Top Long Island restaurants with chef's tasting menus

While some diners love the choice involved with an a la carte menu, others prefer to take themselves out of the mix and embrace a tasting menu, essentially smaller portions of an array of dishes for a set price. Two veteran Long Island restaurants — Maroni’s in Northport and Mosaic in St. James — have long been known for this culinary style. Two decades later, more eateries are embracing this type of dining.

Maroni’s in Northport, opened in 2001 by Maria and the late Michael Maroni, made its reputation on offering diners a massive 20-plus course tasting menu showcasing a hodgepodge of dishes — pastrami and rye egg rolls, Korean-style BBQ ribs and sushi beside its famous saucy Italian meatballs. The cash-only spot charges $140 for the experience at off-peak hours and $195 on weekend nights. Prices include drinks (wine and beer), tax and service/gratuity. And while the restaurant introduced a la carte dining earlier this year, it’s still the tasting menu that draws visitors to the dining room.

Mosaic in St. James, opened in 2005 by partners Jonathan Contes and chef Tate Morris, features a nightly surprise menu of five courses for $118 plus tax and tip (wine pairing for $59 more). The only thing that diners know upon booking is that the ingredients will be high quality and the cooking creative and inspired. A game menu featuring dishes with rabbit, elk, veal sweetbreads and quail is being offered for $154 Nov. 5 and 6. But on a nightly basis, it’s anyone’s guess what the line up will be. Isn’t that part of the fun?

A new spate of tasting menus at other Long Island restaurants offer great value, affordably highlighting some of the region’s most accomplished chefs. Whether it’s three-, four-, six- or seven-plus courses, these samplings give diners a chance to dive deeper into their favorite menus with smaller portions of dishes that made these establishments popular in the first place.

Blackbird Kitchen & Cocktails

3026 Merrick Rd., Wantagh

COST $125 for seven courses, plus dessert

The intimate, moody Blackbird Kitchen & Cocktails in Wantagh opened in 2016 and regularly graces Newsday's Top 50 restaurants list. It's the darling of Frank Ubraico and chef Chris Perrotta’s trifecta of spots, which include Uncle Frank’s, also in Wantagh, and Rustic Root in Woodbury. It’s also one of those restaurants that you can return to again and again for everything from a solid bar burger to a perfect cacio e pepe.

Perrotta’s use of texture and heat is so sublime, no dish is left unbalanced when it comes to a hit of crunch and a spank of spice. This is just one of the many reasons his tasting menu, an affordable and generous seasonal treat, smacks so beautifully.

After an amuse bouche, which changes regularly, Perrotta’s chilled cucumbers kick things off. With a hint of heat, some crispy bits, and bright notes of chili honey lime vinaigrette, these cukes are topped with jalapeño Cheddar crackers — haute, spiced Cheez-Its, if you will — followed by Perrotta’s version of crudo, in this case, Montauk tuna. The teeny, tiny textural element on this bite: Housemade tortillas, crushed for a sprinkling atop Hatch chile, pickled peach, and avocado. And that’s just the start.

What follows are oversized Calabrian chili butter-poached prawns. Next comes your choice of two pastas: right now, that's braised rabbit sugo with spinach, tagliatelle with Alba white truffles and aged Parm, or a seasonal house staple, stuffed sweet corn agnolotti with chorizo and chives.

A hunky portion of Montauk halibut is served over Carolina Gold rice, and just as your belly starts to say "Enough!" comes another choice: Chicken or steak, the former roasted over whole-kernel corn-infused polenta, the latter a dry-aged strip with braised leeks. The chef's selection dessert is worth the price of the menu alone. If you wind up with the bread pudding, you have won at life.

"I show up every day," Perrotta said of his inspired menu. "While I can’t reinvent the wheel, I can certainly do my best to make it better." 

More info: 516-654-9200, blackbirdli.com

2 Spring

2 Spring St., Oyster Bay

COST $105 for four courses or $135 for six courses

What started in 2018 as an a la carte menu full of small plates, quickly evolved to the current four-course prix fixe from chef Jesse Schenker that offers diners a choice from each of its three menu sections: light and raw, appetizers, entrees — plus dessert.

"A year or so in, as people asked for more multicourse options, and since the plates were never particularly large, the menu lent itself to getting multiple dishes," Schenker said.

Here, diners can choose from favorites like the spring egg, a soft-scramble topped with foie gras mousse, caviar and chives or the hamachi crudo laced with grapefruit, celeriac, puffed amaranth and cilantro from the light and raw section. The roasted hen of the woods mushrooms, and the irresistible bucatini and clams, coated in a creamy shellfish bisque and loaded with littleneck clams, sepia and guanciale for some fat to offset the brine of the shellfish, are beloved appetizers. The dry-aged duck or the New York strip, complete with onion ring, get our votes for entree.

Tasting menus course through the chef’s blood, so if you’re craving a little more, Schenker also offers a six-course tasting for $135 that features the seasonal versions of the hamachi, bucatini, branzino and steak, all regular menu mainstays. At press time, the hamachi was being served with a salsa verde, the bucatini with pepper and autumn squash, the steak with apple and spaghetti squash in jus. A riff on s’mores with meringue and graham crackers finishes off the tasting. Wine pairings are available at $65 extra, and a caviar supplement can also be added to any menu.

The restaurant recently renovated its barroom with a darker, sultry new design including red velvet banquettes, dramatic marble table tops, Murano glass chandeliers and a new bar menu.

By 2021, the opening of Four — also on Newsday's Top 50 restaurants list — became a natural extension of Schenker’s tasting concepts. "We always had the space that houses Four, but it lent itself to a chef’s counter based on how dining was trending at 2 Spring." If your wallet can handle the upgrade, as well as your belly, go for it!

More info: 516- 624-2411, 2springstreet.com

Luca

93 Main St., Stony Brook

COST $92 for three courses and $39 for two-course lunch

Luca is the Stony Brook restaurant ranked as one of Long Island’s best Italian spots. Owned by David Tunney and Rory Van Nostrand, it’s a stunning modern space warmed by wood table and chairs, with a marble bar separated from the main dining room by a line of bark-stripped red pine tree trunks and  a white and gray color palate. In warmer weather, a charming patio begs for reservations. The kitchen is overseen by executive chef Luke DeSanctis, who is also involved in the group’s recent announcement of a Luca Steak offshoot in Huntington.

The beauty of Luca, which opened in 2022, is its casual, savory tasting that offers a DIY approach to Italian dishes. Of the featured chef's tastings menus, this is the most approachable and the most affordable. The $92 savory three-course omits dessert, but diners can sample any appetizer, pasta and entree menu items they fancy. For even more value, there's a similar two-course ($39) deal at lunchtime.

The menu changes seasonally, so there’s always something new to try. After an amuse bouche (recently it was a bite of the restaurant’s excellent orange fennel salad), start with a Montauk tuna crudo topped with Fresno chili, chickpeas, capers and basil. Cheesier: Buffalo ricotta with persimmon, avocado and toasted pumpkin seed. Heavier: An oversize meatball in tomato ragu. Greener: An organic Caesar draped with pecorino ribbons.

Pastas here are handcrafted and colorful. They’re also irresistibly delicious. A recent lobster girasole special, star-shaped and smothered in a lemon butter sauce, was piled high with pink lobster meat. Dark squid ink agnolotti stuffed with shrimp and sauced with saffron cream offsets simple pasta options like the gramigna — G-shaped pasta — in a simple, ruby red San Marzano pomodoro.

Entrees include favorites like chicken Parm, roasted chicken with fingerlings and dry-aged New York strip, as well as more involved dishes like potato-crusted halibut with butter leeks and caviar cream. Like many of the chefs on this list, DeSanctis relies on purveyors from across Long Island for ingredients. And should you want dessert, it’s there, it’ll just cost you a little extra. May we suggest the pistachio gelato?

More info: 631-675-0435, lucaitalian.com

Shands General and The State Room

Shands General, 67 W. Main St., Patchogue; The State Room, 2nd floor

COST $155 for seven courses

The State Room and Shands General have been on the cutting edge of fine dining since the original speakeasy-like upstairs space debuted in 2023. Newly appointed executive chef Kenny Siegel executes the tasting menu, which is available for $155 at both State Room and the bar at Shands on Friday and Saturday nights, and comprises seven courses, including dessert.

Starting with an amuse bouche, the tasting changes each week, but constants include house-made sourdough brioche, a pasta (also made in-house) and "something special" from the offal category, "either a pâté or some sort of a mousse," Siegel said. Recently, it was a chicken liver bonbon with raspberry jam inside and a chili chocolate crust; followed by a foie gras tart with cashews and cacao.

The most recent crudo, a play on tuna poke featuring Early Girl Farms’ late-season cherry tomatoes tossed in yuzu atop diced cubes of tuna, complemented the linguine, with semolina mixed with nori powder for a vibrant green-colored plate topped with trout roe and shaved bottarga. There might be broiled scallops for a fish course, prepared in white wine and butter, chopped and served back in their shells. A recent Friday night meat course showcased short rib; on Saturday, it was filet mignon.

Adjacent to Siegel’s plates are beverage director Bert Wiegand’s cocktails and wine selections, an art all their own. For $45, wine pairings from hand-selected bottles that Wiegand brings in specifically for the tasting rotate with the menu. "Originally I was starting course one with a cocktail and ending the last course with a cocktail but I realized people were getting a little too drunk, so I dialed it back to all wine pours," Wiegand said.

More info: 631-447-2337, shandsgeneral.com