Salvatore “Sam” Bilello, the founder and patriarch of Billello’s Restaurant, in Thibodaux, Louisiana, was the second of seven children born to Antonio and Vita Bilello—all of them boys. With his older brother assigned to work on the family’s farm, it fell to young Sam to help his mother cook and take care of the other children. Working alongside his mother in the Bilello kitchen, he developed a love for food and for cooking that would shape his life—and the lives of nearly everyone around him—for many decades to come.
For a while Antonio Bilello operated a bar and club that specialized in po’ boys, Louisiana’s trademark submarine-style sandwich, but it was Sam who went full-bore into business with the Venetian Bar and Donut Shop in downtown Thibodaux, a few miles off U.S. Highway 90. His donuts were so good that at times the line to get inside the place stretched down the block.
Sam had the touch.
In 1950, with his six brothers as co-owners, he opened Bilello’s Restaurant and Lounge on St. Mary Street. It quickly became a landmark on Bayou Lafourche. “We had people from all over the world to come to that place,” Bilello would recall many years later in an interview with the Daily Comet, the local newspaper. “When they came to Thibodaux, that is where they wanted to go. They couldn’t even pronounce the name, but they knew where they wanted to go.”
The restaurant’s menu was filled with Italian and French dishes at reasonable prices as well as such Cajun standbys as fried crawfish tails, crawfish étoufée, broiled oysters with bacon, and stuffed mirliton (a squash-like vegetable, also known as chayote, filled with shrimp and crabmeat).
Even when he turned the reins of the restaurant over to his son Donald, Sam was still there every day, working in the kitchen. In the early 1980s the Bilellos finally let go and sold the restaurant, but it didn’t last long under new ownership. It closed in 1987.
Sam Bilello died on December 27, 2005, at the age of 93. “He was always a cool gentleman, and if you had something to tell him, he’d listen to you,” Odel Zerinque, a longtime friend, recalled at the time. “He was a very, very nice guy.”
Today, Politz’s Restaurant occupies the building in Thibodaux that once was home to Bilello’s.
Lobster à la Newburg
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Loading...Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup mushrooms (pieces and stems)
- 2 cups milk
- 2 cups fresh heavy cream
- Dash of paprika
- 4 heaping tablespoons cracker crumbs
- 1/2 cup sherry wine
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 4 boiled lobster tails, diced
Instructions
Heat oven to 450 degrees.
Saute mushrooms in butter until brown. Add milk, cream, and salt and peper. Let mixture come to a boil, then add cracker meal until it thickens.
Stire in lobster and sherry. Pour into casserole and sprinkle top with paprika.
Put in 450-degree oven for about 1 minute and serve piping hot.
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