WHEN HE WAS younger, Derek Deaver contemplated becoming a commercial pilot, “Then I crashed a plane,” he says offhandedly, “and kind of lost interest.” After a failed restaurant in Reno (“We left St. Louis in a U-Haui on 9/11,” he says. “I should have known.”), Deaver chose a different flight path and now owns six successful local restaurants: four Three Kings Pubs and two Casa de Tres Reyes—one of each, ironically enough, located at the airport. —G.M.
ONLINE Visit stlmag.com to read how Deaver secured his head chef at Tres Reyes.
In high school, I was working at Dierbergs as a bagger and a Stocker. My friend was working at Duffy's with all these cute girls making tons of money in tips…and I was stocking shelves. So I got a job at Duffy's, first as a busboy and then in
