Nov. 3, 2014 By Michael Florio
New restaurants continue to pop up in Ditmars.
Grano’s, an Italian restaurant located at 38-01 Ditmars Blvd, began its soft opening last week and will be celebrating its official grand opening in about three weeks, according to manager Jason Day.
The restaurant offers a menu that consists of a wide variety of choices such as sandwiches, paninis, wraps and burgers. There will also be a selection of traditional pasta dishes including lasagna, spaghetti and ravioli.
The restaurant will also serve traditional flatbread and brick oven pizza.
“We will be delivering brick oven pizza [to people’s homes], which no one really does around here,” Day claimed.
Day said the restaurant is likely to reduce the number of items on its menu once it gets feedback from its customers. ““We will keep the items that are most popular,” Day said.
Currently, Grano’s is offering a limited beers and wines menu but will have a full bar, offering beer, wine and liquor, after its grand opening.
The restaurant is open from 11:30 am until 3 am and can seat 45 customers in the restaurant, Day said. Next spring, the restaurant is likely to establish an outdoor café, which will have seats on both Ditmars Blvd and 38th Street, Day said.
Day said the owners picked this Ditmars location because the area is continuing to improve.
“A lot of young business men and women from the city now live here,” he said. “Plus, [this block) brings a ton of foot traffic.”
Just a couple of blocks away, Tru, located at 35-19 Ditmars Blvd, opened on October 17th.
The restaurant has an extensive menu, offering sandwiches, burgers, salads, pizza and crepes. The menu features Mediterranean cuisine, according to co-owner Michael Miltiadou.
Tru’s entrees include rib-eye steak, lemon chicken, a chicken Kebab platter served with basmati rice and a falafel Platter.
Tru can seat up to 75 people, and it plans to add an outdoor seating café that will add an additional 26 tables and roughly 52 chairs.
It is open from 7 am to 4 am. In the morning it acts as a café, serving coffee and breakfast items, such as eggs, omelets, waffles and pancakes.
Miltiadou senses a need for this restaurant in Ditmars.
“As far as I know there are no restaurants that offer Mediterranean cuisine in the area,” he said last month. “Ditmars needs a place like this.”
However, signs have recently gone up just a few blocks away at 22-41 31st Street for Truva Café & Grill, a restaurant serving Mediterranean cuisine.
Truva is in currently undergoing construction and one worker said it is roughly “two months or so” away from opening.
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3 Comments
Truva sounds good. Their sign says halal, so that will be nice to have in the area. Convenient location is even better.
Turkish food is more middle-eastern/meditarranean like Lebanese food. If you go to Shawramania nearby its like a fast-food version of Truva. The Greek places in the Ditmars area specialize more in seafood as well.
How can anyone say with a straight face that “there are no restaurants that offer Mediterranean cuisine in the area”??? Literally every other restaurant serves Mediterranean cuisine! Even the non-Mediterranean places have some kind of Greek food on the menu. T