Let's Look at Newsday's Best Italian Restaurants on Long Island 2025

After questioning Newsday’s best of series, I acknowledged my allegation that advertising sales influencing their editorial decisions was out of line. I apologized for that.

The responses from several people including Andi Berlin and Erica Marcus made me think about Newsday’s choices in their best of series. From the comments, it appears that Newsday includes the following criteria in addition to the quality of the food: 

· authenticity

· service

· atmosphere

· style

· formality

· price point

· favoring crowd-pleasers over niche picks

I decided to take a look at Newsday’s Best Italian Restaurants on Long Island by Erica Marcus to see how these restaurants stack up to their criteria. For my sake, I focused on authenticity which I interpret to mean is the food served at these Italian restaurants authentic to Italy? I would assume that if a restaurant served Fish and Chips along with Eggplant Parmigiana that would count against them. So let’s see how the 15 Best Italian Restaurants did. My quick conclusion is that 60% of the menus of their Best Italian Restaurants include non-authentic dishes!!

I approached this by analyzing each restaurant menu against whether their food was truly Italian. For this purpose, I used Roger Bissell’s article entitled 12 Popular Dishes that Your Think are Italian but are not.  Those dishes that are not considered Italian food are:

· Fettuccine Alfredo

· Chicken/Veal Parmigiana

· Angel Hair Pasta

· Spaghettini and Meatballs

· Garlic Bread

· Baked Ziti

· Shrimp Fra Diavolo

· Cipollini

· Penne ala Vodka

· Pepperoni Pizza

· Shrimp Scampi

· Chicken Piccata

Also, much to my chagrin, Chicken Scarpariello is not an Italian dish either, it was created here in the USA.

From my analysis, 60% of the restaurants (9 out of 15) on their Best Italian Restaurants serve dishes that are not authentic (but they are truly loved by their patrons). The items that are included the most tend to be Chicken/Veal Parmigiana, Caesar Salad and Shrimp Scampi. These items were added in the new world (mostly the USA but Caesar Salad was created in Mexico) to meet the culinary tastes of their patrons. I would have to say that these restaurants do not check the box on what is authentic Italian Food.

With the multiple criteria that Newsday uses in determining their best of series restaurants, it is not surprising that the quality of food tends to get pushed down. My favorite is when they choose favoring crowd-pleasers restaurants over niche picks. I personally do not see how that improves their choices other than to say their analysis is a popularity contest as opposed to one based upon a best restaurant!!

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