NORTHAMPTON — Since Gombo’s opening in May 2023, Cassidy Bowman has been a regular at the New Orleans-inspired cajun restaurant and bar on Northampton’s Main Street, frequently seen sitting outside together with his Siberian husky dog Lucy.

Bowman first began going to Gombo after dropping off his son at a yo-yo class at the A2Z Science & Learning Store.

“I would come up here with Lucy, looking for an hour to kill,” Bowman recalled. “As soon as it opened, we sat down outside in the chairs, and it was love at first sight.”

Striking up a friendship with John Piskor, the restaurant’s owner, the two would sometimes joke about Bowman buying the restaurant. But one day in July, Bowman received a text from Piskor asking if he would do it for real.

“John sent me a text and he was like ‘hey, I’m moving on to the next stage of my life. The staff thinks you should buy the place. What do you think?’” Bowman told the Gazette. “I instantly forwarded that to my wife (Tamara), who wrote back ‘in’ immediately. It took me another few days to come around to the idea.”

Bowman certainly has some experience in management: he oversaw two cafes in San Francisco in the late 1990s before working for Industrial Light & Magic, the visual effects company founded by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas, eventually becoming a studio operations manager. After moving back to his native New England, Bowman now works as vice president of operations for Dadanco, an HVAC company in Westfield.

Bowman did not disclose how much he and his wife paid for the restaurant, although he added he did not do so because of any financial reasons.

“We just added soul-crushing debt to our existing soul-crushing debt,” Bowman joked. “We are not adverse to getting rich from Gombo, but I do not expect to get rich from Gombo. What I do expect is that we are going to brighten people’s lives and have a lot of fun doing that.”

Piskor told the Gazette he was moving on to work as a business broker and form a non-equity consulting partnership, called Secret Partner, to help others navigate the restaurant business. He will remain attached to the restaurant as a culinary director, helping maintain the restaurant’s signature style and sitting on its board of directors. He said with Bowman, the restaurant will be in good hands.

“He [Bowman] just loves Gombo so much, and I was thinking of other things I’ve been working on,” Piskor said. “Gombo is his baby just as much as it is mine.”

Bowman says under his ownership, Gombo will retain much of its signature dishes, such as seafood jambalaya and fried oyster po boys. Now that the restaurant has acquired a coveted all-alcohol liquor license, signature cocktails with names like “Hurricane Gombo” and “Auntie Mae’s Iced Tea” have also been added to the menu along with non-alcoholic “mocktails.”

But he also hopes to boost awareness of the restaurant with the help of his wife, Tamara, who runs a photography blog, and increase the number of musical performances held at the restaurant, which has sporadically held performances of jazz and other New Orleans music genres since opening.

“Based on conversations I’ve had, the town is clamoring for at least two nights a month, but I have a feeling we could go weekly,” Bowman said. “Maybe we could do New Orleans funk on Wednesdays and jazz on Fridays, or something like that.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.