Review: Luca in Stony Brook
Capunti with broccoli rabe, pesto, pine nut, and pecorino at Luca in Stony Brook. Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
Luca faced a particular challenge when it opened in Stony Brook Village Center in 2022: It was replacing a beloved eatery, Pentimento, whose closing the previous year had become a local cause célèbre.
Luca
Range of entrees: $34 to $69, pastas: $35 to $38
Accessibility: No steps
Attributes: Celebrations, date night, dine at the bar, open for lunch, outdoor seating, vegetarian-friendly
Reservations: Suggested
93 Main St., Stony Brook
First, owners David Tunney and Rory Van Nostrand (who also own Old Fields Barbecue and the newly opened Luca Steak, both in Huntington) took on the design. In place of its predecessor’s cozy rusticity, Luca gleams with refined cool.
The marble bar is separated from the main dining room by a regiment of bark-stripped red pine tree trunks. Walls, ceilings, floors and upholstery are all shades of white and gray; warmed up by the rich wood of the tables and chairs. The white-and-wood theme continues outside to the pebbled patio.
Credit: Yvonne Albinowski
Notable dishes
Calamari with ’nduja, tagliatelle Bolognese, veal chop, lemon tart
Tip:
Both the fixed-price three-course dinner ($94 for first course, pasta and entrée) and two-course lunch ($39) can represent a real bargain, depending on what you order.
Executive chef Luke DeSanctis created an elegant, modern menu with many tweezer-precise platings that belie the soulfulness of his food. His bold flavors draw inspiration from regional Italian cuisine and, as in Italy, the dishes change with the seasons.
Great Gun oysters (from Moriches Bay) and braised calamari with ’nduja (spicy sausage) are usually offered as starters. Or you might find a salad of artichokes and crab, expertly paired with almond and mint; or bresaola (dry-cured beef) with figs, goat robiola and arugula.
Pastas, made in house, can be ordered as a starter or a main, and they range from a classic tagliatelle with Northern Italian (i.e. light on the tomatoes) Bolognese to a more fanciful corn cappelletti with stracciatella and lemon.
DeSanctis’s composed mains tend to skew more New American than Italian: veal chop with cremini mushrooms and rosemary-vermouth cream; dry-aged New York strip with blistered tomato and porcini; saddle of lamb with English peas and mint.
Luca has an exceptional dessert menu, mixing up the expected tiramisu with a suave lemon tart, a coconut cake with pineapple and Italian meringue and zabaglione with fruit and pizzelle.
The restaurant welcomes those with special dietary needs. Most pasta dishes can be made gluten free, and, between the meat-free pastas, salads and vegetable sides, vegetarians (and even vegans) will feel cared for.
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