LA VITA É Bella
WITH 35 YEARS (AND COUNTING!) IN THE RESTAURANT BUSINESS,
ALBERTO LOMBARDI CONTINUES TO FEED HIS INSATIABLE DRIVE.
BY EMILY WISE MILLER PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRANTON ELLERBEE
lberto Lombardi wakes up happy.
To this patriarch of Lombardi Family Concepts and owner of Dallas eateries including Toulouse, La Fiorentina, and
Bistro 31, among others, the glass is always
half full. Certainly he is nothing if not prolific. Having logged 35 years in the business,
Lombardi still opens restaurants at the frantic pace of almost one per year. The latest is
Café des Artistes, an ambitious piano lounge
occupying the finicky ground floor of One
Arts Plaza in the space that formerly housed
Screen Door. So what drives Lombardi? “It’s
not for the money,” he says. “It’s the excite-
A
ment, always doing something new.”
And when one of Lombardi’s restaurants
doesn’t work out? When the timing or loca-
tion is wrong (think Lombardi Mare, Cibus)?
He simply moves on, relationships and ego
intact. As his oldest daughter Anna says, “He
taught us that you have to look forward and
not back; the way he grew up, with lots of
love but basically having to fend for himself,
I think it gives you the feeling you have noth-
ing to lose.”
Lombardi grew up in Emilia-Romagna in
the town of Forli. After leaving home at a
young age, he did a short stint at the Hotel
