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Criteria used in formulating this list

BY PETER M. GIANOTTI | peter.gianotti@newsday.com

Everyone has a favorite Italian restaurant.

I know.

Opinions on the presidential primaries, the U.S. economy and global warming combined won't start an argument faster than noticing someone's all-time top restaurant didn't make the cut here.

So, presenting a list of 40 Italian eateries prompts, if not guarantees, a few questions:

"Are you nuts? Where's (fill-in-the-blank)?"

"Are you stupid? How could you pick (fill-in-another-blank)?"

Italian food on Long Island, as it is across the country, is adapted and assimilated, adjusted and altered. Chefs interpret, filter, change, sometimes leave things alone.

Today, a restaurant can obtain Mediterranean seafood and genuine buffalo mozzarella, artisanal pasta and, of course, olive oil that hasn't lost its virginity.

But Long Island still is 4,300 miles from Rome. And what's pleasing in Naples or Bologna, Sicily or the Veneto, may not be so welcome between Great Neck and Montauk. And above all, the restaurant is a business more than an art. Remember the 1996 movie "Big Night"?

Newsday's ratings of Italian restaurants on Long Island are based on the essentials. The main one: how does the food taste? Whether the goal is to be authentic, to adapt or to improvise, does it work? How is it served? And: Would I pay for this meal?

I'm not comparing apples and arancini, either. Restaurants in Nassau and Suffolk are rated in comparison with each other, not with an Italian restaurant remembered from abroad -- either across the Atlantic Ocean or the East River.

Long Island's best Italian restaurants show an honest effort to deliver fresh and refreshing food, offer specials that respect the market and the season and show some personality, too.

Years ago, at a now-departed restaurant, I had a stirring Sicilian specialty: bucatini with fresh sardines, fennel, raisins, pine nuts, saffron, and a sprinkling of crunchy, fried bread crumbs -- Palermo on a plate.

But you won't find it on many menus or as a special, even on this island with so many whose ancestors came from Sicily. It's a risky dish. The regions of Italy are full of them. Local Italian restaurants aren't. Why gamble? More clam sauce, more tomatoes, more mozzarella. That's what works.

Finally, though, what is here is frequently very good; and, every so often, outstanding -- in its own way. That's what counts.

Pass the grappa.

OK, make it Frangelico.