Best things we ate on Long Island in 2022

Dining out at Long Island restaurants is a full-time job for Newsday's food critics. And what a year it was. Here are the best dishes we ate this year. 

ERICA MARCUS

Wings at Waffles & Soul

461 Station Rd., Bellport

Ubiquitous they may be, wings are hard to get right, harder to get perfect. At Waffles & Soul they strike the ideal balance between chicken and fried  —  which is to say that the meat is juicy and well seasoned, not overwhelmed but complemented by a crust that is crisp but delicate. They recline on a bed of tender waffles with your choice of well-wrought sides. Proprietor Ralph Mann ups the soulfulness even further with a soundtrack featuring Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, Al Green and Stevie Wonder. More info: 631-803-2658

Salpicão at The Salt Grill

75 Cedar Swamp Rd., Glen Cove

The menu is hard to describe — Brazilian-French by way of China and Manhattan — but chef Joerley Da Silva has a firm grip on delicious. Don’t miss his take on salpicão, the Brazilian chicken salad made with peas, corn, olives, diced beef sausage and raisins  —  stay with me here — that he tucks, taco style, into gem lettuce leaves topped with matchstick potatoes. It's like nothing else you've ever eaten, and you'll want to eat a lot more of it. (If avocado shaved ice is among the evening's desserts, don’t miss that either.) More info: 516-200-9902, thesaltgrill.com

Soup dumplings at JIA

84 Old Shore Rd., Port Washington

Long Island’s first confirmed soup-dumpling sighting was in 2003 at the short-lived Shanghai Moon in Merick. Over the ensuing years, the Shanghai specialty has become ubiquitous at Chinese restaurants in Nassau and Suffolk, and there has been an attendant steady uptick in the manufacture of frozen soup dumplings for food service. Draw your own conclusions. Then head to JIA, an ambitious new eatery where the soup dumplings are not only made in house, they are made to order. That’s evident in their rich broth, their gossamer-thin but supple skins and the sweet-tart goji berries that crown each one. (Crystal shrimp dumplings, packed with shrimp and fresh bamboo shoots, tinted pink and brushed with gold leaf, are equally fine.) More info: 516-488-4801, jia-dimsum.com

Italian pastries at Edoardo's Trattoria

300 New York Ave., Huntington

Turns out Long Island can use another Italian restaurant. In the sunny market-cafe of the singular Edoardo’s Trattoria, you can enjoy homemade bomboloni (doughnuts) for breakfast, supernal sandwiches and housemade pasta for lunch, or an expertly pulled espresso for an afternoon pick-me-up. At no time of day should you forgo the pastries, many of them Southern Italian confections almost never seen on these shores. Torta Caprese (rich-but-light chocolate-almond cake) is rare enough but never on Long Island have I seen delizioso di limone (a dome of sponge cake filled and blanketed in lemon cream) and torta soffice all’arancia (sponge filled with orange custard and covered with marmalade). They are rare and they are spectacular. More info: 631-683-4964, edoardostrattoria.com

Olive oil cake at Little Gull Cafe

54 N. Phillips Ave., Speonk

It was hard to pick one best thing out of all the things I ate this year at Little Gull Cafe. Was it the huge, tender buttermilk biscuits? The greens-and-grain bowl made with leaves from H.O.G. and Early Girl farms in Brookhaven hamlet? I’m giving it  — by a nose  —  to chef Will Pendergast’s signature chocolate-pistachio-olive oil cake. Pendergast isn’t one for those dainty, perfectly round individual desserts; his cakes are served by the slab and this one is a towering Bundt mountain run through by a tunnel of dark chocolate and then lavished with pistachios. More info: 631-801-2176, littlegullcafe.com

SCOTT VOGEL

Triple lobster roll at Claws Seafood Market

20 Montauk Hwy., West Sayville

As soon as the triple-meat lobster roll was set before me at Claws, my mind began to race. The price asked for it — $85.95 — seemed outrageous, the idea that two crustaceans had been killed for it (or was it three?) left me squeamish, and my Catholic upbringing told me that eating it would be gluttonous. In short, I felt nothing but guilt. For about five seconds. Suddenly overcome by a force I know not, my head lurched forward, my jaw unhinged itself like a Burmese python and I dived into the pound of lobsterness with terrifying malice. Everything after that was a blissful blur. All I remember was an endless amount of sweet meat, bite after bite of it, and then my telling owner Frank Palermo how I’d love to eat the whole roll but couldn’t, my vowing to take it home, and  instead finishing it on the side of the road when I’d driven far enough for Palermo not to see. More info: 631-256-5900, clawsseafoodmarket.com

Khao soi at Uthai Bistro

8285 Jericho Tpke., Woodbury

To fall in love with a restaurant is to risk disappointment, to fall in love with a Thai restaurant is to risk a treachery unique in the culinary world. The fare can be almost terminally uneven from night to night, or even table to table, and anyone pledging allegiance to a single establishment is asking for serious heartbreak, and often heartburn too. But we serious diners are hopeless romantics, and in September, against my better judgment, I fell hard for the new Uthai Bistro, an affection kindled in large part by chef Apikorn Lombardi’s khao soi, a complexly flavored noodle curry and coconut milk soup beloved in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. Lombardi is a Bangkok native, but his take on the dish was as clever as it was labor intensive, with bits of chicken and shrimp swimming in a Holy Trinity of red, panang and massaman curries, an inspired blend of sweet, spicy and sour. More info: 516-304-5880, uthaiwoodbury.com

Green chile cosmo cocktail at Low Tide Bar

58776 County Rd. 48, Greenport

Yes, it’s December and chilly nights still have a bracing novelty about them, but it’s not too early to start thinking about February, at which point we will all be sick of them. For me, there’s only one way to shake the winter blues, and that’s by shaking up the cocktail of the previous summer, and in 2022 that cocktail was the green chile cosmo at the Soundview Hotel’s Low Tide Bar. Want to make one yourself? It’s easy. Mix one jigger of St. George Green Chile vodka with another of Combier triple sec. Add to that some cranberry juice, a lime wedge, a well-placed Adirondack chair on warm, soft sand, and an arresting, jaw-droppingly beautiful North Shore sunset. Stir and enjoy. More info: 631-477-0666, soundviewgreenport.com

'Crazy' kebab at Kabab Platter & Burger

297 Bay Shore Rd., Deer Park

Don’t think it’s possible for a single new menu item to completely transform a restaurant’s fortunes? I didn’t either. Then I visited Kabab Platter & Burger and sampled a tasty creation that chef Mohammad Umar dreamed up while idling his way through the pandemic’s early days. He called it a crazy kebab, and it starts life as a skewer of minced chicken, peppers and onions fired in a clay oven, before being rolled in a thin layer of naan dough, returned to the oven and finally brushed with butter. The Halal Guide, a local Facebook and Instagram group, sang its praises, as did the group’s followers, and soon there were lines out the door. These days, Kabab Platter sells hundreds of crazy kebabs every day on average, a blessing to Umar and Mohammad Nadeem, his brother and co-owner, and a blessing too to the joint's many halal-observing fans, along with everyone else with a hankering for a sausage roll with something extra. More info: 631-522-1002, kababplatterandburgers.com

Pick-your-own blueberries at Patty's Berries and Bunches

410 Sound Ave., Mattituck

I had never in my life gone blueberry picking until a July visit to Patty’s, whereupon I made up for lost time with a rapaciousness that left not a few kids angry and not a few parents shaking their heads. In my defense, the pick-your-own farmstand was well-managed, the berries were juicy and abundant, and after 20 minutes I’d gathered more than I needed to launch a late night offensive on a Texas-style blueberry cobbler recipe I’d been saving for just such an occasion. Oh, the cavernish crumb! Oh, the rivers of jam running through it! This was a sweet made for embarrassing yourself, for spoon-scraping the pan, for declaring — to whoever was in earshot — that cobbler is one of nature’s great gifts to summer. Even now I don’t know who to thank more, the dessert gods or Patty. More info: 631-655-7996, pattysberriesandbunches.org