After 32 years, Seventh Street Cafe in Garden City is closing its doors later this month. Owners Victor and Brooke Scotto have sold the Italian restaurant and are planning to retire.
With a location on Garden City’s “it” block, a bright, Italianate dining room, separate party room and sheltered sidewalk seating, it’s one of the village’s most desirable spots. When approached by a local restaurateur about taking over the space, “we had been talking about selling it and we could not pass up this offer,” Brooke said.
It was 1992 when Victor Scotto, then-owner of Chateau Briand catering venue (which closed in 2022) bought the restaurant for his daughter, Victoria, who was graduating from Hofstra. Once she had her first child though, Brooke explained, it was “too much for the young mother,” and she took a job with her father at the catering hall.
Together, Victor and Brooke, his partner in business and life, made Seventh Street Cafe one of the pillars of Garden City dining. It will serve its last supper on Christmas Eve.
Brooke and Victor Scotto outside their Garden City restaurant, Seventh Street Cafe. Credit: Seventh Street Cafe
Victor Scotto emigrated from Monte di Procida (near Naples) in 1961 and within two years he was working at his uncle’s Brooklyn restaurant, Romano’s. In 1967, he and his brothers, Anthony and Vincent, opened a restaurant in Port Washington and The Scotto Brothers were launched on Long Island.
In his retirement, Brooke said that her husband was looking forward to spending more time with the grandkids, traveling to Italy, Greece and Hawaii. But she has another plan: “He has a phenomenal voice,” she said. “I am trying to get him on ‘The Voice Senior’ [an Italian competition show for singers older than 60]. Just to hear him sing ‘O sole mio in his beautiful baritone on TV,’ that’s my dream.”
Seventh Street Cafe, 126 7th St., Garden City, 516-747-7575, seventhstreetcafe.com
Erica Marcus, a passionate but skeptical omnivore, has been reporting and opining on the Long Island food scene since 1998.
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