There is a garden behind Gio's in Atlantic Beach. He tends to it himself every summer — basil, mint, pepper growing in the heat. Come summer, the mint ends up in the cocktails and the basil makes it into whatever he is cooking.
Gio grew up in Italy. Not in one city — all over the country, then Germany, London, Brazil. Four years of culinary school taught him to do things properly. The slow way. The way where you understand what you are doing when you walk into a kitchen.
Getting to Long Island was its own story. He owned Mateo, an Italian restaurant in Belmore, before eventually letting it go. He and his business partner then found a space near the water in Atlantic Beach — an existing restaurant, worn down, waiting for someone to care about it. They took it over, rebuilt it, made it beautiful. Gio's opened five years ago. They just celebrated that anniversary.
He will tell you there was no grand plan. The space was available. They made it work. But five years later, when the tables are full on a Saturday night and Gio is walking the floor to make sure no one leaves unhappy, it is hard to call it an accident. You land where you are supposed to land.
Weeknight locals keep Gio's alive through the winter — neighbors who have made this their place, who come not out of habit but out of loyalty. In the summer, the beach club crowd fills the room. Together they have built something that does not depend on the season to survive.
Some restaurants have regulars. Gio's has neighbors.
The menu is what Gio calls a mixed Italian-American kitchen. Some dishes come straight from culinary school. Some are the Italian-American food people on the South Shore grew up eating. Then there are the specials — Italian egg rolls, rotating dishes that change with what is good — things that have no obvious business on an Italian menu and somehow feel exactly right. People like something different. Gio gives it to them.
The dishes people come back for are the Chicken Gio — bone-in roasted chicken with Italian sausage, peppers, onions, burnt broccoli and roasted potatoes, built for two — and the Spicy Paccheri, a wide tube pasta in a tomato cream sauce with hot cherry peppers that regulars order every single time.
Then there is the garden out back, where he grows his own herbs every summer — basil, mint, pepper. Whatever is ready gets used. The mint goes in the cocktails. The basil goes in the kitchen.
Gio walks the floor every night. If something is off, he wants to know before you leave. "We make people feel at home," he says. "When they leave, they feel satisfied — like they were treated like family." That is not something a restaurant stumbles into after five years. It is something you build, table by table, night by night, until it is just the way you do things.
The sourcing matters too. Gio gets his fish from a local fish market in Levittown — a Long Island fish market that knows what they are doing. Some of the fish is local, some comes from further depending on the season, but it comes from people he trusts. Same philosophy as the garden. Know where it comes from. Understand what you are working with. Then cook it properly.
At Gio's you'll find someone who cares about the details that most people never notice and never asks for credit for any of it.
Now Gio is ready for the next chapter. The space next door — the old Atlantic Beach Surf Shop — is being converted into an expanded dining room with a bigger kitchen, outdoor seating and the brick oven Gio has been waiting on for years. The restaurant will grow from 75 to 120 seats. He is hoping to have it open by next summer.
The garden will still be out back. The herbs will still go into the food. Some things you do not change just because you are growing.
Gio's is open year-round. Come in. You will leave happy.
"There's a lot of local people who live in the neighborhood — it's their weeknight spot. They support us all year. It's a nice community."
"We make people feel at home. When they leave, they feel satisfied — like they had a good meal and were treated like family."