Drive Route 110 through Melville on any given evening and you will pass a cluster of restaurants that, on paper, should be cannibalizing each other. A prime steakhouse. A modern Italian dining room built inside a former industrial bakery. An American kitchen and bar. A French-Asian concept a few doors down. All within a mile of each other. All open the same nights, competing for the same dinner reservations from the same corporate park crowd that fills the office buildings lining the corridor.
Except they are not competing at all. They belong to the same person.
One Owner, Four Kitchens, Under a Mile
Anthony Scotto opened Blackstone Steakhouse in Melville in 2005 with his daughters, pairing 45-day dry-aged prime steaks with sushi under one roof, a combination that eventually made Blackstone the only restaurant on Long Island certified by the Official Kobe Beef Association. In 2018, Scotto bought the former Wonder Bread Factory site on Route 110. A year later, One10 Modern Italian opened inside that 14,000-square-foot building, trading the bakery's industrial shell for copper, marble and a dedicated mozzarella bar. The Halston American Kitchen and Bar came next, and Bijou, a modern American concept with Asian and French influence, rounds out the group.
| Restaurant | Concept | Melville landmark |
|---|---|---|
| Blackstone Steakhouse | Prime steak and sushi | Opened 2005 |
| One10 Modern Italian | Italian, hand-made pasta | Built on the former Wonder Bread Factory site, opened 2019 |
| The Halston | American kitchen and bar | Newest addition to the group |
| Bijou | Modern American, Asian and French influence | Route 110 corridor |
Told to Long Island Press, Scotto explained the logic behind stacking so many restaurants so close together: each one needs its own identity precisely because they sit a stone's throw from the next. Steak doesn't fight Italian for a Tuesday reservation. Sushi doesn't fight American comfort food for a Friday table. The corridor isn't a competition. It's a menu.
Why That Actually Changes Your Week
For a resident, this means the usual restaurant-row math doesn't apply. In towns where three or four independent restaurants sit on the same block, you watch happy hour pricing shift, menus chase trends, and one place quietly close while another expands into the space. On this stretch of Route 110, the restaurants offer distinct concepts. You are not choosing the better steakhouse so much as choosing among steak and sushi, Italian, American, and French-Asian dining; all four restaurants belong to the same family.
That doesn't mean the corridor is a closed system. Independent kitchens have carved out real space alongside the Scotto restaurants. Avianna's Carriage House, on Walt Whitman Road, opened with a Prohibition-era theme built around oysters, champagne butter and flame-seared beef, and quickly became one of the names locals mention when asked what's new. Rustic Root has built a loyal following as Melville's farm-to-table option, enough that regulars have made it their New Year's Eve reservation for years running. The Refuge, further down Route 110, has become the corridor's brunch and patio destination, known as much for its espresso martini list as for hosting pickup locations ahead of the Long Island Hospitality Ball each fall.
The net effect is a corridor with more range than its office-park reputation suggests. You can eat steak, Italian, French-Asian fusion, farm-to-table, or Prohibition-themed comfort food without leaving a two-mile stretch of the same road, and the options span several distinct concepts.
The Farm That Needs No Competitor
Melville's other anchor institution runs on the opposite logic. White Post Farms traces its roots back to 1886, when the family that still runs it began raising potatoes and vegetables on the same Long Island ground. The farm's Fall Farm Festival has run for more than three decades, and this year's season opened the weekend of September 19, with animal farm access, giraffe feeding, a bird aviary, and hayrides through the cornfield running weekends through Columbus Day.
There is no second fall festival competing for that same weekend crowd. No rival farm stand two exits down offering pumpkins by the pound or a petting zoo with lemurs and squirrel monkeys. White Post Farms has no need to share its niche with another farm attraction, because nothing else in Melville does what it does. It has functioned as the town's unchallenged seasonal draw for a generation, the kind of institution residents build October weekends around without thinking twice about where else they'd go instead.
A Saturday That Doesn't Need a Main Street
Melville has no walkable downtown in the way Huntington or Northport does. What it has instead is a set of destinations spread along a commercial corridor, each one specific enough to anchor a plan. A typical fall Saturday might start with a bagel and organic coffee at 110 Bagel Market and Bistro, where the bagels are made on site and deli sandwiches still run under ten dollars. From there, a grocery stop at Uncle Giuseppe's Marketplace inside Melville Mall covers the giant chocolate-covered strawberries and prepared foods that have made the store a local fixture beyond its usual role as a supermarket.
Afternoons split between two very different kinds of quiet. Arboretum Park on Wilmington Drive, also known as the Anne Frank Memorial Garden, offers a tree-lined spot for a picnic lunch, its plaques carrying quotes from her diary alongside a small playground. Pine Ridge Conservation Area, tucked near the Old Bethpage border, draws hikers, bikers and joggers looking for a longer stretch of green space than the corridor's restaurant parking lots suggest exists nearby.
Evening brings the choice the Scotto restaurants were built to offer: steak at Blackstone, pasta at One10, American plates at The Halston, or a reservation at Avianna's Carriage House or Rustic Root if the mood calls for something outside the family's portfolio. Close the night at Bowlero for blacklight bowling and arcade games, a local favorite that has nothing to do with dinner reservations and everything to do with how Melville actually spends a Saturday night.
None of this reads like a Main Street. It reads like a corridor where one family owns several restaurants with distinct identities, alongside a farm old enough that it never had to compete.
That's the texture of living in Melville that a satellite photo of Route 110 won't show you. If you're curious what else shapes daily life in this corner of Long Island, or you're weighing what a home here actually offers beyond the restaurant lineup, Team Levine knows this stretch of road as well as anyone. Reach out anytime to talk through the neighborhood, no obligation required.
