The language is Italian, but the message is universal. “La Famiglia é Tutto.”
So says a neon sign in the Lombardo’s piano lounge. “Family is everything.” In its gleaming interior and a menu stocked with classic recipes and 21st century culinary creations, the relaunched Lombardo’s brings its family to yours.
Lancaster businessman Sam Lombardo bought the family business from his cousins in 2018 and took it on a journey of rediscovery. The origins go back to 1946, when brothers Joe, Jim, and Dave Lombardo were delivering ice to Lancaster restaurants and decided to open one of their own. The dishes came from their sister Toddy, keeper of the family recipes. In 1969, they moved the business to Harrisburg Pike.
It was a red-checkered tablecloth kind of Southern Italian cafe, “small but family-oriented,” Lombardo recalls.
Family recipes reigned then, and in the renovated and refreshed Lombardo’s, unveiled at the same spot in November 2020, they still hold a place of pride. Lombardo hired a powerhouse team of chefs, cooks, and pizza makers to recharge the menu. The chefs visited top restaurants in southern Florida, New York City, and New Jersey. There, they shadowed chefs and collected ideas for exceptional, Italian-inspired appetizers and entrees to complement the Lombardo’s classics.
Every meal starts with a complementary plate of cold peppers fried in garlic and olive oil, served with bread and herbed oil.
“That was my mother’s recipe, a staple when I was growing up,” says Lombardo. “I wanted something people could enjoy that’s different than what other restaurants do.”
In the kitchen, 60 pounds of Lombardo’s signature sauce might be cooking in the giant kettle. Take a bite, and the flavors of the stick-to-the-pasta sauce come in waves—tomato, pork, cheese. That’s because the Lombardo’s meatballs, also from a cherished family recipe, are cooked in the sauce. Served on fresh, house-made pasta, they offer an enticing blend of tastes.
“The sauce is the Lombardo’s recipe, the same as 1946,” says Lombardo. “It was passed on from Aunt Toddy to my cousin Paul, and from Paul to my chefs.”
Other family dishes got upgrades. The escargot still nestles in a butter pesto garlic base but, unlike its predecessor, is prepared and served fresh in the shell. “It’s wonderful,” says Lombardo.
The menu additions offer contemporary twists on classic tastes, such as the black truffle arancini, or rice ball, served with tomato fennel jam. Lombardo loves the chilled seafood salad of fresh calamari, scallops, shrimp, tomato, and light olive oil and lemon with capers. The pizza dough is modeled after a famous New Jersey pizza parlor’s. Steaks and burgers stack up against any in Lancaster County, Lombardo says.
Chef de Cuisine Ryan Stradley’s favorite dish is the wild mushroom gemelli pasta, created by Executive Chef John Marconi.
“Lombardo’s has been around for so long and has its name set in stone,” says Stradley. “We wanted to not only bring it back to the name it carried for so long but also bring in the new, and give our diners an exciting experience. Sure, you can come in and get a classic spaghetti and meatballs, but you can also try the gemelli and feel as though you may have stepped into New York but still be here in Lancaster.”
That same spirit of traditional and contemporary carries into the redesigned restaurant. Manhattan-based designer Julia Roth created a transformation with builder Aston Black and flooring provider Certified Carpet, both Lancaster-based. Red brick was painted a crisp white by Lancaster-based Two Dudes Painting Company. Banquettes, booths, and chairs made in Manhattan invite couples to sit and snuggle, or groups to socialize.
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The space flows easily among four distinct dining areas. The bar and booths hint at Lombardo’s love of sports cars, with glass-printed photos of cars from his collection by Jeremy Hess Photography, over booths upholstered in a black-and-white racing stripe. (And try not to miss the men’s room mural featuring Lombardo’s friend, champion racecar driver Brian Redman.)
In the piano lounge, Sam’s grandfather Saverio Lombardo smiles down from a mural. Murano glass sparkles in the mirrors and a custom-made wall hanging. Seating is upholstered in a luscious gray crushed velvet.
In the dining room, a mural on the back wall practically draws you into the cliffside Italian town of Gasperina, hometown of Lombardo’s grandparents. Another painting from the same studio, New York-based Silver Hill Arts, takes diners to the Bay of Naples, where his mother came from. A side room can be made private by windows that frost at the touch of a switch. There, another Silver Hill mural introduces the family that Sam Lombardo grew up with—aunts, uncles, and parents.
They are the reason Lombardo bought and revived the business that still bears his family name. All those families lived near each other and did everything together. The restaurant was the hub, where “La Famiglia é Tutto.”
“I would come into the old restaurant with my parents, and I knew everybody,” he says. “Our family existed around this restaurant. It was the family hub. I just had to do what I could to keep the name going and to keep the restaurant history with all this great food.”
Lombardo's
216 Harrisburg Ave, Lancaster, PA 17603
lombardosrestaurant.com | 717.394.3749
