About La Viola Restaurant - Cedarhurst, NYUpdate: La Viola Restaurant reviewed in The New York Times

• Dinner specials nightly
• Opera/broadway night live - first Friday of the month
• Private party rooms
• On & off-premise catering
• Cooking classes
• 3 miles east of Kennedy airport

My wife Elsa and I opened in Cedarhurst in 1977 as a French continental restaurant - fancy and elegant (French and Italian dishes which was the format in vogue those days). As the years passed we moved away from the French and closer to the Italian. Ultimately in march 1990 we switched to family style - the present format. It is considered a fun way of going out to eat, attractive and flexible. We offer plenty of good food at moderate prices. All throughout the years we never lost focus of our aim to please and we still treat our fine clientele with that same white-glove type of respect and class. Eight years ago we opened up La Viola of Syosset. The following year we opened up in Boca Raton, and in November of 1999 we opened in West Palm Beach. At La Viola in Cedarhurst we have been featuring Opera since 1980.We call it "Opera/Broadway Nite Live". This exquisite evening encompasses beautiful music (two sets of opera arias and one set of popular Broadway tunes), sang by three internationally known professional singers. A superlative dinner consisting of house salad, a pasta course and a choice of veal chicken or fish as main course accompanied by a fresh vegetable and potato, along with house wine and dessert and coffee. All we charge for this wonderful evening is $40 per person. The reason for this entertaining night is that my wife and I are opera lovers which dates back to the opera houses in Europe. La Viola Restaurant in Cedarhurst, New York.This turn of the century building that we occupy is very large (two floors) and affords as the possibility to hold banquets seven nights a week. Most of our banquets take place on the second floor. We also do a good amount of catering outside the restaurant.

• La Viola was the first Italian Restaurant in the five towns to offer our complete menu for free delivery service.
• We bottle our own dressings and sauces, and customers buy them from us.
• Elsa and I are working on a cook book that would reflect our culinary experiences throughout the years.
• We are presently engaged with a franchise specialist to open up in some other locations in adjacent states.

Many thanks for what you are doing for us and look forward to seeing you at our restaurant soon! Celebrating their 25th Anniversary, owners Lino and Elsa Viola are as involved in their vibrant community as they are in their charming restaurant. They participate in many fundraisers and bring cultural programs to their patrons by offering monthly Opera nights. Their philosophy on running this very successful restaurant (there's another one in Syosset and one in Boca Raton, Florida) is “to give the customers lots of good food at reasonable prices, lots of attention and they’ll come back.” They are right - so many of them have been coming back for years - it’s more like a family, everyone knows one another. The customers know Lino and Elsa have a genuine love for the business and for them. Under Lino’s guidance, the professional waitstaff is friendly and knowledgeable. La Viola is made up of five comfortable, homey dining rooms with flowered wallpaper and curtains. Upstairs, are more dining rooms for private parties, where you can entertain your guests and enjoy the same great food and attentive service as you get if you’re dining downstairs. Chef Giusseppe Agnese, from the Island of Ischia, has been cooking his home-style food at La Viola since 1987. The basket of warm rolls, focaccia and breadsticks is homemade as well as the delicious desserts. Family style portions are extra large and so are half portions. Signature dishes are Boneless Stuffed Chicken and Seafood Marinara, both full of fresh ingredients. A favorite is the veal meat balls, which are so popular, they must make sure they prepare enough. La Viola’s superb sauces can now be purchased at your favorite food stores. The inexpensive wine list of mostly Italian selections nicely compliments the menu and there’s also a small list of selected vintages.

Reviews

The New York Times - Dining columnist Joanne Starkey called La Viola "a weathervane of Long Island’s taste in Italian food" and "a leader in the family-dining trend." She described the staff as "exceptionally friendly and spiffily decked out in white shirts and red suspenders" but was far more concise about the fare: "Oh, what food!" (Click here to read the entire article.) Newsday - Joan Reminick calls La Viola a "stalwart" of family-style Italian dining, "much loved by the large groups of family and friends" which "exudes a sense of camaraderie and good times." (Click here to read the entire article.) Long Island Pulse - Lamenting the hallmarks of family-style Italian restaurants on Long Island, namely "emphasis on quantity over quality, a liberal use of inexpensive ingredients and menus that feature familiar, predictable Italian favorites," Long Island Pulse instead names La Viola as one of the "handful that break the mold for the better...where standards and sophisticated fare share the menu and the sizable list of specials." The most flattering endorsement is directed at the owner himself: "Mr. Viola, a suave, sophisticated Italian-born restaurateur is a hands-on man of good taste, an opera lover and a world traveler who has no interest in running an eating place that features pasty pastas and bland, runny, mass-produced tomato sauces." (Click here to read the entire article.) Great Restaurants of Long Island - Compliments the "charming" and "successful" La Viola for a "friendly and knowledgeable" waitstaff, and "comfortable, homey dining rooms." The reviewer was as impressed with the veal meal balls, and even more so with the hosts: "The customers know Lino and Elsa have a genuine love for the business and for them." (Click here to read the entire article.)