyday diet in both his personal life and the menu of the 50-year-old family-owned restaurant.

Toia bought the Leona’s chain from his father more than 10 years ago and has been placing healthier ingredients and foods into the menu despite his father’s reactions such as: “Udon what?!”

A little more than a year ago, Toia decided to intensify his commitment to “clean food,” starting with natural turkey and several months ago he rolled out a new menu that included healthier alternatives.

For example, Toia and the restaurant’s chef were successful in taking the food additive MSG (monosodium glutamate) out of the menu completely after it was discovered in 27 ingredients.

“It took a lot of time to get it out. It wasn’t easy. I’m proud of that,” said Toia.

In addition, Leona’s now serves an 8-oz. natural steak, uses filtered water in its homemade sauces and dressings, uses no lard and offers soy cheese. The bread is dairy-free and the chicken soup is cooked with chicken that’s hormone-free and 99 percent antibiotic free. Leona’s also serves one completely organic item — vegan minestrone soup.

“It’s not going to cure the world, but it’s one more thing you can do and feel good about,” said Toia.

Toia said there are endless possibilities to make food healthier, which leads to some confusion about what to do in these low-carb, food trend days.

“People are so lost right now,” said Toia.

Toia admitted he needed help navigating the healthy-food maze and two years ago hired a personal macrobiotic chef/educator.

“When you talk about small business ... you have the luxury of projecting your own beliefs upon the business; then you can only hope there are enough people that are feeling like you,” said Toia.

Apparently they do.

“I noticed some changes to the menu,” said Chicagoan Jason Sywak. “I would come back knowing that they serve this type of food.”

Since the menu changed, business has increased 15 percent, Toia said. Surprisingly, even to him, in the last three months Leona’s has sold 1,000 more vegan burgers than meat burgers.

Chicago restaurant patron Kate Walpole also gave the new menu a thumbs up: “I’d rather have no hormones in my food, instead of eating something processed that’s been lying around the fridge — you wonder what’s in that.”

Jessica Sectzer is a Chicago-based writer with a penchant for collecting restaurant menus.

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