As the Long Island Press reported, the awning at 1512 Old Northern Boulevard changed sometime around April. For years it read Limani Mezze, the casual offshoot of the Greek seafood restaurant that still runs a few doors up at 1043 Northern Boulevard. Now it reads Griffin Kitchen & Bar, and the menu behind the new sign has almost nothing in common with what came before it: buttermilk biscuits, mussels a la plancha, Wagyu meatballs, a schnitzel with chicory-arugula salad, dry-aged steaks. Chef Pasquale Abbatiello, a Long Island native who spent years running restaurants in Westchester County, came back to open it after the birth of his twins. He told the Village Board of Trustees in February that the timing simply felt right.
What he also told the board, in the same meeting, is the part that matters more if you actually live near that block. Griffin doesn't operate the way its predecessor did, and the difference has almost nothing to do with food.
A Seven-Day Menu Built Around a Parking Problem
At the February 17 Board of Trustees meeting, Abbatiello walked through logistics most diners never think about. Employees would park in the lower garage, not the main lot. Deliveries would route to the rear of the building and get received in the basement, so trucks wouldn't block traffic or fire lanes. And the restaurant would run primarily on a reservation-based system, a choice Abbatiello framed explicitly as a way to control customer flow and limit the impact on parking.
That last detail is the one worth sitting with. This is a seven-day-a-week restaurant, open noon to 10 p.m., built from the outset around managing a municipal lot that every business on that stretch shares. It's a different operating model than the one that built this block. Trattoria DiMeo has served the Roslyn area for 56 years on a walk-in basis. Besito, one door down at 1516 Old Northern, draws a busy weekend bar crowd without a reservation requirement standing between the sidewalk and a seat. Griffin arrived already treating the shared lot behind the row as a constraint to design around, not a background inconvenience to absorb.
Old Northern Boulevard Was Never Built for This
The parking squeeze isn't new, and it isn't really about restaurants. It's about what the block used to be.
As the Long Island Press reported, at the Roslyn Landmark Society's most recent walking tour, guide and Village Trustee Craig Westergard opened by asking the group to picture the area in 1776, when it was known as Hempstead Harbor and looked nothing like it does now. Old Northern Boulevard hadn't taken its current form yet. Much of today's commercial district sat under the Mill Pond and its mill dam. The street grew up around water and foot traffic, not automobiles, and the commercial corridor that eventually replaced the pond kept the same narrow footprint. Every restaurant, bank building, and harness shop that came after had to fit itself into a street plan drawn for a different century.
That history is also why the Village Board spent part of the same February meeting amending its snow removal law, requiring vehicles to clear East Broadway, Main Street, and Old Northern Boulevard during storms so plows can actually get through. Mayor John Durkin pointed to a winter of repeated storms that had made cleanup take up to a week in spots. It's a separate issue from restaurant parking, but it comes from the same root condition: a commercial corridor with only so much curb and lot space to go around, now asked to hold more cars than it was ever laid out for.
Griffin's reservation system isn't solving that problem for the whole village. It's just the first restaurant on that particular corner to build its business model around not making it worse.
The Night Old and New Sat at the Same Table
If you wanted a single evening that captured how much this stretch of Roslyn has turned over this year, it happened on September 24. As the Long Island Press reported, the Roslyn Landmark Society and the Roslyn Chamber of Commerce hosted the first Taste of Roslyn, presented by Rallye Motor Company, at Haute Durvo on Lumber Road. The venue's name is itself a piece of local shorthand: Haute Durvo stands for "Down Under the Roslyn Viaduct Overpass," and it sits next to longtime Roslyn historian Howard Kroplick's garage. Guests walked past Kroplick's vintage car collection displayed alongside vehicles from Rallye's current fleet before heading into the tasting room itself, an entrance Landmark Society co-vice president Rosanna Wolff described as meant to feel like a real, immersive experience.
The restaurant list for the night mixed decades of Roslyn dining in one room: Okaru, Hendrick's, Griffin Kitchen, Mim's, 388, Sweet Harbor Coffee, Ilios Frozen Yogurt, Gino's Pizza, and Trattoria Diane. Wolff, who chairs the Landmark Society's events committee, called the evening a celebration of the village itself, saying it's about more than the food, pointing to the people who work to keep the place beautiful. The format was also a departure for the Society, which had run a more traditional gala-style fundraiser since the events committee's first outing at the Webb Institute three years ago. Trading that format for a communal tasting event, with newcomers like Griffin sharing floor space with a 1969 institution like Trattoria DiMeo's sister restaurant, says something about where the village's civic energy is going. It's less black-tie, more block party, even when the proceeds still fund the same preservation work.
For a Regular Night Out
None of this changes where you'd actually go on a given Friday. It just changes how you get there.
If you want to walk in without a plan, DiMeo's Zagat-reviewed red sauce or Besito's weekend bar scene still work exactly as they always have. If you're after a table on the water, thyme overlooks the Roslyn Duck Pond with a porch built for cocktails and a weekend brunch that runs Saturday and Sunday. If you've got out-of-town guests staying at the Roslyn Hotel, Atlas New World Bistro is built into the building itself, a Tapestry Collection property by Hilton, and doesn't require you to leave the lobby.
Griffin is the one that asks you to plan ahead. Not because the food demands it, though Abbatiello's menu has already picked up a following, but because the restaurant was built from its first Board hearing to treat a reservation slot as the thing standing between a busy Friday and a full parking lot. That's a small operational choice. But it's also the clearest sign yet that new restaurants opening on this block are starting to design around a constraint the neighborhood has lived with since it was a mill pond, rather than waiting to run into it.
If you've noticed other corners on Old Northern Boulevard changing hands this year, you're not imagining it. Gwen Levy keeps track of these shifts because they say as much about the character of the village as any listing does. Let's Connect if you want to talk about what else is changing in Roslyn this season.
This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.
