I like to keep you up-to-date about some of the new restaurants in Slidell and I have recently found one that is worth your time to visit.
El Patron is now open in the former site of the Saltgrass Steakhouse, right to the back corner of the Fremaux Town Center as you exit the area and head down Town Center Parkway towards the new Amazon distribution center.
No doubt there are plenty of Mexican restaurants in Slidell, and personally I have always been partial to my friends at Carreta’s where Daniel and Carlos Valencia have maintained one of the best Mexican restaurants in the region for years.
El Patron is the newest addition to the Mexican restaurant lineup, and I have gotten to know co-owner Leo Campos since attending a ribbon cutting for his grand opening, and then doing an interview for a business story we ran in last week’s Slidell Independent.
Leo is still a young man but has spent nearly 20 years of his life working in Mexican restaurants, all starting when he was a teenager with his dad. He knows the business as well as anyone could, and it is quite obvious at El Patron.
Topping the list of reasons to visit is the food—and what else is most important, right? I’ve eaten a few meals there and have walked away every time believing it was as good as any Mexican food I’ve ever had. Personally, I love the steak quesadilla, but my wife had some enchiladas that she did not need to bring home—since they were completely gone!
The former Saltgrass building is really a cool site for a restaurant, and they have great service, as well as live music a couple of times a week.
I’m always about eating at our local restaurants. Leo and his wife Mariali, one of the El Patron managers, have settled in Slidell now and can join the list of great local restaurants to support.
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I got information recently about a former Slidell resident who might have moved away but has found some pretty amazing success in the automobile industry in South Carolina.
Many of you who have lived for a while in Slidell are familiar with the Lambert family, especially as it relates to Val’s Meat Market, that operated for many years on Pontchartrain Drive.
I personally got to know several in the family, and especially Pat Lambert, who became one of the top area football coaches at several Slidell high schools.
Terry Lambert was born in Slidell to Val Lambert and Cheryl Duthu, attending Slidell High, and then moving to Ohio. His grandparents were Clarence and Catherine Lambert, who owned Val’s Meat Market. Terry’s maternal grandmother was Lucy Band, and along with her husband Alex, owned a security company in Slidell. So, you can see there are probably a lot of Slidellians who are reading this and nodding with familiarity when it comes to the Lambert name.
After Terry served with the U.S. Army, he got an opportunity to sell cars, and apparently found his thing. Moving up the ranks, he was offered a general sales manager spot at a Chevrolet dealership in Augusta, GA, making the most of that opportunity before he partnered with the Auto Group and purchased what is now Terry Lambert Hyundai in N. Augusta, SC.
With the one-year anniversary of the dealership coming up, his wife Theresa decided to do something pretty sweet. She contacted me and wanted to put a full-page ad in the Slidell paper to let folks know how well her husband had done. The couple met on a blind date and were married in 1995.
So, the ad in today’s paper that shows Terry, and his staff is all from a girl who must love her man. They have now been married 28 years and have four boys. Chris, 27, is in the Army; John Patrick, 23, works at the same dealership his dad first started at; Michael, 20, works with his dad at the Hyundai dealership; and Joseph, 14, just started high school. The couple recently had their first grandbaby, Charlie, compliments of Chris and his wife Miriam.
What a great story I get to tell you about a strong Catholic family that is living the American dream because of a guy who worked hard from a young age, a work ethic he said came from his grandfather Clarence Lambert.
He and Theresa must feel beyond blessed with all their boys and now the grandbabies starting to join the family.
Theresa tells me there are plenty of Lamberts still living in this area, and I thought it would be fun to pass along a good Slidell story about a guy who started in our neck of the woods and has a great success story to tell. As Theresa said, “we taught our boys that nothing gets handed to you without working hard for it.”
Kevin Chiri can be reached by e-mail at kevinchiri@gmail.com.