Casale's Halfway Club: Reno's Oldest Family-Run Italian Restaurant on East Fourth Street

Drive East Fourth Street out of downtown Reno toward Sparks and a brick building appears at 2501 East Fourth with a family name over the door. Casale's Halfway Club has been serving ravioli and red sauce from this spot since 1937, which makes it the oldest continuously family-owned restaurant in Reno. It began as a fruit stand beside the family house, and it was named for geography: when the Casales opened, this stretch of road sat halfway between Reno and Sparks.

The story belongs to a family as much as a building. John and Elvira Casale came from Italy, raised their children on this road, and watched the county road in front of their stand become part of the main highway across the country. Their daughter Inez spent more than seventy years in the kitchen. Four generations later, the restaurant still feels like a house where dinner is on. The exact year the stand first became a place to sit down is a little fuzzy; the dining room was serving by the early 1940s.

The Road Between Two Towns

In the 1930s this was an empty stretch between Reno and Sparks, ranch and dairy country with the railroad close by. The county road that ran between the two towns was part of U.S. 40, the transcontinental route that followed the old Lincoln Highway, and John Casale, who had worked a dairy near what is now Prater Way, saw that it would not stay quiet. He told his family the property would become a main thoroughfare. It did. Motels and auto courts lined the road within a few years, and every car on U.S. 40 between the two towns passed the front door.

That road has a long story of its own, told in our piece on how Fourth Street became Nevada's main street. The Casales' corner of it sat outside the city limits then, and Reno has since grown out to meet it. Another survivor of that same corridor, farther east, is the oldest bar in Sparks.

The Casale Family

John and Elvira Casale were married in Reno in 1920. After the dairy years ended, a former owner gave the family two lots up the road, and there they set up a roadside stand. Trucks brought oranges and apples down from Idaho and the Casales sold what the wholesalers did not take. Each October they bought wine grapes from Lodi and Colfax for neighbors who made their own wine at home. Elvira's handmade ravioli, first sold cold by the case for customers to cook themselves, turned the stand into a destination, particularly among local Italian families.

When the family applied for a liquor license, the neighboring motel owners objected. Elvira answered them at the county commission hearing: her bar, she said, would be cleaner than their motels. The license was granted. John died in 1943, and Elvira leased the business for about eighteen months before taking it back, and it was in those years that the place became the Halfway Club.

Inez, born in 1927, grew up at the family's dairy and then at the stand. In 1946 she married Casimir "Steamboat" Stempeck, who became a partner with her brother Jerry after his return from military service. Steamboat died in 1969, leaving Inez a widow with six children in her early forties, and she took over the kitchen and worked it well into her nineties; she died in September 2020. Her son Tony now owns the restaurant, with a fourth generation of grandchildren working beside him.

The Restaurant and Its Table

The building began as a combined business and home, with bedrooms among its rooms, and the family lived there until 1980. A ravioli room and a storeroom were added in the 1940s, the original brick walls stayed, and the dining room grew slowly around the kitchen: about ten tables and walls signed in pen by customers over the decades.

The menu is Northern Italian and has barely moved: ravioli, spaghetti, and lasagna under red sauce, all made on the premises, with garlic bread alongside. Pizza joined the menu in the early 1940s, when the stand became a restaurant. This is the cooking of the Italian families who settled the Reno-Sparks corridor, and the recipes passed from Elvira to Inez to the grandchildren now in the kitchen. The decades that filled the Riverside Hotel downtown with divorce-seekers also filled the motels and auto courts along Fourth Street, and the trade they brought was a large part of the neighborhood's business.

Casale's Today

The Halfway Club is no longer halfway to anything; the city has grown around it, and the old highway has become an ordinary urban street. What has not changed is the address, the brick, and the family at the stove. The state has recognized Casale's as the oldest continuously family-owned and operated restaurant in Reno, and in 2019 the city of Reno proclaimed a day in its honor. Inez was known across the Reno-Sparks area simply as Mama.

At a Glance: Casale's Halfway Club

• An Italian-American family restaurant at 2501 East Fourth Street, Reno, on the old U.S. 40 and Lincoln Highway corridor.
• Founded in 1937 by John and Elvira Casale, Italian immigrants, as a roadside fruit stand; handmade ravioli turned it into a restaurant.
• Named for its original position halfway between Reno and Sparks.
• Inez Casale Stempeck, born 1927, worked the kitchen for more than seventy years until her death in 2020; her son Tony and the grandchildren carry it on.
• Famous for ravioli, spaghetti, and lasagna in red sauce; pizza has been on the menu since the early 1940s.
• The oldest continuously family-owned and operated restaurant in Reno.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is it called the Halfway Club?

The Casales' property stood on the county road midway between Reno and Sparks. The city has since grown out to meet it, but the name stuck.

When did Casale's Halfway Club open?

1937, as a fruit stand and small store at the family's home on East Fourth Street. Ravioli, a bar, and eventually full dinners followed.

Who was Inez Casale Stempeck?

The daughter of John and Elvira Casale. Born in 1927, she worked the restaurant's kitchen for more than seven decades and was widely known as Mama Inez. She died in 2020 at the age of 93.

Is Casale's still open?

Yes. It remains a family-run restaurant on East Fourth Street. Call ahead for current hours.

Conclusion

Very few Reno restaurants from the 1930s are still serving. Casale's has stayed because a family kept the stove lit, one generation after another, on a road that has been a county road, a transcontinental highway, and a city street. The halfway mark has moved a long way since 1937. The ravioli has not.

We return to Fourth Street often at The Eclection, from the Lincoln Highway to the Riverside. To bring a piece of that era home, explore our curated collection at The Eclection.

Resources & Further Reading

For deeper study, these are reliable, non-commercial starting points:

• Online Nevada Encyclopedia — the Fourth and Prater oral history project, including Inez Stempeck's interviews.
• Reno Historical — the entry on Casale's Halfway Club.
• Nevada Historical Society — the state museum and research library for Nevada history.

Hero image: a set of mid-century Knowles China Company restaurant plates from The Eclection's collection, shown to evoke the era's roadside dining. It is not a photograph of Casale's Halfway Club.