Luigi's is the oldest family-owned restaurant in Augusta, spanning four generations. Bebe Ballas (front left) and Claudia Ballas hold a picture of founder Nicholas Ballas. The family includes Penny Ballas (back row, from left), Chuck Ballas Sr., Matthew Stewart, Penelope Ballas-Stewart, Chuck Ballas Jr. and Debi Ballas. MICHAEL HOLAHAN/STAFF

Web posted April 26, 1999

By Emily Sollie
Staff Writer

Beneath the clink of forks twirling up strands of spaghetti, the ping of wine glasses full of Chianti toasting a hearty meal and the sounds of Dean Martin singing That's Amore, members of the Ballas family -- lifelong proprietors of Luigi's restaurant at 504 Broad St. -- gather at a back table to reminisce about half a century of food and family.

``Look at that; it was back in the horse-and-buggy days,'' Chuck Ballas Sr. quips, holding up a 1956 photograph of himself and Budweiser General Manager Miles Ponds with the famed Clydesdale Horses. Behind the team of horses, a sign hanging from the front of Luigi's advertises a lunch special: ``Men's Business Lunch, 65›.''

The restaurant is virtually unchanged from what it was when Mr. Ballas' father, Nick, opened it in 1949. The recipes are the same, the music in the jukebox is the same, and most of the decor is the same. The prices, however, have gone up slightly. A plate of spaghetti that once sold for $1.25 is now $7 -- still a reasonable price, the Ballases say.

``We came here in '54,'' said Chuck Ballas' wife, Penny, who ran the restaurant with her husband from 1954 until their retirement in 1989, when their son Chuck Jr. took over. ``Chuck's father took sick, and we came down here from Boston to help him out for a while.''

When they moved to Augusta, the Ballases had no intention of staying.

``I wanted to stay five years, make a million dollars and go back North,'' Mr. Ballas said. ``But after six months here, you couldn't have moved me if you tried. You couldn't give me all of New England now for Augusta.''

``We just fell in love with the lovely city and the friendly people,'' Mrs. Ballas explained. ``It was so nice, compared to the big city that we came from. And no snow.''

And Augusta fell in love with Luigi's -- the restaurant that opened the city's eyes to the wonders of pizza.

``Nick Ballas introduced pizza to Augusta -- no one else served it,'' Mrs. Ballas said.

``To Augusta? To the Southeast -- are you kidding?'' Chuck Jr. cut in. ``Nobody back then knew what pizza was. They called it pizza pie. And it was very confusing because people would order it late, after their dinner, thinking it was a dessert.''

Though the Ballases are Greek, Nick Ballas opened an Italian restaurant because, as Mrs. Ballas put it, ``Nobody back then knew what Greek was.''

But as foreign travel became more common and Americans discovered Greek cuisine, customers started asking the Ballases to add Greek dishes to their menu. They started with a classic Greek salad, then added the baked Greek chicken that today is one of the restaurant's most popular entrees.

Most of the restaurant's original customers were soldiers from Fort Gordon and construction workers who were building a nuclear power plant just across the Savannah River.

``There weren't too many restaurants -- five or six in the whole downtown area,'' Mr. Ballas reminisces. ``Construction was still going on. They were just in the finishing stages at the Savannah River Plant. And they must have had 50,000 soldiers here because of the Korean War. At 3 in the morning there were more people on the streets downtown than there are now at noon because of the shift changes. It was a flourishing town. It really was.''

But as the restaurant became more established, the clientele became more, well, famous.

``Elvis ate here in 1956,'' Mrs. Ballas said. ``He wasn't really popular yet. We didn't really know much about him. To the kids he was popular, but not to us. We were in the kitchen anyway. The waitresses were the ones who were excited. I wasn't that impressed.''

But granddaughter Penelope Ballas-Stewart, the next generation of management in training, sings a different tune.

``Fourth-generation grandchildren are impressed that Elvis ate in our restaurant,'' she said. ``That's just really cool.''

Luigi's has become a favorite hangout for golfers and their families during the annual Masters Tournament, the Ballases said.

``We feed the Nicklaus family every year -- not Jack, but Barbara and all the kids come in,'' Mrs. Ballas said.

``They said it was really neat because it's one of the few times they all get together in one place,'' Penelope Ballas-Stewart added.

And professional golfer Ben Crenshaw has been a regular customer for nearly a quarter-century, they said.

But the one who really took the cake, Mr. Ballas said, was the late entertainer Jackie Gleason, who had a meal there in the '70s and then went next door to the Sports Center to shoot a game of pool.

``He was a real class act,'' Mr. Ballas said. ``Just a great guy.''

The only changes to the original decor are a mural depicting a Venice scene, painted in 1966 by then-Augusta College art professor Keith Cowling, and a bar added in 1984 in the far corner of the restaurant.

For a few years, there was a spinoff restaurant, Lil' Luigi's, in Big Tree Shopping Center off Washington Road. Chuck Ballas Jr. opened it in 1978 but sold it when he took over the downtown restaurant in 1989.

``I think the location down here is so much a part of Luigi's that it would take away from it to be anywhere else,'' Penelope Ballas-Stewart said.

When she takes over the restaurant after her father's retirement -- still quite a few years away -- she doesn't plan to make many changes. If it's worked the same way for 50 years, she figures, there's no need for changes.

``If it ain't broke, don't fix it,'' her grandfather agrees.

Emily Sollie can be reached at (706) 823-3340 or esollie@augustachronicle.com.