Long Island restaurants offering tropical drinks, music and more
Someday science will discover a vaccine for the winter blues, but until then, we must rely on denial to get us through the bleaker months. There’s no shame in this, but there are different ways of going about it. Among the best: making more frequent pilgrimages to restaurants with cuisines that conjure images of sunny climes, either real or imagined. And while dozens of Latin bars and restaurants on Long Island stand ready to offer refuge, the winter of 2022 has seen a whole host of great new places for denial dining. Snowed in but want to go out? Need a nip when there’s a nip in the air? Wondering what comes alive in the dead of winter?
Little Mexico
3253 Horseblock Rd., Medford; 631-730-8199, littlemexico-restaurant.com
Don’t let the name fool you. Restaurants don’t come much bigger than this Medford behemoth, Luis Garcia having opened his second Little Mexico there almost a decade after the first in Middle Island. In the months to come, expect live music and perhaps even dancing in the cavernous dining room, its walls sporting an exhibition-level devotion to Mexican history. For now, enjoy a large menu with highlights including street tacos in several varieties (all as authen-tic as the handmade tortillas housing them) zesty margaritas, creamy shrimp (camarones a la diabla) and a formidable lamb shank doused with dark chili sauce (chamorros de borrego).
Shrimp tacos at Little Mexico in Medford. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
Tiesto's
411 W. Main St., Patchogue; 631-730-8602, tiestosrestaurant.com
Longing for equatorial temperatures? Why not visit the country that started it all, or at least a place dedicated, in part, to Ecuadorian cuisine? Last fall, Luis Marin, the longtime chef at Painters’ Restaurant in Brookhaven, opened his own place, Tiesto’s, transforming Blue Goose’s former home with the unflagging support of his two daughters, Yvonne Castro and Jessica Marin. A substantial portion of Tiesto’s menu is as American as it gets, but it’s the Marin family recipes that will warm your cockles, especially the Ecuadorian churrasco, a day’s worth of meals on a single plate, with strip loin, fried eggs, fries, sautéed onions and more. And then there’s chaulafan, a mound of fried rice offering surprises by the forkful. One bite might have shrimp or a scrap of sausage, the next a morsel of chicken or beef, the next some avocado or sweet plantain.
Chaulafan rice at Tiesto's in Patchogue. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
The Last Word
13 Wall St., Huntington; 631-629-4545, thelastwordhuntington.com
Yes, it gets its name from a Prohibition-era cocktail both exquisite and potent, but The Last Word is also aiming for the last word in Peruvian tapas. The brain- child of barmen Je Alvarado and Matt Sanchez, this Huntington Village spot opened in September with a mesmerizing, pisco-loving drinks program chock-full of delights, along with such Peruvian classics as lomito saltado, in which juicy slivers of stir-fried steak are served not over rice but exploding from a sourdough bread bowl. Other noteworthy dishes include choros a la chalaca—spoonfuls of lime-juice marinated mussels, white corn, cilantro and limo, a tongue-teasing Peruvian pepper—and, fittingly, a selection of ceviches.
The Last Word cocktail at The Last Word in Huntington. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
Puerto Plata on the Water
42 Woodcleft Ave., Freeport; 347-288-1048
The music and atmosphere at Puerto Plata on the Water—open since last summer on Freeport’s Nautical Mile—almost demand that you get up and dance, and many people do. Father-son duo Rey and Rudy Liriano, Brooklyn restaurateurs, are running a fun and lively spot with a two-category menu: "mini" plates—one-person portions of seafood delights—and two-person feasts in which ginormousness is announced by name, from the Big Papi ( five lobster tails and two pounds of shrimp) to the Olympus, with over a pound of king crab legs, shrimp and more.
The ceviche at Puerto Plata Seafood on the Water in Freeport. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
Fogo de Chao
160 Walt Whitman Rd., Huntington Station; 631-382-6161, fogodechao.com
The Island’s second Fogo de Chao is churrasco-centric, albeit with a Brazilian bent, and it’s a beauty. The huge dining room, once a Del Frisco’s in the Walt Whitman Shops, is anchored by the restaurant’s signature feijoada bar and smorgasbord of soups, salads, roasted vegetables and more. Lots more. High-quality meats of every sort are still shaved tableside by gauchos determined to feed you into oblivion, although the Huntington Fogo turns its preparation into entertainment, courtesy of a large open-air churrasco kitchen, with all the dancing flames the name implies.
Sliced Wagyu steak with pickled onions, hearts of palm, and asparagus at Fogo de Chao in Huntington Station. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
Mamajuana Cafe
555 E. Jericho Tpke., Huntington Station; 631-923-3686, mamajuanacafe-huntington.com
The name inspires a doubletake, and this attractive pan-Latin place is a double threat. Fruit fresh mojitos in multiple flavors and Piña Chula—a.k.a. the cocktail in the pineapple (see page 9)—bring the Mamajuana bar alive from happy hour onward, and the food is delicious and unusual, from small plates upward. Winning shareables include a fun trio of miniature mofongos, try-it-before-you-criticize Latin sushi rolls, and a seriously good plate of grilled octopus. Larger appetites will want to turn their attention to shrimp-clam- lobster-mussel paella, slow-roasted pork for two, or seafood-stuffed red snapper.
Paella at Mamajuana Cafe in Huntington Station. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
Carribean Island Restaurant & Bar
229 Woodcleft Ave., Freeport; 516-415-7616
Like Puerto Plata on the Water, Caribbean Island Restaurant & Bar has been racking up the Nautical Mileage. This place, which had its grand opening in August, is the progeny of veteran Queens restaurateurs Bibi and Egbert Bethune, and Guyanese native Bibi rules the kitchen, turning out cha chi kai chicken—fried morsels with a garlic-ginger-soy marinade—along with cook-up rice, in which starch and vegetables are prepared together in a pot of coconut milk. Ensuring that Jamaica-born Egbert doesn’t go hungry either, the menu also includes jerk meats, callaloo and oxtail stew. In fair weather, the large outdoor area features bands playing Jamaican reggae and other Caribbean music. In foul, the music comes inside.
The mango margarita at Caribbean Island in Freeport. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.
