There is a particular kind of Long Island restaurant that does not want you to eat and leave. Casa Stellina, on Main Street in Farmingdale, has built its entire personality around that idea. Its own two-word summary of itself is "Italian, at dusk," the doors open at four in the afternoon, and the room, by the restaurant's own admission, fills by seven.
What makes it worth a closer look is not the mood lighting. It is who is in the kitchen. Chef Fabrizio Facchini has been listed in the Michelin Italy Guide every year since 2012, and he is cooking on a village main street in Nassau County, about a mile from the Long Island Rail Road station.
The house around the star
The name is doing more work than it looks. Stellina means little star. Casa means house. Casa Stellina, as the restaurant puts it, is the house around the star.
That is a family reference, not a marketing line. Casa Stellina is a sister restaurant to Stellina Ristorante in Oyster Bay, and both trace back to Stella Ristorante in Floral Park, which was opened by Adriana Milana's grandparents in 1960. The wider group, which the restaurants call La Famiglia Stellina, also includes L'Étoile and The Audrey. Sixty-six years into that lineage, Farmingdale got the evening room: the one the family describes as the warm space where dinner becomes a long one.
A chef who came up through Emilia-Romagna
Facchini trained in Italy, moving from the traditions of Emilia-Romagna, which is roughly the world capital of egg pasta and long-simmered ragù, into Michelin-starred kitchens in Italy's major cities. In 2012 he earned a place in the Michelin Italy Guide and has held it every year since.
A word on what that does and does not mean, because the distinction gets flattened constantly. Being listed in the Michelin guide is recognition by the guide's inspectors; it is not the same as holding a Michelin star, and Casa Stellina does not claim one. Facchini also carries the title Ambasciatore del Gusto, an ambassador of taste, awarded by the Italian American Chamber for bringing the standards of the Italian kitchen into the United States. He has more than twenty-five years in Italian kitchens behind him.
The restaurant's description of how he works is the most telling detail on the whole website: he cooks the way he cooks for his family, and if you have a question, he would rather you ask than guess.
What the kitchen actually sends out
Two operational facts set the tone. Pasta is made in house each morning. Sauces start simmering in the afternoon, before anyone sits down.
The menu is longer than most and organized the Italian way, running from spuntini and antipasti through salads, pizza, pasta, meat and fish. San Marzano tomatoes and fior di latte mozzarella turn up throughout, and a wood-fired oven does real work: it roasts the meatballs, blisters the Roman-style pizza and broils the veal chop.
A few dishes tell you what the place is going for. Polpette al Sugo are meatballs of veal, beef, pork and lamb, roasted in the wood oven and then finished slowly in San Marzano DOP sauce. Strozzapreti al Fume pairs hand-rolled pasta with smoked pancetta, chili and smoked provola. Agnolotti di Vitello e Tartufo is stuffed with braised veal and truffle and finished with veal demi and shaved black truffle, which is the single most ambitious thing on the menu and priced accordingly at $42. Pollo alla Parmigiana uses a bone-in airline breast, breaded, with burrata on top rather than a blanket of melted mozzarella.
Then there is the upper register, where the check climbs quickly: a sixteen-ounce breaded veal chop broiled in the wood oven at $69, a Barolo-braised short rib at $59, a tagliata-cut New York strip at $69, Colorado lamb chops at $59. Pasta mostly sits between $23 and $42. Wood-fired pizzas start at $19 for the Margherita. Prices are as listed on the restaurant's menu on July 29, and a menu is always a moving target.
Dietary needs are handled openly rather than grudgingly. Vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free-on-request dishes are marked throughout, there is a separate gluten-free menu, and the kitchen runs weekly pizza and fish specials that never make it onto the printed page.
Aperitivo begins at four
The bar is not an afterthought waiting room, and this is where Casa Stellina is most useful to know about. Happy hour runs Tuesday through Saturday from 4 to 6 p.m., and all day Sunday. Cocktails are $10, which on Long Island in 2026 is genuinely notable: a house spritz, a Negroni, a margarita, an old fashioned. House wine by the glass is $9. A short bar menu comes with it, including those meatballs at $10, crispy artichokes at $9, and a Margherita pizza at $12.
Walk-ins are welcome at the bar with no reservation, though the offer is limited to the bar and bar-top tables, so a happy-hour price will not follow you to a dining room table.
The full bar list is Italy-leaning and deeper than the room's size suggests. Cocktails run to $18 and $25. The wine list is organized by Italian region, with real range: a Barbera at $40 at one end and, at the far end, Barolo from Piedmont, Brunello and Bolgheri from Tuscany, Amarone from the Veneto, and a Fontodi Flaccianello from 2000 listed at $599. There is a full page of amari and grappa for after dinner, a house-label limoncello and blood orange bottled under Facchini's own first name, and a zero-proof section that is more than a token gesture, with non-alcoholic cocktails at $10 and Peroni 0.0.
Wednesdays belong to Sinatra
The single best reason to know about Casa Stellina is not on its menu. Every Wednesday from 6 to 9 p.m., vocalist Gino Dabbicco performs the great American songbook live in the dining room. There is no cover, but it is reservations only, and Wednesdays like this fill fast.
It fits the room almost too neatly. Sinatra traded on warmth and swagger, which is more or less the brief Casa Stellina has written for itself, and a set of standards is the kind of thing that has a whole room humming by the second chorus. Practically speaking it also solves the hardest night of the week: Wednesday is where most people's dinner plans go to die. We covered Sinatra Night when it launched in July, and it has held its slot since.
Arrive before six and happy hour is still running, which makes the $10 cocktail the correct opening move before the first song.
Three courses, one decision
For anyone who finds a long menu exhausting, the prix fixe is the best-designed thing here. Three courses, an antipasto, a secondo and dessert, for $45 per guest, chosen from a shortened list drawn off the same à la carte kitchen. A sommelier-selected wine pairing is $10 a glass per course, a house pour is $10, and tables of four get a complimentary bottle. One caveat worth knowing before you sit down: it is priced per person and cannot be shared between two guests.
Sunday, Italian style
Sunday is its own thing. Brunch runs Sunday afternoons in what the restaurant calls the green-velvet room, with light coming through the front windows and the bar pouring espresso and Aperol. The food is Italian breakfast rather than American diner: frittata, prosciutto and burrata, egg and cheese on focaccia, alongside lunch dishes, pizza by the slice, sparkling cocktails and fresh-pressed juices. Reservations are recommended, and since happy hour runs all day Sunday, the $10 cocktails apply.
Three private rooms, and a kitchen that travels
Casa Stellina has three private room options, and it will do semi-private sections or a full buy-out of the dining room, with menus built directly with the chef. It also caters off site, which is the version most people overlook: the same kitchen, at your venue. The occasion list is broad and includes rehearsal dinners, milestone birthdays, anniversaries, showers, weddings, corporate dinners, holiday gatherings and celebrations of life. Parties of eight or more are pointed toward private dining rather than a long table in the middle of service.
Why it lands
Farmingdale has spent the last decade turning Main Street into one of the better walkable restaurant strips in Nassau County, and it now has enough range that a night out can be planned entirely on foot. Casa Stellina is a specific bet inside that: not a quick red-sauce dinner, and not white-tablecloth formality either, but a room built for the three-hour version of the evening, with a chef whose résumé would not be out of place in Manhattan.
The restaurant's own closing line is the most honest summary of the pitch. Dinner, when you're ready. We'll take care of the rest.
If you go
Casa Stellina is at 300 Main Street, Farmingdale, and the phone number is (516) 943-9111. The kitchen is closed Mondays. Tuesday through Thursday it serves from 4 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 4 to 10 p.m., and Sunday from 3 to 9 p.m. Reservations go through OpenTable or by phone, gift cards are available, and the restaurant posts as @casa.stellina. Full menus and booking are at casastellinany.com.
Three standing plans are worth putting in your calendar rather than deciding on the night: happy hour from 4 to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, Sinatra Night every Wednesday from 6 to 9 p.m., and brunch with all-day happy hour pricing on Sunday.
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