Stresa Restaurant — Restaurant in Town of North Hempstead

Walked into Stressa on a Wednesday afternoon at 12 noon sharp. The restaurant had approximately 3 tables seated. Not a single Wai staff was visible, waited by the front door for approximately 2 minutes when I grew tired and walked inside the restaurant to look for a staff member to be seated. I went into the back of the restaurant by the kitchen entrance and waited another 2 minutes before I was seen by anyone to be seated. The restaurant does a virtual menu via a QR code by the table side, to accommodate for safety practices due to the covid-19 virus. The wait staff brought out some warm rolls and breadsticks, the breadsticks appeared to be imported from Italy and were a decent appetizer with the whipped butter they brought out. The rolls were a bit lacking and were on the hard and stale side...there was a bit of a refrigerator taste to them. Onto the main dish, I ordered the parpadelle with porcini mushroom sauce. The sauce for this dish was quite delicious as there were diced and sautéed porcini mushrooms in this sweet sauce...as for the parpadelle. You could tell the pasta was fresh however I question the chef who prepared the pasta today as I found certain parts of the pasta to be undercooked. I like my pasta al dente any day of the week however today's parpadelle were inedible due to it being too hard. I tried my best to ignore that part but it virtually ruined the harmony of the dish, the sauce/ragu was perfect if only the pasta matched it would have been a great dish. Ended the meal with a cup of coffee which was a nice way to start digesting after a hearty pasta dish, the coffee comes with some slices of a almond biscotti and accompany the coffee quite well. All in all I think the food could be so much better if they were more attentive to the detail of the cooking time...

I never write a terrible review but i do this in the hope that the lovely owners which were so hospitable actually begin tasting the dishes put out by their ridiculously incompetent chefs. The food was the worst I've had in ANY italian restaurant or even pizzeria in the last 10 years and I don't only go out to high end places. We had 4 dishes in this 4/4 strike-out. The bland, overboiled Grilled Octopus, literally the worst i've ever had, was soft and squishy like playdo lacking the typical charry, grilled Mediterenean-spiced lemony bite. The meat's flavor and texture had been sucked out of it by over-boiling. The Chicken Picatta was drenched in a totally flavorless starchy sauce not resembling the butter, lemon and white wine sauce meant to accompany the chicken - the blandness could not be helped even by the taste of the capers. The Chicken Scarpariella's overpowering spicyness hit your tongue like a ton of bricks and preempted the delicate acidic balance of the cherry peppers and vinegar sauce typical of this dish. Bad to do it with balamic vinegar. Lastly the usually-cant-go-wrong-with turamisu, was a stale, overly sweet slice of badly presented pastry which topped off the miserable meal for both of us. How could such a lovely presumably experienced family allow such bad cooking is beyond me. The food was so badly prepared I did not know even how to begin...

Stresa has been one of long island’s finest restaurants for over 25 years. Although the ownership changed in 2018 , the restaurant remains our favorite Italian restaurant ! The new owners, the well respected Restauranteurs the D’Ana family, has continued Stresa’s tradition of Excellence!

We returned to Stresa after waiting for the past 4 months to dine “Al Fresco”. The Pandemic has wrought havoc on the hospitality field, but Stresa has Helped bring elegance and ingenuity to outdoor dining. We were seated in a tented area beautifully appointed with elegant white table cloth tables and a spectacular old world chandelier dramatically hung from the top.

Tommy D’Ana,was our host for the evening and the service and the ambiance was superb. We began our dinner with a delightful “amuse bouche” (chef’s gift) Egg plant and mushrooms . A perfect beginning to an excellent dinner.... We were then served one of the best Caesar Salads On Long Island. For our main courses we chose salmon oregenata with prosciutto crusted avocado.and shellfish risotto. We also were served two large lamb chops with little potato’s. For dessert we had a a slice of melt in your mouth Chocolate Mousse..and a rich iced coffee,

All in all a fabulous summer...