Forty seats is not many. It is small enough that the people cooking know who is in the room, small enough that a regular keeps a table, and small enough that a restaurant has nowhere to hide. Stellina Ristorante has been working at that scale on South Street in Oyster Bay since 2022, and the man running its kitchen has been listed in the Michelin Italy Guide every year since 2012.

That combination is the reason to drive here. Not a tasting menu, not a marble atrium, but a small Italian dining room where the pasta is rolled in the morning, the oven is wood-fired, and the chef would rather you asked about a dish than guessed.

A name borrowed from Floral Park

Stellina is the Italian word for little star, and the name carries two debts at once.

In 1960, co-owner Adriana Milana's grandparents opened Stella Ristorante in Floral Park. It has been a Long Island landmark for more than six decades, the kind of place where families become regulars and regulars become family. Stellina takes that name a generation forward, and it carries her late mother's name with it. In the restaurant's own words: "We named it for my mother Maria, and for my grandparents' restaurant where I grew up learning what hospitality really means."

It is a small thing to put on a sign and a large thing to live up to, and it explains a lot about how the room is run.

The chef

Fabrizio Facchini came up through Italy's kitchens, from the traditions of Emilia-Romagna into Michelin-starred rooms in the country's major cities. In 2012 he earned a place in the Michelin Italy Guide and has been listed every year since. Worth being precise about, because the distinction gets lost constantly: being listed in the guide and holding a star are two different things, and it is the listing he has, across more than a decade.

He is also an Ambasciatore del Gusto, a named ambassador of Italian cuisine abroad, and has been recognized by the Italian American Chamber for carrying the standards of the Italian kitchen into the United States. He is the founding chef of this room and of Casa Stellina in Farmingdale, which we wrote about last summer.

What the wood-fired oven touches

Most Italian restaurants with a wood-fired oven use it for pizza and stop. Stellina runs half the menu through it. The meatballs, veal, beef, pork and lamb in San Marzano DOP, are oven-roasted at $18. So are the potatoes with rosemary and garlic, the broccoli rabe, the asparagus. The veal chop parmigiana, a 16-ounce cotoletta broiled in the oven under San Marzano and burrata, is $69 and is the most theatrical plate in the room.

The pizza itself runs from a $15 marinara to a $29 tartufo under black truffle and mushroom cream with truffle shaved at the table, plus a bresaola di Wagyu at $27 and a salsiccia e friarelli with broccoli rabe at $21.

Pasta, rolled that morning

The menu splits pasta into two honest halves: pasta secca, the dried shapes, and pasta fresca, the ones made in house. From the dry side, bucatini all'Amatriciana with guanciale and aged pecorino at $29, a cacio e tre pepe with three peppercorns at $24, and a spaghetti allo scoglio with mussels, clams, shrimp and calamari at $39.

The fresh side is where the kitchen shows its hand. Pappardelle with a traditional meat ragu at $30. Strozzapreti with smoked pancetta and smoked provola at $28. Gnocchi alla Sorrentina baked and topped with burrata at $32. A traditional lasagna with ragù and béchamel at $36. And the agnolotti di vitello e tartufo at $42, stuffed with braised veal and truffle in a reggiano cream, which is the dish to order if you are only ordering one.

The plates you build an evening around

Secondi run from a $32 roasted organic chicken, which the menu warns takes 35 minutes and is worth the wait, up to a bistecca di manzo, an 18 to 20 ounce bone-in dry-aged Wagyu ribeye at $79. In between: the Milanese veal chop at $59, grilled Colorado lamb chops at $59, a zuppa di pesce with clams, mussels, shrimp, scallops and lobster at $45, and a Wagyu burger with taleggio at $29.

To start, the tuna tartare with black truffle and caviar at $32, slow-cooked octopus at $27, burrata with smoked confit tomatoes at $19, or the fried zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella at $16. The drinks list runs to roughly three hundred entries, Italy forward, and the restaurant says plainly that the full wine book lives in the restaurant rather than on the website.

Sunday, all day

The part most people do not know: Stellina serves brunch on Sunday from 11 in the morning straight through to 8:30 at night, and it is not a token three-egg menu. There is an eggs benedict made with lobster and caviar in lemon hollandaise at $39. Truffle scrambled eggs with bruschettona at $27. Poached eggs in spicy San Marzano with buffalo ricotta at $25. A breakfast pizza with egg and crispy pancetta at $25. Buffalo ricotta pancakes with chocolate and amarena cherries at $25. Chicken and waffles with vincotto at $30.

The full pasta and pizza lists run alongside it, and the brunch cocktails are $18 to $20, including a bloody mary built on the house tomato sauce. On an island where Sunday brunch usually means a buffet or a bottomless deal, a Michelin Guide kitchen serving lobster benedict for nine straight hours is an unusual thing to have twenty minutes away.

Getting there from the rest of the North Shore

Stellina sits on South Street in the middle of Oyster Bay, a short run from Locust Valley, Bayville, Mill Neck and Glen Cove, and roughly twenty minutes from Syosset, Woodbury, Jericho or Muttontown. From Cold Spring Harbor, Huntington and Northport it is a similar drive across the county line. Manhasset, Great Neck and Garden City are further out, and the room is small enough that the drive is the easy part.

The Long Island Rail Road's Oyster Bay branch terminates in the village, a walk from the door, which matters more here than it does at most restaurants: this is a room with a three hundred entry drinks list.

One family, one street

Stellina Ristorante is the founding room of Stellina Hospitality, which has since built an unusual cluster in one village. L'Étoile, the French dining room we called the best French restaurant on Long Island, is a few blocks down the same street. The Audrey is the all-day kitchen and bar around the corner on Audrey Avenue. The Bay Butcher is the group's own butcher shop at 96 South Street. Hoshi, an omakase counter, is coming to 34 Audrey Avenue. Casa Stellina carries the Italian side into Farmingdale.

Three of those names mean the same thing in different languages. Stellina is the little star, L'Étoile is the star, and Hoshi is 星, star in Japanese. That is not an accident, and it is the tidiest piece of branding on the North Shore.

If you go

Stellina Ristorante is at 76 South Street in Oyster Bay. Dinner runs 5 to 10 PM Tuesday through Thursday and 4:30 to 10 PM Friday and Saturday. Sunday is 11 AM to 8:30 PM. Closed Monday. Reservations are on OpenTable or by phone at (516) 757-4989, and parties of eight and above go through private events. Pickup orders run through Toast. All prices above are as listed on August 30, 2026, and this is a menu that changes when the market does, so confirm anything you are counting on at stellinany.com first.