Louie Bossi, the chef, partner and namesake of Louie Bossi’s Ristorante in Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton, was arrested Monday on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge, court records show.
Bossi’s wife called police after an argument with Bossi, 58, in which she said her husband pushed her and threatened her at their Palm Beach County home, according to a probable cause affidavit for his arrest.
As the two were arguing in their bedroom, Bossi allegedly threw a water bottle at his wife and missed, the affidavit said. His wife told deputies that he then came toward her aggressively, grabbed her by her hair on the back of her head and pushed her against a wall, the affidavit said.
Bossi’s wife told deputies she held out her hand to try to prevent her face from hitting the wall, and her husband then grabbed her right wrist and pulled her toward the door, “screaming for her to get out of the house,” the affidavit said.
While on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, Bossi’s wife said he was shouting: “I’m going to kill you,” according to the affidavit.
A Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy who responded to the call wrote in the affidavit that Bossi’s wife had bruising and scratches on her right wrist. She declined to be medically treated at the scene, the affidavit said.
Bossi told the deputy he and his wife had an argument over his wife’s medication and that she had “aggressively approached him so he put his hands on her shoulders” to prevent her from getting to him, according to the affidavit.
He was handcuffed and put in the back of the deputy’s patrol car. Jail records show he was released Tuesday afternoon after posting bail on a $1,000 bond.
Bossi and representatives of Big Time Restaurant Group, which operates the restaurants, did not respond to phone and email messages on Tuesday evening.
Louie Bossi’s Ristorante first opened in Fort Lauderdale on Las Olas Boulevard in 2015. The second location in Boca Raton was forced to close in April 2025 after a kitchen fire. It reopened in November with an updated look.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel in 2017 chronicled Bossi’s troubled upbringing in Queens, N.Y. and New Jersey and his rise in the South Florida service industry after overcoming a heroin addiction.
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