ITA Kitchen Brings Modern Italian Cuisine to East Moriches Waterfront

With their new waterfront location in East Moriches, ITA Kitchen has officially dipped their toe into the East End dining scene. Following successful openings in Bay Shore in 2019 and Garden City South in 2022, ITA’s owners, husband-and-wife team Salvatore and Christina Sorrentino, have put a new spin on their popular Italian fare, infusing the East Moriches menu with lighter, sea-inspired options.

ITA Kitchen’s East Moriches restaurant is located at the end of Atlantic Avenue, one street over from the Silly Lily Fishing Station, which gives the new dining destination nearly 360 degrees of water views from the dining room, bar and outdoor lounge.

Despite how stunning the location is, Christina Sorrentino was hesitant at first to consider it a match for their signature Italian cuisine.

“Most restaurants on the water, the majority of them, are serving a different fare than we are. We have some heavier food items on the menu,” Sorrentino explains, adding that she and Salvatore decided move on to open the Garden City location. Then this location was brought back to their attention, and they couldn’t pass it up a second time. “We sat down and thought about it, and we were like, ‘OK, we really want to make this work. We love the location; we love the town in which it’s located. So how do we pivot without taking away from who we are?’”

Salvatore Sorrentino, ITA Kitchen’s head chef and co-owner, took up the challenge to, once again, diversify his Italian menu. He hails from the family behind the Matteo’s Italian restaurants popular across Long Island and in Florida, so when he was ready to launch the ITA brand, he wanted to “be different and set himself apart,” Christina shares. “Long Island is saturated with restaurants in general, and especially Italian restaurants, so the last thing he wants to do is be traditional.”

Starting with the ITA Kitchen in Bay Shore, the creative menu was “all about layers, taking traditional dishes and making them his own, and taking it up a notch in all facets.” Nowhere is this philosophy more evident than the Chicken Bowl, a pasta dish sitting inside a massive fried chicken cutlet shaped into a bowl and topped with a “crown” of fried mozzarella cheese. The dish went viral on social media when it debuted and would later inspire the option to order a pasta, fish, chicken, red meat or other dish and “crown it.” The Crown can also be ordered as a side with San Marzano tomato sauce.

When it was time to create a unique ITA menu for East Moriches, Salvatore was ready. “My husband sat down and delved through the menu and said, ‘OK, we can negate some things that we serve at other stores and add to this menu to make it a little more friendly based on the location,’” Sorrentino explains, adding that, for the first time, Salvatore was joined by his brother, new East Moriches Head Chef Matthew Sorrentino. What they came up with includes new seafood items, salads, a larger “Skinny Italian” section and lighter food in general.

With some of East Moriches menu staples, such as crab cakes and scallops, debuting as specials at other ITA locations, about 20% of the new menu is exclusive to the location.

These East End specialties include cold lobster rolls, Blue Point oysters, Scallop Mediterranean (pan-seared with capers, onion, red bell pepper, zucchini, white wine sauce and risotto), Shrimp & Crab Torre (stacked cocktail shrimp, colossal crabmeat, smashed avocado, cherry pepper aioli), Tuna Tartare (sushi-grade yellowfin tuna, sliced cucumber, wonton chips), Watermelon Carpaccio Salad (thinly sliced watermelon, red onion, pomegranate seeds, feta, baby arugula, lemon zest and juice, EVOO), Quinoa Bowl (roasted corn, artichoke heart, heirloom tomato, red bell pepper, avocado, sweet chili aioli), Lobster Ravioli Willy (diced shrimp, red bell pepper, peas, light marinara, toasted bread crumbs), Truffle Lobster Mac and Cheese (Bechamel, lobster meat, truffle oil, toasted Italian bread crumbs), gelato and sorbet. Ingredients are sourced from local purveyors such as Justin’s Chop Shop in Westhampton Beach and Mastic Seafood.

The East Moriches ITA Kitchen also has an extensive Waterfront Cocktail Menu. Sorrentino explains that she and the team assessed the top sellers at the Bay Shore location to decide the baseline drinks across all locations, then had fun with the waterside atmosphere to create cocktails that are “light and refreshing and that are geared towards where we are located.”

One of the Garden City location bartenders, Tim, was instrumental in concocting some of the fresh cocktails for the latest restaurant. The Waterfront Cocktail Menu includes sangria flights and espresso martini flights, rainbow cookie martinis, limoncello martinis, mojitos, frozen drinks (the frosé machine is currently exclusive to East Moriches), Moriches Mules, Strawberry Basil Lemonades and Mama Mia cocktails. The wine list comprises white, red, rosé, sparkling and wines from Italy, France, New Zealand and the U.S. West Coast, as well as Champagne.

With Atlantic Avenue jutting into Moriches Bay’s Tuthill Cove, ITA Kitchen sits at the tip of a peninsula surrounded by water. Both the stylishly decorated outdoor and indoor dining spaces offer great views, and sailing enthusiasts who’d rather eat on their vessel can pull up to one of five designated boat slips.

“We try to deliver the vibe at all of our stores, of the same caliber. We all play the same music. While the staff are trained the same way, we take veterans from other stores and bring them to the new stores to get them going, and some stay,” Sorrentino explains, adding that what sets East Moriches apart is “the menu, the cocktails and the view. I mean, the view kind of sells itself.”

“At the end of the day, it ended up being an incredible decision, because we’re very happy there,” she says of their East End expansion.

“If you’re in the restaurant industry, or any industry that has lengthy hours, you put everything that you have into it — whether it’s financials, your mindset or your time. And every time we build another, the feeling that, ‘We did it again,’ is so immense. It’s such a good feeling because we know people come by and really enjoy their time, and at the end of the day, our job is to make sure that everybody leaves there happy,” Sorrentino says. “There’s nothing more in the world of business we could be any happier about. It really is a labor of love. Every inch of these stores is a labor of love.”

ITA Kitchen is open at 215 Atlantic Avenue, East Moriches for lunch and dinner, seven days a week. For hours, the full menu and more details, visit itakitchen.com.