Italian restaurant Baldoria opens in Long Beach
Spaghetti alla chitarra cacio e pepe at Baldoria in Long Beach. Credit: Newsday/Erica Marcus
Long Beach is one Long Island town not overrun with Italian restaurants.* So local residents may be particularly welcoming to Baldoria, a straight-ahead Italian whose name, fittingly, translates to revelry, spree, frolic.
The restaurant, which takes over the ill-fated DuMont’s “modern American buffet and sushi,” has been transformed into a welcoming space, a little more than half of which is a white-tableclothed dining room, a fireplace and bleached-brick and pickled-wood. Alongside the dining room runs a bar with a few TVs tuned to sports.
Only 25¢ for 5 months
Long Beach is one Long Island town not overrun with Italian restaurants.* So local residents may be particularly welcoming to Baldoria, a straight-ahead Italian whose name, fittingly, translates to revelry, spree, frolic.
The restaurant, which takes over the ill-fated DuMont’s “modern American buffet and sushi,” has been transformed into a welcoming space, a little more than half of which is a white-tableclothed dining room, a fireplace and bleached-brick and pickled-wood. Alongside the dining room runs a bar with a few TVs tuned to sports.
Francesco Lazzinnaro, who owns Baldoria with Sal Ciccone, said that most of the menu is based on the one at Spolini's, his father’s 26-year-old restaurant in Kew Gardens, Queens, where he started his own hospitality career.
That casual, family-style menu is the wellspring for such favorites as fried calamari, clams oreganata, Caesar salad, linguine alle vongole, fettuccine Alfredo, gnocchi al pesto, chicken scarpariello, veal scaloppine piccata, grilled salmon and chicken/shrimp/veal/eggplant Parms. Less common preparations include shrimp salad with avocado and walnuts), spaghetti alla chitarra cacio e pepe, pappardelle Piemontese (with veal and porcini mushroom sauce), skirt steak with fried potatoes and spinach, grilled shrimp and scallops and cotoletta di maiale principessa (pork chop with prosciutto, provolone and asparagus in Champagne sauce).
Salads run between $11 and $14; starters, $12 to $17; pastas, $18 to $28; mains, $19 to $44, for the veal chop. On Sundays, $28 buys you a “Sunday sauce” with sausage, meatballs and braciola over homemade fusilli with salad, coffee and dessert.
Baldoria, 40-42 E Park Ave, Long Beach, 516-431-2122, facebook.com/baldorialbny
*It’s not there aren’t any Italian restaurants; it’s just that once you exclude pizzerias, you’re left with Steven’s Pasta, La Bottega, Mio Posto, Grotta di Fuoco and not much more.