Lola in Great Neck to close

When it opened in 2009, there was no other Long Island restaurant remotely like Lola and, after it closes its doors after dinner next Friday, its elegant, Middle Eastern-fusion cuisine will be enshrined in the taste memory of its many fans.

Chef-partner Lenny Messina said that after years of splitting his time between the restaurant and Hudson Valley Farms, its sister company in upstate Ferndale, the farm had won. "Yes, it’s getting harder to run a restaurant here," he said. "Yes, our rent went up. But the main reason is that there’s an opportunity to really expand what we are doing upstate, and I want to devote my energies there." He added that his core kitchen staff had all been offered jobs there as well.

Lola was founded by Michael Ginor, an Israeli-American globe-trotting culinary insider who also co-owned Hudson Valley Foie Gras, the country’s leading producer of foie gras that was the forerunner of Hudson Valley Farms. Ginor, who died in 2022, opened his first Great Neck restaurant in 2008. Tel Aviv was a spirited and modern take on Israeli food, and it spurred him to open the more ambitious Lola the following year. Lola quickly vaulted into the top tier of Long Island restaurants, earning 3½ stars from Newsday and a place on Newsday’s Top 100 and, later, Top 50 restaurant lists.

While some Israeli dishes from Tel Aviv (which closed in 2011) made their way to Lola, the original menu was eclectic, featuring a tandoori-inspired venison chop, braised short rib with Thai red curry, kabocha squash soup with Parmesan custard and herbed gnocchi. But the far-flung flavors eventually gave way to a mostly Mediterranean menu.

Messina, who came aboard in 2012, made it his mission to temper Ginor’s global enthusiasms and, by 2015, Lola was concentrating on perfecting such Levantine treasures as hummus, baba ghanoush and malawach (a rich-yet-flaky, Yemenite-style flatbread topped with mushrooms and roasted garlic) as well as creating New American dishes with Middle Eastern flavors such as Hudson Valley duck with pomegranate, charred onion and walnut sauce, or sticky lamb ribs with sunchoke mousseline and preserved lemon. Everything was prepared with extraordinary refinement and served in a fine-dining setting along with equally refined wines and cocktails.

After Ginor died, Messina became increasingly involved in Hudson Valley Farms, which produces not only foie gras but raises fresh ducks and chickens and manufactures broths, soups and sauces for private clients and the retail market. The company recently bought a former PepsiCo plant in upstate Liberty that will increase its capacity — and presented Messina with an offer he could not refuse.