{"id":184552,"date":"2026-04-03T15:38:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-03T15:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/184552\/"},"modified":"2026-04-03T15:38:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-03T15:38:09","slug":"darios-pizza-of-west-hempstead-expanding-to-massapequa-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/184552\/","title":{"rendered":"Dario’s pizza of West Hempstead expanding to Massapequa Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a busy few months for Dario Carosi. Late last year, the chef returned to his eponymous 3-year-old West Hempstead pizzeria<\/a>\u00a0after a short stint at Taglio in Massapequa Park. Then, in March, Carosi\u2019s Philly cheesesteak went viral and landed him on “Good Morning America.”<\/p>\n

Now the much-rumored location of the second Dario\u2019s,\u00a0a Newsday top\u00a0pizzeria<\/a>,\u00a0has been revealed: 4952 Merrick Rd. in Massapequa Park, formerly Sgambati\u2019s Pizza in the Southgate Shopping Center. “We were looking all over the South Shore for months. One place didn\u2019t work out, and then this place fell into our laps,”\u00a0Carosi said. He hopes to open this summer.<\/p>\n

The team targeted\u00a0that neighborhood, he said, “because a lot of our customers come from the south and from the east.” He acknowledged that the Massapequas are home to “many great pizzerias” \u2014 among them, Taglio and Umberto\u2019s in Massapequa Park, Undici in Massapequa, Saverio\u2019s in North Massapequa \u2014 “but we are not afraid of competition.”<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The Philly cheese steak at Dario’s Pizza in West Hempstead. Credit: Newsday\/Erica Marcus<\/p>\n

Italian-born Carosi trained as a baker, not a pizzaiolo, and his round, crisp-crusted New York pies and lofty rectangular Roman pies have always been supplemented by pastries such\u00a0bomboloni (Italian doughnuts) and sandwiches on homemade bread. He offered\u00a0a new special sandwich every Saturday and, one evening in March, he found himself on YouTube geeking out on cheesesteaks videos made by Angelo\u2019s Pizzeria in South Philadelphia. “I love steak,” he said, “and I love that they make their own bread. I said, \u2018This Saturday, it\u2019s going to be cheesesteaks.\u2019 “<\/p>\n

It turned out that Saturday could not contain the demand. “The first week, we sold 500, the second week it was 1,000, now we are selling about 2,000 a week. It\u2019s not a special anymore.”<\/p>\n

At Dario\u2019s, the griddled rib-eye is chopped with onions and red peppers and slathered with a sauce made of Cooper Sharp White (which chefs consider a step up from Kraft American) that has been thinned out with cream to penetrate every morsel of meat as well as the nooks and crannies of the homemade sesame-seeded sourdough roll it is served on. It costs $22.99. There\u2019s no reason not to follow it up with a pistachio-cream-filled bombolone ($4.75).<\/p>\n

Dario\u2019s, 239 Nassau Blvd., West Hempstead, 516-279-4390, dariospizzali.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tErica Marcus, a passionate but skeptical omnivore, has been reporting and opining on the Long Island food scene since 1998.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a busy few months for Dario Carosi. Late last year, the chef returned to his eponymous…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8695,8015,9,11,10,49,51,50,821],"class_list":{"0":"post-184552","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-feedme","9":"tag-nassau","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-new-york-state","14":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-state-news","16":"tag-restaurants"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}