Inside Northside July-August 2025

A Beloved Chef at Eighty-Three

Why Retire When You Love What You Do?

By Mimi Greenwood Knight

The Northshore held its collective breath last June, when word got out that beloved local chef and restaurateur, Sal Impastato, had taken a tumble from his second-story balcony. In fact, so many friends and Sal & Judy’s Restaurant patrons crowded his hospital room, during his recovery, that the nursing staff had to chase them out—on more than one occasion. After a ten-day hospital stay and three weeks in a rehab hospital, nobody was surprised when Impastato went directly from rehab to the restaurant where he set about preparing that night’s menu.

“I fussed at him and even told on him to his surgeon,” said longtime Sal & Judy’s employee, Zoe Stigler. “He told me to leave him be. It’s what he loves to do. Let him do it.”

At 83, the word “retirement” isn’t in Impastato’s vocabulary. “What am I going to do at home? Die?” he says. What age does he think might be reasonable for retirement? “I don’t know. 93?” he says with a mischievous glint in his eye. But his family, employees, and faithful customers will be surprised if he calls it quits even then.

For this Northshore icon, days begin with watering the fruit trees at his home on Lake Road in Lacombe, a short drive from Sal & Judy’s Restaurant. He’s at the restaurant by 10:30 handcrafting his pasta, sausage, and other ingredients and calling produce, meat, and seafood purveyors to task accepting only the choicest and freshest ingredients. His nights are spent wowing guests with signature Italian and Sicilian dishes and greeting visitors for whom no visit to Sal & Judy’s is complete without a tableside chat with Impastato. He finally heads home at 11:00 PM. And the next day, he does it all over again.

It’s a work ethic he learned as a boy on the family farm in Cinisi, Sicily where the family worked together to make cheese from their goat herd, olive oil from their olive groves, wine from their vineyards, and tomato sauce with ingredients picked fresh from their garden. Impastato quit school at age 11 to work the family farm and serve as shepherd to the family goats.

At age 18, he set his sights on America, landing in New York in 1960 but quickly meeting up with his brother who was already in New Orleans. He spent years working at top restaurants throughout the French Quarter, most notably the Napoleon House, which was run by the Impastato family from 1914 to 2015. He even lived above the Chartres Street restaurant before taking a detour to Dallas in the early 60s. There he made a friend for life when he worked with the late Chris Karageorgiou, owner and chef of the famed La Provence Restaurant, in Lacombe.

The two soon made their way back to Louisiana where Impastato returned to the Quarter working in the kitchen at Moran’s and La Louisianne Restaurant and bartending at the famous Old Absinthe House. “I’ve done every job you can do in a restaurant,” Impastato said. “I’ve cooked, bussed tables, washed dishes, but I made the most money bartending.”

By the early 70s, Karageorgiou was ready to open his own restaurant and tried to coax Impastato to join him, to add his Italian and Sicilian influence to Karageorgiou’s French. But Impastato wanted to make his own mark. So, in 1974 he plunked down $50,000—a fortune to him at the time—on an old gas station which he fashioned into a restaurant. He named it Sal & Judy’s and, even after his marriage dissolved, he kept the name.

“People thought I was crazy to open a restaurant in Lacombe where there wasn’t much of anything in the 1970s,” Impastato said. “But I knew people in the city

who followed me here. One doctor out of Bogalusa, who’d originally told me I was crazy to open in Lacombe, brought a lot of people here. We still get a lot of business from Bogalusa today.”

Right away, Sundays at Sal & Judy’s were busiest as people from New Orleans enjoyed a drive to the country and an authentic Italian or Sicilian meals. Impastato continued to make everything by hand using only the freshest ingredients the way he’d learned back in Sicily, and within a year, the restaurant was on the map.

“My mother taught me how to make tomato sauce, veal cannelloni, spaghetti and meatballs, and many other things I still make using her recipes,” Impastato said.

But for Impastato, the food comes second to the relationships. “I get to meet a lot of nice people, and my customers have been very loyal to me,” he said. “People work here a long time. And even when they leave, they come back to visit.”

“My grandparents came to Sal & Judy’s in the 60s,” said Stigler. “I’ve been here 15 years, but Sal and I have been friends for 40. My sister worked here, too, and met her husband while they both worked for Sal.”

That family connection isn’t unusual. Another employee, Lori Burris worked at Sal & Judy’s and before long her daughter was working there, and then her granddaughter.

“We actually have a lot of siblings and friends of employees who come to work with us,” Stigler said. “It’s a warm, family environment. When employees show up for work, the first thing they do is find Sal and give him a kiss. Then, that’s the last thing they do before they leave at night. A lot of young people will work here before they head off to college. Then whenever they’re back in town, they come by to see Sal. They bring their future husband or wife to meet him, bring in their new babies in to show him.” In fact, a former employee recently came in after 35 years. Impastato remembered them immediately and called them by name.

Impastato’s two grandsons—both named Sal—currently work at the restaurant, while they’re in school. And they’re not doing the cushy jobs either. Both are learning the ropes in the restaurant’s kitchen. His son, Jimmy (actually also named Sal), came to work there, while he was finishing up college, and never left.

One annual event that brings together employees, friends, and loyal customers is a yearly Christmas party Impastato hosts for the children in the local Head Start program. “The kids get a shrimp dinner, a visit from Santa, and a gift,” Stigler said. “Sal and few of his customers and friends donate everything and employees volunteer to work. A good time is had by all.”

Plenty of celebrities make their way to Sal & Judy’s, too, including frequent visits from John Goodman and Saint’s owner, Gayle Benson, who honored Impastato with a custom Saints football, last year for Sal & Judy’s 50th anniversary. Other local chefs, such as John Besh and Pat Gallagher, love any excuse to indulge in one of Impastato’s meals and a chat with a mentor.

When he does tear himself away from the restaurant, Impastato loves to travel back to Sicily to visit his cousin and sisters and actually still maintains a home there and Facetimes with them every day. Or he might make a shorter trek across the lake to Metairie where his brother has Impastato’s Restaurant. He’s even corralled all the grandkids and taken them to Sicily which he says is exhausting—but he’s already planning their next trip.

Meanwhile, son Jimmy is ready and willing to take the reins when Impastato decides to retire. I hope he’s a patient man because it doesn’t look like this Northshore icon will be hanging up his apron any time soon.