Forty years of Northern Italian tradition, a Cooking Channel spotlight, and a family story rooted in the grand dining rooms of the Hotel Pierre — Il Toscano Ristorante in Douglaston, Queens, has earned its reputation not through trend-chasing but through an unwavering commitment to craft. As someone who has spent 25 years behind a counter in Mount Sinai watching what separates restaurants that endure from those that disappear after two seasons, I can tell you this: Mauro Privilegi understood something essential in 1985 that most restaurateurs still don’t fully grasp. Longevity is built in the kitchen, not the marketing budget.
Il Toscano sits at the convergence of Douglaston’s quiet, tree-lined residential streets and the commuter energy of the LIRR’s Port Washington branch — a neighborhood that prizes authenticity as much as ambiance. For four decades, it has been the answer to the question Long Island’s dining public was quietly asking: where is the restaurant that treats ingredients with the reverence they deserve?
From the Cruise Lines to the Pierre: The Making of Mauro Privilegi
Mauro Privilegi’s education as a cook did not happen in a classroom. It happened on the rolling decks of Italian line cruise ships, where the philosophy of cooking was inseparable from the philosophy of provision — you cooked what was fresh, what was seasonal, what was best on hand that day (Il Toscano Ristorante, 2025). This is an Old World discipline that maps perfectly onto the seasonal-local ethos that fine dining now celebrates as an innovation.
After arriving in the United States, Mauro logged 19 years at the Hotel Pierre on Fifth Avenue — one of New York City’s most storied properties, a hotel where culinary standards are not posted on a wall but lived in daily practice. Those nearly two decades in that kitchen were an immersion in the precision, patience, and institutional knowledge that defines serious professional cooking. When Mauro finally opened Il Toscano in 1985, he wasn’t guessing at what an exceptional restaurant looked like. He had spent his entire career inside one.
The result was a restaurant with a philosophical foundation: Long Island deserved cuisine with “intensity and flair,” and what it had been missing was not ambition but knowledge (Il Toscano Ristorante, 2025). That diagnosis, made forty years ago, remains the restaurant’s operating thesis.
The Next Generation: Alex Privilegi and the CIA-to-Tuscany Pipeline
The story of Il Toscano is also the story of a succession done right. Alex Privilegi — Mauro’s son, co-owner, and graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park — spent a year living and working in Montefollonico, a hill town in Tuscany, before returning to Douglaston (Il Toscano Ristorante, 2025). That’s not a brief culinary tourism excursion. That’s an apprenticeship in place — learning how a region tastes, how its markets operate, how its seasonal rhythms shape what ends up on the plate.
I think about this in relation to my own work at Marcellino NY, where the English bridle leather briefcase I stitch by hand carries within it the accumulated knowledge of a craft tradition that can’t be taught in a weekend course. Alex’s year in Montefollonico is the culinary equivalent — you absorb the culture of the material, and then you bring it home transformed. The National Restaurant Association’s 2024 State of the Restaurant Industry report repeatedly identifies culinary authenticity as a primary driver of consumer loyalty among fine dining patrons (NRA, 2024). Il Toscano doesn’t read that report; it wrote the model it describes.
Today, Alex runs the restaurant alongside his father and his two sisters — a genuine family operation where every night either Mauro or Alex is present in the dining room, paying attention to every detail (Patch, 2019). That level of ownership presence is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
The Dish That Stopped the Industry: Lobster Il Toscano
In 2019, the Cooking Channel’s Best Thing I Ever Ate featured Il Toscano’s signature lobster dish following a nomination by celebrity chef and restaurateur Michael Psilakis — a man not given to casual superlatives (QNS, 2019). Psilakis called the Lobster Il Toscano “mind-blowing,” adding that the kitchen “just took the lobster and ruined every other lobster for me, because it’s just this good” (Bayside Patch, 2019).
The dish itself is a study in precision over pageantry: two-plus pounds of whole lobster, cracked in its shell, coated lightly in cornstarch, then sautéed in olive oil with garlic, lemon, white wine, butter, fresh parsley, and a measured pinch of hot pepper (Bayside Patch, 2019). Mauro and Alex refined the recipe over a two-month period in the early 1990s before it hit the menu, where it was an immediate success. “This is a very labor-intensive way to make the lobster,” Alex told Patch. “Most restaurants aren’t willing to pay the expense.”
That sentence contains the entire philosophy. At The Heritage Diner, I’ve watched the economics of shortcuts play out over 25 years — the suppliers who shave a little off the product, the operators who substitute, the menus that quietly hollow themselves out in the name of margin. The restaurants that survive a quarter century are almost always the ones that refuse to run that particular calculation. Il Toscano’s lobster is expensive to produce because it is made correctly. That’s the whole argument.
The filming for the June 2019 episode took nearly six hours of interviews, cooking segments, and diner footage — a production commitment that reflects how seriously the Cooking Channel took the validation of what Douglaston had known for decades (QNS, 2019). Il Toscano was also featured on American Dream TV, further extending its national profile.
What the Menu Says About the Kitchen
A menu is a set of promises. Il Toscano’s current dinner menu reads like a kitchen that understands both classical Italian technique and the modern dining appetite for contrast and texture.
The antipasti section opens with a Mediterranean Pulpo — grilled octopus with white beans, andouille sausage, and Romesco sauce ($26) — a dish that requires careful timing and confident execution. Alongside it: Prince Edward Island Mussels with red onions, cherry peppers, Peroni beer, and applewood-smoked bacon ($16.50); a Lobster Bisque anchored by real Maine lobster meat ($21); and a Mushroom Wellington with wild mushrooms, asparagus, and truffle butter in crisp puff pastry ($18.50) that demonstrates range beyond the expected.
The pasta program reflects the kitchen’s classical grounding. Lasagna Bolognese with Béchamel and Parmigiano ($31) is the benchmark dish that separates kitchens that understand northern Italian cuisine from those performing it. The Rigatoni Mezze with lamb Bolognese, fresh ricotta, and mint ($33) shows the creative confidence that Alex’s Tuscan apprenticeship made possible — mint in a meat ragu is a choice that requires both knowledge and conviction.
Among the entrees, the Long Island Duckling with savoy cabbage, crispy sweet potato, and honey peanut glaze ($42) and the Grilled Branzino with corn, zucchini, snap peas, tomatoes, and salsa verde ($39) demonstrate the kitchen’s range. The Black Angus Rib Eye ($58) with Cipollini onions and house steak sauce is the kind of order that tests a kitchen’s relationship with quality protein sourcing — Cipollini onions are not a budget decision.
The insalata selections show attention to composition: the Insalata Toscana with roasted beets, endive, watercress, and Gorgonzola against a sherry vinaigrette ($15.50) is a dish built on balance, not afterthought. These are not filler courses. They are courses.
Forty Years in Douglaston: What Endurance Looks Like
Rated 4.9 stars across 1,682 OpenTable reviews and ranked #1 on TripAdvisor in Douglaston, Il Toscano’s longevity is documented in the language diners use to describe it: “old school warmth,” “always delicious,” “classic Italian with awesome food,” “outstanding service” (OpenTable, 2025; TripAdvisor, 2025). These are the words of return customers — people who are not reviewing a novelty but affirming a relationship.
The Harvard Business Review’s research on restaurant industry longevity consistently identifies owner presence, consistent product quality, and community embeddedness as the three primary variables in multi-decade survival (HBR, 2019). Il Toscano demonstrates all three nightly. Mauro or Alex are in the room. The Lobster Il Toscano is made the same way it was made in 1993. And Douglaston — a neighborhood that treats its institutions with genuine loyalty — has made the restaurant part of its civic identity.
From where I sit at The Heritage Diner, watching the North Shore of Long Island evolve restaurant by restaurant, the Douglaston model is instructive. Boutique real estate, boutique dining, and bespoke craftsmanship share a common resistance to the disposable. When Paola and I launch Maison Pawli in 2026, we’ll be making a similar bet — that the North Shore market rewards depth over flash, provenance over promotion. Il Toscano has been proving that argument in Queens for forty years.
Private Dining, Events, and How to Book
Il Toscano offers full banquet and private event services on-premises, with parking available at the adjacent Douglaston LIRR Station — a practical amenity for a restaurant that draws from across the borough and beyond. The catering and event inquiry line is info@iltoscanony.com.
The restaurant is available Tuesday through Sunday, 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM. Monday is the only dark night. Outdoor patio dining is available seasonally. Takeout and delivery are offered through GrubHub and Seamless. Gift cards — both handmade and digital — are available through the restaurant’s website.
Reservations are strongly encouraged, particularly on weekends, and can be booked directly through OpenTable.
The lasting restaurants, the ones that accumulate four decades of diners who treat a table there as something close to ritual, are built from a particular kind of refusal — a refusal to simplify, to substitute, to drift toward what is easier rather than what is right. Mauro Privilegi arrived in Douglaston in 1985 carrying 19 years of the Hotel Pierre and a lifetime of watching great ingredients handled with discipline. Alex Privilegi arrived in Montefollonico and came home with something that cannot be replicated from a textbook. Together, they built a restaurant that a Cooking Channel celebrity chef called the best thing he ever ate. That’s not a marketing claim. That’s a verdict, delivered by someone who has eaten in a lot of rooms.
Il Toscano is the kind of restaurant that makes Long Island dining worth taking seriously.
Il Toscano Ristorante 42-05 235th Street, Douglaston, NY 11363 Phone: (718) 631-0300 Website: iltoscanony.com Reservations: OpenTable Delivery: GrubHub Hours: Tuesday–Sunday, 5:00 PM–10:00 PM | Monday: Closed Events: info@iltoscanony.com Social: @iltoscano_ristorante | Facebook
