Restaurants in Melville, NY on Route 110: The Ownership Story

How many restaurants have you actually eaten at on Route 110 this year? If you tried to count the ones that felt genuinely different from each other, you'd probably land somewhere around five or six names. Blackstone. One10. The Halston. Maybe Ruth's Chris if you had something to celebrate. Cirella's for the reliable Sunday dinner. That feels like a healthy, varied strip of restaurants for a stretch of road that's better known for corporate parks than fine dining.

Here's what most of those names have in common: the same person built them.

Anthony Scotto, who opened his first Long Island restaurant in Port Washington in 1967, now runs a group of steakhouses and Italian concepts that includes several of Melville's most recognizable dining rooms. Understanding which restaurants on Route 110 belong to that one operator, and which don't, changes how you read the corridor. Some of what looks like turnover is really just one company rebranding a space it already owns.

The Address That Keeps Reinventing Itself

Four hundred Broadhollow Road has had three identities under the same ownership. It operated as Jewel, then Anthony Scotto transformed the space into Bijou in 2021, an Asian fusion concept built around a sushi program that leaned into elaborate rolls and a lively bar built for lingering rather than quick turns. Bijou ran for roughly three years before the same address became The Halston American Kitchen & Bar, the concept operating there now, offering lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch under a different name and a different menu inside the same 250-seat room with its floor-to-ceiling windows and courtyard patio.

Three names, one owner, one building. If you dined at Bijou in 2022 and at The Halston in 2026, you were in the same physical space both times, just under different signage and a different kitchen direction.

Three Blocks Away, Nothing Has Changed

Ten Pinelawn Road tells the opposite story. Blackstone Steakhouse opened there in 2005, when Anthony Scotto and his daughters built a concept around pairing 45-day prime dry-aged steaks with a full sushi program under one roof. Twenty years later, that's still exactly what Blackstone does. The restaurant is the only one on Long Island certified by the Official Kobe Beef Association, and in July 2025 it marked its 20th anniversary with a week of events, an anniversary menu built around throwback dishes, and live music from DJ Sal Scott, as Long Island Press covered at the time. Same building, same concept, same family name on the door since George W. Bush's first term.

That's the contrast worth sitting with. One Scotto property has cycled through three identities in the same footprint. Another has run unchanged for two decades a short drive away.

The Rest of the Portfolio, All Within a Few Minutes of Each Other

Melville has a third Scotto property too. One10 Modern Italian opened in January 2020 at 569 Broadhollow Road, on a site Scotto purchased in 2018 that had previously housed a Wonder Bread distribution warehouse. The name is a nod to the road it sits on. Chef Ron Gelish, who had worked at several of the other Scotto restaurants, ran the kitchen for its opening, and the concept was built as a lower-priced entry point into the same steakhouse-and-sushi formula Blackstone had already proven.

So within a few minutes of each other on the same corridor, you have three restaurants under one ownership group, each with its own name, price point, and dining room design:

Scotto's wider group also includes Insignia in Smithtown, Rare650 in Syosset, and Opus in Jericho, so the Route 110 cluster is really one piece of a larger Long Island footprint, concentrated more heavily here than almost anywhere else he operates.

The Restaurants That Aren't Part of the Pattern

Not everything on the corridor traces back to one ownership group, and the independents are worth knowing by name specifically because they're the exception.

Cirella's has been family-owned and operated since 1987, with a member of the Cirella family still overseeing the restaurant. It was one of the first Italian bistros on Long Island to pair classic Northern Italian cooking with sushi and crudo, a combination that's become more common since but that Cirella's was doing well before it was a trend. La Focaccia, open seven days a week for gourmet Italian food and catering, is another standalone operation with no connection to the Scotto group.

The Refuge, at 515 Broadhollow Road, is an independent operator known locally for its Sunday brunch and its standing as a longtime supporter of the Long Island Hospitality Ball, an industry fundraiser that returns to Crest Hollow Country Club on September 28, 2026. The Refuge has served as a ticket pickup location for the event, which is the kind of community tie a chain outpost usually doesn't build.

Ruth's Chris Steak House represents the other real outside entrant. The national steakhouse franchise opened its Melville location on August 15, 2022, at 881 Walt Whitman Road, taking over the space formerly occupied by Bertucci's, as Patch reported when the restaurant announced its opening. It was the chain's third Long Island location, joining existing outposts in Garden City and Lake Grove, and it arrived with its own national identity, its own 500-degree sizzling plates, and no connection to the Scotto family of restaurants.

Reading the Corridor Correctly

None of this means Route 110 lacks variety. Blackstone's Kobe-certified steak and sushi combination is a genuinely different experience from One10's Italian menu or The Halston's American kitchen approach, and all three are different again from what Cirella's or The Refuge are doing. But it does mean that when a Melville regular describes the corridor as constantly refreshing itself with new restaurants, a meaningful share of that refreshing is one company updating a concept inside a building it already owns, not new capital entering the market.

That distinction matters if you're trying to understand what actually changes here versus what just gets a new sign. Blackstone's twenty years without a concept change is the anomaly on this stretch of road, not the norm. The norm, at least at 400 Broadhollow Road, is a space that keeps finding a new identity every few years while the ownership behind it stays exactly the same.

If you're weighing a move to Melville and want the real map of who owns what along Route 110, or you just want a second opinion on where to eat while you get to know the area, that's a conversation Jamie Marcantonio has all the time. Let's Connect.