A restaurant like this resists easy categorization — it starts as one thing, grows into something larger, and somehow carries every chapter of its evolution without losing the soul it began with. ZPita, born in 1998 at 217 Main Street in the heart of Port Jefferson Village, is exactly that kind of place. What launched as a Greek-Mediterranean pita destination with a philosophy rooted in clean, honest ingredients gradually expanded — through decades of community trust, a pandemic-era reinvention, and the sheer force of its owner’s vision — into Joey Z’s Restaurant, a full-spectrum dining experience that now holds down the number-five spot among all restaurants in Port Jefferson on TripAdvisor and carries a 4.7-star rating on Google across thousands of verified reviews. The building has changed. The menu has evolved. The spirit has not.
A Village Landmark, Twenty-Five Years in the Making
Port Jefferson is one of those North Shore villages that rewards the patient observer. Tucked against the harbor where the Bridgeport Ferry docks and the Long Island Rail Road terminates, it has long attracted artists, academics, boaters, and families drawn to its Victorian architecture and walkable Main Street. In 1998 — the same year Google was incorporated and the year a certain diner in Mount Sinai was just settling into its second decade — Joe Zangrillo, known universally on the North Shore as “Joey Z,” opened ZPita at 217 Main Street. The original concept was straightforward and confident: bring the finest in fresh seafood, pasta, steak, and specialty salads to a street that needed exactly that kind of anchor. The pita was the vehicle — warm, pillowy, hand-held — but the ambition was always larger than the bread.
For over two decades, ZPita became a fixture of Port Jefferson life. Locals lined up for gyros wrapped in whole wheat pita, for Greek salads dressed with the kind of house dressing that inspires the sort of evangelical loyalty that no advertising budget can manufacture. The restaurant’s longevity in a notoriously unforgiving industry — the National Restaurant Association estimates that nearly 60 percent of restaurants close within their first year (NRA, 2023) — speaks to something deeper than good food. It speaks to community stewardship.
The Reinvention: From ZPita to Joey Z’s
In the fall of 2019, Zangrillo made a bold and characteristically confident move: he rebranded. ZPita became Joey Z’s Restaurant, and with that name change came an expanded menu that layered traditional Italian dishes alongside the Mediterranean classics that had defined the restaurant’s first chapter. This was not abandonment — it was expansion. Joey Z is 100 percent Italian, and the rebranding represented a return to his roots as much as it was a commercial pivot. The gyros and souvlaki remained. The Greek salad and its legendary dressing stayed. But now moussaka appeared alongside stuffed chicken breast with spinach and feta, and prime filet mignon shish kebab took its place next to the kasseri-topped baked shrimp that had long been a quiet house specialty.
Then came March 2020 and the pandemic. Rather than retreat, Zangrillo leaned forward. He launched Joey Z’s Brooklyn Pizza Company — initially inside the Main Street location, a nod to pandemic-era pragmatism that has since become a permanent feature of the restaurant’s identity. “Being 100 percent Italian, I grew up on pizza,” Zangrillo told Greater Long Island in 2020. “Everyone has a different or favorite type of pizza, so we are trying to appeal to everyone.” The move encapsulated something essential about the man and the restaurant: the understanding that survival, in the restaurant business as in life, requires both rootedness and adaptability.
The Menu: Where the Mediterranean Meets Long Island
To dine at Joey Z’s / ZPita today is to navigate a menu of genuine abundance — one that resists the reductive labeling of “Greek place” or “Italian spot” and insists, correctly, on being understood as a comprehensive culinary destination. The Mediterranean Specials anchor the experience: marinated chicken souvlaki with basmati rice and vegetables of the day; grilled shrimp baked over kasseri cheese with fresh tomatoes, mushrooms, olive oil, and lemon; moussaka layered in the classical tradition with eggplant, chopped meat, potato, and béchamel; and chunks of prime filet mignon on skewers, the kind of preparation that rewards anyone paying attention to detail. The gyro — beef and lamb, thinly sliced, topped with fresh onions and tomatoes, finished with a drizzle of olive oil and a bake of kasseri — remains among the finest on Long Island’s North Shore.
The breakfast and brunch program deserves its own paragraph. Weekend brunches in particular have become a defining ritual for Port Jefferson regulars, with the apple, bacon, and brie omelette earning the kind of word-of-mouth reverence that food critics spend careers trying to manufacture through prose. The Western wrap — grilled chicken with onions and peppers, paired with sweet potato fries and a maple honey sauce — reflects the kitchen’s willingness to range across culinary traditions without losing coherence. Fresh fruit crêpes sprinkled with powdered sugar and served with whipped cream complete a breakfast menu that punches well above the weight class one might expect from a Main Street Village spot.
The full menu spans salads available as pita or tortilla wraps, an extensive pasta program across spaghetti, linguini, rigatoni, penne, ziti, and angel hair, Neapolitan-style pizza from the Brooklyn Pizza Company side of operations, and a seafood program anchored by Chilean sea bass and grilled salmon. BYOB is welcomed. Full bar service is available. Free Wi-Fi is standard. Outdoor seating is offered when the North Shore weather cooperates, and the restaurant is fully wheelchair accessible.
The Atmosphere and the Host
There is a phrase that circulates through Port Jefferson’s restaurant reviews with the consistency of a leitmotif: “Joey always stops by your table to make sure you are happy.” In an era of corporate dining and algorithmic hospitality, this personal attentiveness — owner-present, instinct-driven, genuinely warm — represents something rare and increasingly precious. The restaurant’s atmosphere is described across hundreds of reviews as cozy, lively, and comfortable: a space with personality accumulated over decades rather than designed in a single afternoon by a hospitality consultant. Christmas decorations maintained year-round have become part of the restaurant’s quirky, beloved visual identity. The staff is consistently described as energetic and pleasant, the kind of team that reflects the ownership culture above them.
This is, at its core, what separates the restaurants that last twenty-five years from the ones that don’t: a host who understands that the dining room is not a transaction processing center but a theater of hospitality — a stage on which community is built one table at a time.
Delivery, Ordering, and Practical Information
Joey Z’s / ZPita serves the full Port Jefferson area and beyond through a robust delivery infrastructure. The restaurant is available on DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Postmates, with an Uber Eats rating of 4.6 from over 120 verified orders. Delivery or takeout is available seven days a week, with no half-orders and no price adjustments on menu items. Off-premise catering is offered for events — a full catering menu is available upon request.
Address: 217 Main Street, Port Jefferson, NY 11777 Phone: (631) 476-7510 | Fax: (631) 476-7508 Website: zpita.com | joeyzsportjeff.com Instagram: @joeyzsrestaurant DoorDash: Order on DoorDash Uber Eats: Order on Uber Eats
Hours: Monday – Thursday: 9:30 AM – 9:00 PM Friday: 9:30 AM – 9:30 PM Saturday: 9:00 AM – 9:30 PM Sunday: 9:00 AM – 8:00 PM
Parking is available in a free lot near the restaurant. Reservations are recommended, particularly on weekend evenings and for brunch service.
Why ZPita Endures: A North Shore Meditation
From the vantage point of someone who has spent twenty-five years feeding the Mount Sinai community just a few miles down Route 25A, the story of ZPita / Joey Z’s is instantly legible. You recognize the texture of it — the quiet accumulation of daily trust that transforms a restaurant from a business into a landmark. You understand why Joey Z’s weekend regulars don’t just eat there; they belong there. The philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote about the concept of Dasein — “being-in-the-world” — as the fundamental structure of human existence, the irreducible fact of our embeddedness in place, time, and community. A restaurant that survives twenty-five years on the same block of the same village street achieves something like that on a civic scale. It becomes of the place. Inseparable from it.
ZPita earned its longevity the old way: through consistency, through personal hospitality, through the courage to reinvent without abandoning. The Greek salad dressing that made its name in 1998 still arrives at your table today. So does Joey Z himself, to make sure you’re happy. That, ultimately, is the unseen detail that defines a masterpiece.
