Celebrity chef Michael White to open branch of Osteria Morini at Roosevelt Field mall in Garden City
Chef Michael White plans to open a branch of his Italian restaurant, Osteria Morini, at Roosevelt Field mall in summer 2019. Credit: Liz Clayman
Tom Colicchio isn’t the only superstar chef to be opening a restaurant at Roosevelt Field mall. Hot on the heels of the Top Chef judge’s unveiling of Small Batch (to open later this year), Michael White has announced that he will open a branch of his casual Italian, Osteria Morini, in summer 2019.
White’s flagship restaurant, Marea, holds two Michelin stars (the only New York Italian to do so); his Ai Fiori holds one. The first Osteria Morini opened in SoHo in 2010 with a menu highlighting the cuisine of Emilia-Romagna, the home of lasagna Bolognese, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, Prosciutto di Parma, mortadella and balsamic vinegar.
The menu in Garden City will be similar to Manhattan’s, with house-made pastas, Italian salumi, grilled and roasted meats and fresh fish — all washed down with a good selection of Italian wines. The décor, predictably, is contemporary farmhouse. In Manhattan, starters range from $15 to $19, pastas are $24, mains from $19 to $47.
White and his partner Ahmass Fakahany also operate Osteria Morinis in Bernardsville, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., as well as other restaurant properties in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and overseas.
Unlike Colicchio’s Small Batch, which will take over the old Houston’s spot, Osteria Morini is carving out a new restaurant space. It will be just across the mall’s entrance from Bobby Flay's Bobby's Burger Palace, where New York & Company was. (That store has moved to the second level of the mall.)
With White, Colicchio and Flay at the mall, and David Burke at the Garden City Hotel, this corner of Long Island is rapidly becoming Celebrity Chef Central.
