Louise and Joe Isidori at their Jupiter home. Photo by Steven Martine
Turkey is not on the menu at Joe Isidori’s house on Thanksgiving. “Boring. And dry,” the Michelin-starred chef says of the traditional bird. “From a chef’s standpoint, cooking a whole turkey is literally the worst thing in the world to do. You dry out the breast to get the legs cooked enough and it becomes kind of like sawdust.”
Instead, there’s roast pork alongside his mother’s stuffed mushrooms, plus “Aunt” Denise’s balsamic roasted peppers, sweet potatoes with marshmallows, and, most importantly, lasagna. “That’s the real star,” he says. “That’s a holiday dish right there.” Isidori’s version is no weeknight noodle-and-sauce fest. Instead, it’s a two-day production: baked, cooled, weighted down, refrigerated overnight, and baked again. “If you do it the right way, it could be as many as 50 layers,” he explains. “Rush the process and it would be soup.”
Joe Isidori’s 50-layer lasagna is a holiday staple at his family’s Thanksgiving table. Photo by Steven Martine
That distinction—honoring tradition without simply reproducing it—may offer the clearest window into Isidori’s storied career. “Everything I do comes from Mom, Dad, Grandma, aunts, uncles,” he says. For Isidori, that inheritance began practically as soon as he could see over a stove. He says he was cooking by age 5, standing on milk crates to plate pasta. He first learned his way around a professional kitchen at Frankie & Johnnie’s Pine Tavern in the Bronx, where his father, Artie Isidori, was a chef. In 1996, Artie opened his own restaurant: Arturo’s Pine Tavern in Mahopac, New York.
Culinary work wasn’t always voluntary for Isidori. When he misbehaved, his father banished him to the kitchen to clean industrial quantities of calamari, shrimp, and mussels. Eventually, he got so fast at the task that Artie had to admit that the threat had lost its edge. “My punishment turned into my career,” Isidori says, laughing.
Despite that early exposure and expertise, Isidori didn’t plan to follow in the family’s food business. “I always had two inclinations in life,” he says. “I wanted to be an artist or a creative. And I always wanted to be my own businessman.”
Joe Isidori in his home kitchen in Jupiter. Photo by Steven Martine
A talented painter, Isidori enrolled at Manhattan’s Fashion Institute of Technology as an advertising design major, picking up kitchen shifts to pay tuition. “Every kitchen I’d land in, the chef would ask, ‘Where did you learn all of this?’ I’d be like, ‘My dad’s a chef.’ I kind of shrugged it off. I really didn’t have a passion for it, but I was really good at it.”
Then fate struck: Isidori’s sister was seriously injured in a car accident, and his father suffered a second heart attack. With two family members hospitalized, someone had to run the restaurant. “I said, ‘All right, screw it.’ It was the Italian guilt—I couldn’t leave the family hanging,’” Isidori recalls. He withdrew from art school and stepped into his father’s kitchen full time. When Artie gave his son room to experiment, Isidori changed the dining room, reworked the kitchen, and created special menus. “Then I knew all of a sudden: This is my medium,” he recalls. “My passion changed. I was like, ‘Well, now I want to know everything about food.’”
Cerignola olives. Photo by Steven Martine
Isidori enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America and continued his education in professional kitchens across the country. By 2004, he had joined the Trump hospitality organization, eventually serving as vice president and corporate executive chef. His work culminated at The DJT Restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, where he earned a 2009 Michelin star.
“I was full of piss and vinegar. I wanted to prove to the world how great I was,” he admits. “My goal was to win Michelin stars, five stars, five diamonds, and I achieved all of it.” Yet the rigor of it all had kept Isidori from building much of a life outside the kitchen. “I had the star, but I didn’t have a family,” he says. “The only friends I had were the cooks standing next to me. It felt soulless.”
An Arthur & Sons cook prepares shrimp oreganata. Photo by Steven Martine
Then, in 2010, Isidori’s father died after suffering a third heart attack at age 65. By then, Artie had a Jupiter connection of his own: he had been living locally and working as a chef at Admiral’s Cove. For Isidori, the loss forced a reckoning. “That’s when it clicked,” he says. “‘Modern American molecular gastronomy is not who you are,’ I told myself. ‘Who you are is a New Yorker with a story to tell.’” The prospect of earning more culinary stars and diamonds suddenly lost its shine. “It never seemed worth it to me to keep chasing more,” he admits. “I had just met my wife, Louise. I wanted to get married. I wanted to have a kid. I wanted to be home.”
In search of his next venture, Isidori kept coming back to a single memory. “My happiest time with my dad was on Tuesdays,” he says. “We’d close the restaurant and go to the local luncheonette, where I’d get a cheeseburger deluxe and a milkshake.” So, in 2015, Isidori opened Black Tap Craft Burgers & Beer in SoHo, an 18-seat burger joint built around that specific memory. “People were like, ‘This guy’s a Michelin-starred chef and he’s decided to flip burgers in a luncheonette?’” But within days, the place took off, with hundreds of people lining up for his burgers.
Marinated roast pork takes turkey’s place on the Isidoris’ Thanksgiving carving board. Photo by Steven Martine
Then Louise, pregnant with the couple’s son Roman, asked him to make her a cotton-candy milkshake to satisfy a pregnancy craving. “She’s like, ‘Make it huge! Make it over the top!’” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Louise, you’re crazy! There are 300 people a day waiting for my cheeseburgers. They don’t want this cotton-candy milkshake.’” But Louise prevailed. Isidori and his team posted the resulting shake to Instagram, where it became a social-media phenomenon and helped fuel Black Tap’s rapid expansion. But eventually that success began to feel limiting. “The milkshake eclipsed me,” he says. “I’m not a one-trick pony and I wasn’t telling my story anymore.” He sold his equity in Black Tap in 2019.
“That’s when everyone started asking me, ‘Joe, what are you going to do now?’” he recalls. And this time, Isidori knew exactly the right answer. “I said, ‘I’m going to recreate my father’s restaurant.’” And so he did: Arthur & Sons opened in Manhattan’s West Village in 2022 as a love letter to the world that raised him. But Isidori is particular about the recipe that makes the brand run.
Personalized place settings, menus, and vintage-inspired glassware set the scene for an Isidori Thanksgiving. Photo by Steven Martine
“Arthur & Sons is three things. One, it’s family. It’s a story of father and son,” he says. “If my dad could see this place, he’d notice all the little touches. He’d love the vintage Tiffany lights. He would tell me, ‘Oh, we had this one. We had that one, too,’” pointing out the ones his dad would recognize immediately. Isidori’s mother has made sure she gets her due, too. “All you do is talk about your father,” he remembers her complaining after a television appearance on The Today Show. “When are you going to talk about me?” Isidori’s answer? “‘Ma, take it easy. We have your meatballs on the menu.’” (“My Mother’s Meatballs” remain among Arthur & Sons’ most popular dishes to date.)
Second, Isidori says, Arthur & Sons is about food. “It’s not about Italian-American food or authentic Italian food. It’s about New York Italian food.” And the third part? “It’s about me and how I incorporate myself into the story,” Isidori admits.
Dawn Leone, “Aunt” Denise Cicconi, and Joe’s mother Denise Beniamino raise a glass to the holiday. Photo by Steven Martine
Years before Arthur & Sons existed, Isidori remembers himself as a young prep cook in his family’s restaurant, Wu-Tang Clan blasting in his headphones while he pounded chicken cutlets. Out in the dining room, Sinatra was playing. Decades later, that unlikely combination is the soul of the Arthur & Sons aesthetic: Tiffany-style lamps and red sauce mixed with ’90s hip-hop, graffiti, live music, and a healthy dose of attitude. It’s not a shtick invented by a branding agency. It’s the world Isidori grew up in. “I take the family, I take the New York Italian recipe, and I add my style to it, and then I elevate it,” he says. That might mean making pasta in-house, sourcing higher-quality ingredients, or training the kitchen to execute familiar dishes with fine-dining discipline. “That doesn’t mean I change the recipe,” he says. “I just take some sort of left- or right-hand turn.”
Beyond the kitchen, Isidori designs his restaurants and treats the whole experience as a composition. “Everything in the restaurant is going to be me,” he says. “That’s my artwork now.”
The chef chats with guests over pre-dinner cocktails. Photo by Steven Martine
Jupiter, meanwhile, was never supposed to become part of the restaurant plan. Isidori bought a home here in 2020 and moved into it in 2022, but continued flying around the country for work and returning to South Florida on weekends. “I’d come home Thursday night or Friday morning to paradise,” he says. “It’s the middle of February and it’s 80 degrees. I’m like, ‘Why would I ever ruin that by opening a restaurant in Jupiter?’”
Louise Isidori designed a Thanksgiving tablescape that mixes white pumpkins, greenery, candles, Arthur & Sons sauce jars, and red roses arranged in empty tomato cans. Photo by Steven Martine
Then Louise was diagnosed with stage 4B ovarian cancer in 2024. “It changed everything, obviously. I couldn’t just get on a plane and travel anymore,” Isidori says. “I had to stay home and take care of my family.”
Isidori worked every connection he had made as a celebrity chef to get Louise in front of a world-class ovarian-cancer specialist. When he was told there was no appointment available for three months, he pushed back. “My wife will be dead in three months,” he remembers saying. “I’m not accepting that.” A well-connected friend intervened, and by 6 a.m. the next morning, Louise was in the surgeon’s office. Soon after, she underwent a 10-hour operation. “I just sat there in awe,” Isidori recalls.
For her part, Louise decided to make her diagnosis public—emerging from treatment determined to advocate for better ovarian cancer detection. “She’s is a fighter, like me,” Isidori says. Louise’s cancer had been discovered after she pushed to have a transvaginal sonogram—a test that’s not considered a frontline diagnostic option. “She said, ‘I need to let the world know about this option,’” Isidori recalls. “She looked at me and she goes, ‘You’re my famous celebrity chef husband. Can I use your platform? I want to tell my story.’”
His response was immediate. “I said: ‘Bet.’”
Isidori put his connections to work a second time, helping Louise share her story internationally, including on Good Morning America. Speaking publicly “became therapy for Louise,” Isidori says. “It motivated her instead of sitting home and saying, ‘Woe is me.’” As a couple, their philosophy of staying tough and sticking it out became simple. “We say, ‘The only way out is through,’” Isidori explains. “You can’t sit down. You can’t curl into a ball and give up. You got to fight.”
“Aunt” Denise’s peppers. Photo by Steven Martine
At the same time, Isidori began rethinking his own life. He restructured his businesses and gave his partners more control. And, he figured if he was going to keep working, he needed to do it closer to home. Arthur & Sons opened in Jupiter earlier this year and quickly became one of the area’s toughest reservations.
Isidori expected the restaurant to keep him busy and help his family put down roots. Instead, the Jupiter location became something bigger. Louise became increasingly involved in the local community, the couple began lending their names and energy to charitable causes—including local nonprofit Hearing the Ovarian Cancer Whisper (H.O.W.)—and the restaurant became part of their family’s new identity here. “The story of family has evolved,” Isidori says. “This whole nucleus of Jupiter has pretty much saved our lives…and it’s saving my family.”
Lobster tail pastries and cannoli. Photo by Steven Martine
Now another chapter is taking shape nearby. Isidori is targeting the opening of Chez Louise later this month. The roughly 50-seat white-tablecloth restaurant in Tequesta is inspired by the modern American cooking he was producing when he and Louise first met.
“It’s going to be a story about my wife and me,” he says. Louise’s instruction to her husband was simple: “At Arthur & Sons, you’re cooking your family’s food. I want you to cook your food again,” she told him. If Arthur & Sons looks backward through generations of Isidoris, Chez Louise belongs to this new chapter—to Joe and Louise and their son, Roman, to Jupiter, and to the family they have built here.
Friends and family load their plates at what Joe Isidori calls the “Thanksgiving abbondanza.” Photo by Steven Martine
And that brings things back to Thanksgiving, where Isidori and his wife preside over a table filled with friends and family. After Louise’s diagnosis, Isidori says, even the people around that table took on new meaning. “It actually made our circle of friends tighter, not bigger,” he says. “You learn a lot when you go through these things. So now the people that are at the table are the people who showed up when the shit hit the fan.”
Friends who stayed became family. “That’s a classic Italian thing,” he says. “We have an extended family of non-blood-related relatives.”
Louise and Joe Isidori toast the season. Photo by Steven Martine
At an Isidori Thanksgiving, everyone brings something. That’s how they end up with what he calls the abbondanza on the table—all the pastas, sides, and little touches. As for recipes? “There’s no recipe cards in an Italian household,” he says. The lasagna still disappears first and, if there are leftovers, gets eaten cold from the refrigerator the next morning. Turkey, of course, is still not invited.
What happens to the Isidori restaurant tradition in the next generation is less certain. “I pray to God he’s not in this business,” Isidori says of his son, Roman. “I talk more people out of the restaurant business than into it.” Then, almost in the same breath, the son of a chef qualifies that statement. “Even so, I’m never going to deter my son away from anything he wants to do.”
Roman, after all, would inherit a very different restaurant world than his father did. “When I was a kid, we were knock-around guys. You went into the restaurant business because you weren’t smart enough to do anything else,” Isidori says. “We Isidoris were cooks. Nothing special about it. I was just a kid from the street who was forced to cook—and I took that and made something out of it.”
If Roman chooses the same path, Isidori wants him to understand just how far he can go. “I’m going to make sure he knows he can make it into something iconic,” he says. “When they say the Isidori name, it won’t be average. It’ll be legendary. It’ll be immortal.”
Quick Bites
Joe Isidori dishes on Taco Bell, Florida footwear, boat ownership, and the ingredients he can’t live without in his home kitchen.
What’s always in your refrigerator at home? Everything needed to make a quick tomato-basil or marinara sauce
Who cooks at home when you’re off duty? My mother
What does Louise order at Arthur & Sons? Spaghetti Tomato Basil—her favorite
What’s Roman’s order? Caesar salad and grilled salmon
Does your mom order her own meatballs? She orders them every single time.
What’s one dish you’re surprisingly bad at making? I can’t bake bread for the life of me.
Most un-chef-like guilty pleasure? I love Taco Bell.
What have you become embarrassingly Floridian about since moving here? I wear shorts all the time.
Are you a flip-flops convert? No. No no no. I hate flip-flops. I’m a Hey Dudes guy.
Are you a boat owner yet? No. And I’m not going to be. I tried it and it didn’t work.
What’s your avorite local restaurant when you’re not eating at one of yours? The River House
What do you miss most about New York? Pizza
What don’t you miss? The weather
Dining and Cooking