Restaurants in Mineola

An uber-extensive menu of Italy’s favorite dishes are recreated day after day inside Papa Louie’s Pizzeria. Piles of penne and spaghetti pair with fresh italian bread ready to be dunked into a medley of sauces for their own Rorschach test. Chicken, eggplant, and veal change costumes with a marsala, parmigiana, and francaise dressing. The staff bakes 15 specialty pizzas that come in circles or squares, just like the schoolwork given to kindergartners and the most advanced babies. Heros sandwiches are chockfull of baked eggplant, buffalo chicken, and Nani’s famous meatballs. The catering leg of Papa Louie’s Pizzeria feeds partygoers at myriad celebrations: graduations, birthdays, and surprise spring-cleaning parties.

For the chefs at Nu Urban Cafe, quality is their number-one concern. To that end, they try to refrain from cooking with frozen or canned veggies, preferring to import seasonal and fresh produce whenever possible. Their sauces, marinades, and dressings are made from scratch, using high-quality ingredients. When fashioning one of the café's handmade desserts, chefs mix in real butter, quality vanilla and chocolate, and real eggs, known to be more flavorful and less metallic than ones laid by robotic chickens. This devotion to detail lends a crisp, fresh flavor to servings of glazed baby back ribs, thyme-seasoned red snapper, and apple-smothered pork chops.

Sangria Tapas Bar and Restaurant lavishes dining coteries with sharable small plates, flavorful steaks, and dishes of fresh seafood forged in Spanish and Portuguese traditions. The menu incorporates diverse dishes concocted to represent the complete culinary landscape of Iberia, from the seafood-studded feasts of Portugal to the leafy paella orchards on Valencia's coastal plain. In addition to crafting plates of cool olives and cheese or piping-hot seafood and skewered meat, chefs sling more substantial fare in the form of juicy steaks, seasoned fish, and marinated chicken and pork morsels.

Spaghetti and meatballs without meat; egg salad without eggs. Maggie's Raw Love Cafe brings such edible oxymora to life by using vegan-friendly substitutes. The eclectic menu includes entrees that range from various lasagnas to tacos and fajitas to pad thai. Located within the Blue Firmament Holistic Center—a health spa that offers health treatments and classes—the café aspires to imbue energy, tranquility, and x-ray vision in its patrons with a healthy diet of all-raw and vegan foods.

The menu of Italian comfort foods already lends Mezzanote Restaurant a familiar vibe, but it's the family-style service that truly makes guests feel at home. During meals, platters of veal milanese, chicken parmigiana, and pasta in meaty bolognese sauce can all arrive at once. From there, diners pass plates and serve themselves from the trays while enjoying the lively group-dining ambience. For a pleasant end to the meal, parties can either indulge in the kitchen's homemade tiramisu and italian cheesecake or try to guess their server's height in millimeters.

Chef Chris Randell has always had somewhat of a wandering streak. After growing up in Southern California on the North Dakota recipes of his mother and grandmother, he spent two years cooking Mexican food in New York, blending the Lower East Side's traditional Jewish and Spanish cuisines. Later, he and his wife Heather—whom he met while working at a restaurant in San Francisco—decided to distill Chris's culinary passions into one restaurant: the tin-ceilinged Left Coast Kitchen and Cocktails, a "casual gastro-pub," in the chef's own words. Inside the kitchen, Chef Chris crafts a range of high-end pub dishes influenced by recipes from both the East and West Coasts, from mini crab burgers echoing a New England bay to root-beer-glazed pork chops inspired by the Pacific's sugary tides. Nearly 50 craft beers and 80 wines pair with the meals, whose aromas waft among bistro tables, brass ring chandeliers, and art in vibrant colors, surrounded on some nights by the equally eclectic sounds of live musicians.