Among the great chefs of Italian cuisine working in America, many are immigrants from Italy, who talk of the influence of their grandparents and the flavors of their youth. Some have earned international accolades. But few can say they’ve cooked for two popes.
Chef Salvo Lo Castro checks all those boxes. His wild culinary ride from small town Sicily to Manhattan included 10 years as a Vatican chef. And now he has brought those experiences, as well as a deep passion for food, wine and life, to New York.
Three years ago, Lo Castro came to Manhattan and within a year found a developer/investor partner to open coffee shops with him and expand his dream. There are now four Casasalvo cafés in Manhattan—all selling espresso for a democratic $2.50.
Last summer Lo Castro, 52, debuted Casasalvo Restaurant in SoHo, with its elegant wood-paneled room, tablecloth service and inventive cuisine that reflects Lo Castro’s Sicilian roots from Mount Etna. “My gastronomic culture is Etna,” says Lo Castro. “I’ve exported those flavors to the world.”
Sicilian influences are found in his fresh, homemade pastas, his savory and sweet meatballs and his beef and vegetable ragu. They are also in the touches he gives to dishes like salted edamame served with a pair of Sicilian sauces—one based on pistachios and the other a wild fennel cream—or tuna sashimi marinated in a Mediterranean salmoriglio of olive oil and lemon and lime juices. Or Casasalvo French fries seasoned with garlic, parsley and melted Sicilian style primo sale cheese.
A Journey Centered Around Good Food
Lo Castro grew up in the town of Linguaglossa on Etna’s north face, which in the last 20 years has experienced a wine boom. “When I was growing up there was no culture of fine wine on Etna—it was all familial,” says Lo Castro, who as a boy trod Nerello Mascalese grapes for the family’s red wine. Since then, he says, “Wine has become the motor of everything in Sicily: gastronomy, tourism, the economy and society.”
Lo Castro developed a passion for cooking through his maternal grandfather, who ran a rosticceria selling prepared foods and fresh pasta. His father, a local mechanic, advised him to learn English and travel the world. For his high school years, he enrolled at a pair of hotelier schools in Sicily and Switzerland.
He worked his first job as a line cook in Sicily at Taormina’s San Domenico Palace, a medieval convent converted to a grand hotel in the 19th century. (Four Seasons purchased it in 2020 and it was used as the setting for “The White Lotus” TV series’ second season in 2022). Next, Lo Castro traveled for seven years as an itinerant chef in France, Britain, Switzerland, Rome and Florence, where he worked a stint at Wine Spectator Grand Award winner Enoteca Pinchiorri.
During the Vatican’s Jubilee of 2000, he volunteered with a fraternal organization as a cook for pilgrims to Rome. Later that year he was offered a job in the Vatican on a team of six chefs for papal events. Lo Castro spent a decade there working for popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Though each pope had his particular tastes (the German Benedict was fond of potato gnocchi and Bavarian desserts), Lo Castro expanded his culinary range by preparing foods for world leaders from U.S. presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton to Queen Elizabeth II and the future King Charles III.
“The concept is very different with every guest,” says Lo Castro. “Normally these very important people have very important diets of things they can eat, so the papal secretary sends you a list of what you can prepare.”
For wine, he says, “I remember with the French delegations they would serve French wines, but for all the other delegations in the world, it was Italian wine. Mostly Tuscan wines like Chianti Classico and Brunello.”
“There was nothing from Sicily then,” he adds with a laugh. “Probably now that has changed. I don’t know.”
Lo Castro had little direct interaction with the pontiffs, though, he recalls, Benedict once found him smoking in a courtyard and implored him to stop. “He told me, ‘It’s not good,’” Lo Castro says, recounting how the Pope prayed for him. “He put his hands here on the top of my head.”
Lo Castro didn’t kick the habit and eventually left the Vatican. For a time he worked outside Rome on lake Vico, where one of his clients was British actor Anthony Hopkins, who was acting as Pope Benedict in the film “The Two Popes.”
“Anthony Hopkins told me, ‘Salvo…your food…is a drug’,” he says imitating the actor’s deep voice and measured delivery.
Falling In Love With The Big Apple
After several years in Romania, where he ran a gastronomic restaurant and was a regular on Romanian television, Lo Castro came to New York on vacation in December 2022 and fell in love. “When I got here, my God, I said, ‘This is my city.’ The vibe, the culture, just as it was in the films I saw as a boy.”
Lo Castro’s resumé earned him a green card for “extraordinary ability” and he got to work.
The chef is full of infectious enthusiasm and a volcanic energy, which he is applying in full force to his American dream. In 2026, he plans to start selling his Made in Italy Homeware collection and to open Casasalvo restaurants in South Hampton, Dallas and West Palm Beach.
Italian restaurateurs have long been ambassadors of many things, including wine. And in this cooled wine market, Lo Castro is expanding his wine program with plans of doubling the labels on his wine list from 400 to 800.
Unsurprisingly, he takes a welcome, heartfelt approach to vino. “Wine is cuisine,” he says, “and love and passion—all of it mixed together.”
Dining and Cooking