Newsday Top 40

LONG ISLAND RESTAURANTS
L.I. Italian That's Amore/Top 40 Restaurants

BY ERICA MARCUS
mailto:peter.gianotti@newsday.com

January 23, 2008

It's no wonder that Billy Joel titled his 1977 musical epic of love and life on Long Island "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant." Then, as now, Long Islanders follow many, many cultural traditions in the privacy of their own himes, but when they go out to eat, they mostly go for Italian.

Between them, Nassau and Suffolk counties are home to about 1,500 restaurants that identify themselves as Italian, according to Dun & Bradstreet. And there are Italian restaurants to suit every mood, palate, and wallet. Families gather on weeknights at their neighborhood Gino's or Sal's or Vinny's for baked ziti and spaghetti with clam sauce. These casual, inexpensive spots provide a first restaurant experience for countless LI bambini.

Special occasions are celebrated all'Italiano, whether in one of the older scaloppini palaces, where tuxedoed waiters address patrons as signore and signora, or in one of the newer market-driven restaurants that strive to give Italian food a more contemporary (and, they say, authentic) spin.

In between are the business lunches, first dates, girls-night-out dinners, birthdays, retirement parties and Sunday suppers that depend on baked clams, a large slab of lasagna and a bottle of red or white.

KingUmberto, 1343 Hempstead Tpke.,Elmont, 516-352-3232. (Moderate)

King Umberto has reigned in southwest Nassau since 1976. Its motto: "real Italian...real good." Really accurate, too. Time-capsule decor. Stuffed artichoke, crisp "baci balls" of mozzarella, roasted peppers and prosciutto, orecchiette with cauliflower, chicken scarpariello, rigatoni Bolognese, roast pork, and cannoli are consistently good.

So what does "Italian restaurant" mean on Long Island?

Long Islanders hold widely diverse notions of what an Italian restaurant should be. And restauranteurs have complied - there is an establishment to suit every notion. What they all share is a commitment to providing a setting for culinary nostalgia.

Traditional Italian-American places such as Mamma Lombardi's or Sergio's in Massapequa or King Umberto's in Elmont bring Long Islanders back to their childhoods - whether they are reminded of their own mothers' cooking or of dinners out that the whole family enjoyed at a favorite restaurant.

At Stresa - or at La Pace With Chef Michael in Glen Cove, or at Benny's in Westbury - patrons relive the kind of elegant cuisine and graceful service that Italian restauranteurs brought to Long Island and made their own.

Many of the newer restaurants, such as Trattoria Diane or 18 Bay in Bayville or Caruso's in Rocky Point, are run by non-Italians, chefs who discovered Italian cooking as young adults and fell in love with a centuries-old tradition that seemed unmarked by supermarkets and fast food. Their connection is to a longed-for past neither they - nor their customers - have experienced.