The Oldest Restaurant in Nevada Celebrates 88 Years of Red-Sauce Tradition

When Haley Stempeck was born, her first stop after the hospital was Casale’s Halfway Club, a small but humming Italian American restaurant owned and operated by her grandmother on East 4th Street. “This was where you showed off your new baby,” she says. “’Cause this is where the family was.” 

Named for the traditional midpoint between Reno and Sparks, Nevada, Casale’s Halfway Club remains one of northern Nevada’s most treasured historic landmarks. It’s also a great place to unwind with pizza, pasta, and a carafe of wine. By all accounts, it may be the oldest operating restaurant in the state, passing through four generations and now run by Haley, who has grown up to understand the timeless combination of food, family, and familiarity.

The roots of the operation stretch back to John Casale, an Italian immigrant who worked the Tonopah mines before moving to the Reno-Sparks area to buy a business called the Coney Island Dairy and raise a family. He was connected through correspondence with Elvira Pazzagli, who traveled from Genoa in Italy to become his bride. The couple built a house just a few blocks away.

That home, which would become Casale’s Halfway Club, opened a small produce stand out front in 1937, serving food to motorists on the old Lincoln Highway (U.S. 40). The road was a paved, dusty conduit between the growing Reno and Sparks communities — and a relatively modest stretch on a transcontinental route connecting New York and San Francisco. From there, the business evolved into a small market and deli, serving meats from a counter that eventually became the bar with a scale still on display. Back then, the signature ravioli sold uncooked, an option that continues as tradition today and remains especially popular around the holidays.

The post-war era brought a boom in casinos, vacationers, and family homes, and as Reno changed, so did Casale’s. The family introduced hot meals in the 1940s; by the end of the following decade, the business grew so large that John and Elvira moved into bungalows behind the restaurant, where they lived out the rest of their days. Doors and walls were removed as the dining room expanded into what used to be children’s bedrooms.  

The Casales’ daughter Inez Stempeck took charge of the restaurant as an adult, keeping the recipes locked in her memory before she eventually — begrudgingly — wrote them down for others in the kitchen to access. “Mama Inez” became the face of the restaurant, a source of affection for regulars, and a local presence in Reno for decades. When she and son Tony Stempeck (her right-hand man in running the business, Haley’s father, and a local strong personality in his own right) passed away three weeks apart during the pandemic, it generated national headlines.

Today, Haley follows their lead, running Casale’s with the help of family, including her aunt Maria Rogers, husband Paul Kramer, and, as always, anyone eager to pitch in. 

“It’s so funny having four generations of family here,” Haley says, noting how everyone gravitates toward a specialty. “When I was growing up, Uncle Jerry made the vinaigrette for our salad, my grandma was the ravioli lady, my dad was the sauce guy — the sauce boss, we called him — and our aunt and uncle are still here most Tuesdays, helping us make meatballs. E very little item on the menu is a family project.”

At first glance, Casale’s reflects what many Americans expect in traditional Italian restaurants, from red-and-white checkered tablecloths to a firm dedication to red tomato-heavy sauces. But history hides within the recipes: Ravioli gets made with the same wooden rolling pins that Elvira brought with her from Genoa. It’s one of the best-selling items, along with the lasagna, added in the mid-1970s, making it the newest addition to the menu. “We’re not making groundbreaking daily specials or anything like that,” Haley says. “We’re making what my grandmother and my great-grandmother made before us.”

Lasagna gets cooked to order in casserole dishes (or “crocs”) in individual and shareable sizes. (It’s not uncommon for a single diner to order the latter for themselves, Haley says.) Ask for the Valentine’s Special — named not with couples in mind, but after a customer with a special request — and you’ll receive lasagna and ravioli on the same plate. 

While Las Vegas became known for convenient marriages, Reno’s reputation for quick and easy divorce laws may be the reason Casale’s became the first restaurant in the city to serve pizza. “A divorcee from New York was out here in the 1940s and she was craving pizza,” Haley says. “And my great-grandmother said, ‘If you can teach me how, I can make it for you.’”

The pizza that arrived at her table came topped with longhorn cheddar because the deli didn’t carry mozzarella — and that’s how Casale’s continues to make its pizzas today. The tradition works best with the big, savory flavors of the Bagna Cauda Special, marked by punches of garlic and anchovies, or a salami, meatball, and mushroom combination pie. If there’s a story behind the inclusion of roasted cashews on the Health Spa pizza, it’s long been forgotten: it’s just one of those things the family has done for decades.

Watching quirks and special customer requests evolve into policy only makes Casale’s more endearing. There’s no chicken or veal Parmesan. The meatballs — all beef, no breadcrumbs — are baked once, then cooked in sauce to a tenderness that pairs well with the crackling butter-drenched garlic bread. Don’t even ask: The soup is always minestrone. Order it for a classic start to any meal here.

The bar area leans into the spirit of a weathered cowboy saloon, tipping a hat to Old West heritage and road trip culture with a haphazard collection of decorations, from neon signs and random memorabilia to the stainless steel keg table that lengthens the bar. Each one has its own story, so feel free to ask any roving family members about the vintage bottles on display and random signatures etched across the walls and ceiling. 

“My father was drumming up business with Jäger shots in the ‘80s,” Haley says, noting that when a customer finished off a bottle, they could sign the label and slap it on the wall. The policy loosened to a signature on the wall for every shot of the German liqueur. “Now that real estate is at a premium, it’s two shots of Jäger to sign the wall… People come in 40 years later and find their name.”

The drink selection isn’t fussy and there is no cocktail menu. Like any good bartender in Reno, the Casale’s team is always ready to serve Picon Punch (a local favorite connected to northern Nevada’s legacy of Basque immigrants). Lemon drop martinis with huckleberry-infused vodka are also a house specialty, but order what you like. 

Despite its established template and reputation, Casale’s success never feels guaranteed in a fraught industry. “The restaurant business is hard,” Haley says. “They say the first generation creates it, the second generation builds it, and the third generation loses it. You can see it in Reno.”

Casale’s sits on the outskirts of the city’s up-and-coming Brewery District, far enough from the action to be a place that locals and regulars go out of their way to visit, not accidentally stumble upon. Back in the day, the restaurant was surrounded by motor lodges that felt the rumble of freight trains passing by. Today, the city continues to make slow but steady commitments to improve the 4th Street tourist corridor.  “For years and years, these streets didn’t have sidewalks,” Haley says. “It was essentially gravel. We didn’t have street lights. Those came in the last 10 years.”

Casale’s, which once operated seven days a week, now welcomes customers only Tuesday through Saturday. When Inez was pregnant with Maria, her sixth child, the doctor insisted she take at least one day a week off. She chose Sundays, which became a popular day for fishing when the matriarch remarried in 1975. After Inez and Tony passed away in 2020, the restaurant closed on Mondays, too, stressing the importance of family time amid the uncertainty of the pandemic. 

Yet little else has changed — and regulars like it that way. There was a small uprising when the restaurant replaced the small hooks on the bathroom doors with proper locks. “So many people consider this place their home away from home and our family their family,” Haley says. “And we’re incredibly fortunate for that.” 

“Folks choose us, whether celebrating the happiest moments in their lives — proposals and that kind of thing,” says Maria. “Or the saddest — celebrations of life.”

While still the “biggest little city in the world,” Reno is on a culinary upswing, especially in neighborhoods like Midtown and the Wells Avenue District, where customers can bounce from one local restaurant to another. Yet Casale’s Halfway Club continues to anchor the local restaurant scene in its own historic corner of the city. Don’t be surprised if it lives to over 100.