Patrizia’s opens Westbury flagship, Long Island’s largest Italian dining room

Patrizia’s Italian opened its Westbury flagship on April 15 in the former AG Steakhouse space just south of Samanea mall, and the scale alone changes the chain’s Long Island footprint. At 1177 Corporate Drive, the new room has more than 300 seats, making it the largest Patrizia’s on the island and the clearest sign yet that the family-owned group is chasing bigger celebrations, bigger parties and a more polished suburban crowd.

Tony Luisi described the concept as “the same, but different,” and that is exactly the bet. The Westbury dining room is broken into several distinct spaces, so the place can still feel intimate even while it handles the sort of volume that usually comes with birthdays, date nights and private events. Patrizia’s Westbury leans into that flexibility with big shared tables and family-style service, keeping the loud, communal energy the brand has built its name on while giving the flagship a cleaner, more considered layout.

The menu tells the same story. Patrizia’s did not reinvent itself for Westbury, but it did trim the lineup by roughly 30 percent so the kitchen can focus on a narrower set of dishes and build a more specific identity for this location. The family-style meal still anchors the experience, with pizza, salad, four starters, pasta, an entree and dessert, plus unlimited wine and beer. But the tighter menu puts more weight on the dishes that define the brand and the ones that make Westbury feel like its own stop, not just another branch in a regional chain.

For pasta regulars, the biggest news is what survived the cut. The signature fioretti money bags are back, joined by truffle-fig money bags and St. Joseph’s Pescatore, a seafood-heavy pasta served over linguine. Those dishes give the Westbury kitchen a stronger culinary point of view than a standard red-sauce roster, and they suggest Patrizia’s wants the flagship to feel a little more ambitious without losing the crowd-pleasing comfort that drives the brand.

Patrizia’s describes its Westbury outpost as serving “Neapolitan tradition with New York attitude,” and the line fits the larger business move. The company says it is family owned and operated and has been in business for more than 25 years, with locations across Long Island, New York City, New Jersey, Florida and Aruba. A Toast listing says the Patrizia’s Restaurant Group was established in 1991 and that Westbury is its 20th location. In a Long Island dining scene full of oversized rooms and crowded menus, Patrizia’s is making a different wager: a bigger footprint works best when the pasta list is lean enough to give the room a sharper voice.