The wait that started with two sold-out pop-up nights in August is over. Vitolo Sorrentino Italian Supper Club opened its doors on Tuesday, October 27, at 9 Nassau Boulevard in Garden City South, in the corner space that spent years as ITA Kitchen.

The restaurant announced the opening date on its own Instagram the week before, and by opening week its reservation book was already working: the restaurant's OpenTable listing showed tables booked dozens of times a day, with dinner service running seven nights.

The names over the door

The two names on the sign belong to its executive chefs. Anthony Vitolo is the chef behind Emilio's Ballato, the family-run red sauce institution on East Houston Street in Manhattan that has drawn lines to a small storefront for decades. Salvatore Sorrentino comes from the family behind Matteo's, the Italian name generations of Long Islanders grew up with. The two tested the partnership here in August, taking over the former ITA Kitchen dining room for a pair of pop-up dinners that filled immediately, then promised a permanent room by late October.

They delivered with four days to spare.

What is on the table

The menu reads like the old-school Italian canon with a few house moves. Antipasti run from baked clams and polpette in San Marzano marinara to mozzarella in carrozza, a fried Italian grilled cheese, and chicken scarpariello wings in a sweet and spicy vinegar pepper sauce. The pasta list keeps it classic: spaghetti cacio e pepe, tagliatelle Bolognese, linguini with Long Island clams in white sauce, a spicy paccheri all'Amatriciana with guanciale and Calabrian chili, and ricotta gnocchi alla Nerano with roasted zucchini.

Among the mains, the chicken Antonio comes panko-crusted under vodka sauce, sweet peas, crispy prosciutto and fresh mozzarella, with a center-cut veal chop version built for two. There is a whole grilled branzino, a double-cut pork chop with vinegar peppers, and a Chilean sea bass piccata over risotto. The sides lean nostalgic on purpose: old-school burnt broccoli, Nona's pastina with butter and sweet peas, and potato croquettes finished with Calabrian honey.

The room and the reservation

The dining room the partners described when the project was announced seats about 120, a scale closer to a North Shore catering hall than to Ballato's tight Manhattan quarters, and the restaurant styles the experience as a supper club: dinner, handcrafted cocktails from a full bar, and a room built for lingering. The dress code is business casual, and valet parking is offered on weekends. A private room is available, and the restaurant also books private events and off-site catering through its website.

Dinner runs 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 4 to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 3 to 9 p.m. Sunday. Reservations are live on OpenTable and through the restaurant's own site, and the phone number is (516) 620-3945. For anyone who has stood on the Houston Street sidewalk hoping a table at Ballato opens up, the same family's cooking now comes with a parking lot, 25 miles east.

Sources