Tidbits: Long Island's most underrated food

Ask anyone about Long Island's iconic foods and they might say a cold cheese slice from Little Vincent's, a BEC sandwich or maybe an All American Hamburger. But let me tell you about the secret of tidbits, a South Shore delicacy that's been flying under the radar for a generation. 

Nassau County folks swear by it, yet this open-faced sandwich is practically unheard-of outside of New York. Advertised on the menu at most every pub, the "signature tidbits" consists of two slices of fluffy garlic bread loaded with strips of steak or chicken, smothered with a thick blanket of gooey mozzarella cheese. The plate usually comes with some fries and a side of barbecue sauce.

You might say the tidbit is the Long Island version of a Philly cheesesteak, or maybe it's more like Boston steak tips? A little bit Italian, a little bit Irish ... Tidbits are an everyman's meal that gets the job done, but doesn’t brag about it. And after a beer or three, boy do they hit the spot.

"Long Island has vibrated at a level that the rest of the world has never seen yet." said Tom Schaudel. The longtime chef cooked "a whole metric" load of tidbits in his teenage years in the late '60s and '70s, working at Sir Loin in Westbury. But tidbit history goes back before that.

WHAT ARE TIDBITS? 

The term tidbits is both a specific recipe, and general word for a small piece of tasty food. That might be why there are newspaper references for beef and chicken tidbits dating back to the 1890s. By the 1930s, people were adding canned mushroom sauce. A 1952 Newsday ad for the Ships Inn in East Rockaway lists a "sliced steak tidbit platter" on toast with mushroom sauce and french fries for $1, served after 10 p.m. Tidbits as we know them now became widespread in the '60s and '70s, when they were mentioned in Barbara Rader reviews of restaurants like T.J. Poole’s in Mineola, and Ickle Bickle’s in Malverne, both of which were decorated with Tiffany lamps.

"We use to call it the salad trough," Schaudel said, referring to the more casual steakhouses that dotted the Island when he was coming of age. "People would go up there and annihilate the salad bar. They didn't have prime steaks, they had large and small. The large steak was $4.95. Tidbits were probably two bucks." 

Tidbits were originally created to use up leftover trimmings of filet mignon after the steak was butchered, he said. Originally, they didn't even include bread — just a handful of meat trimmings marinated in olive oil and vinegar, thrown on a steel hot plate, broiled and served maybe with a little parsley. 

The former Lawson Pub in Oceanside is often credited with either inventing or popularizing tidbits. The pub opened in the early '70s, when Joseph "Joey" Bonacore worked there as a teenager. It closed in the '90s, and the South Shore chef revived it for a spell in the 2010s around the time of Superstorm Sandy. 

"I wouldn’t say I invented [tidbits], no. But I served thousands of them," Bonacore said. "Back in the day, when I worked there when I was a kid, it was the place to go for that. It’s a pub thing, a classic pub thing." 

TIDBITS STILL POPULAR

Bonacore opened his latest restaurant, Joey's Bold Flavors, in Oceanside last October. The hideaway spot mostly serves old-school Italian food, except for the last item on the menu, the Lawson's Pub Style filet mignon tidbits for $29. 

The dish is more elevated, and is significantly smaller than the pub versions. There is only one slice of garlic bread, but the nubs of steak are fatter and more tender, flavorful. Should you eat it like a finger food, or slice it with a knife? The fries are so thin they'll give you a paper cut, served in a steel basket along with housemade white barbecue sauce with horseradish, sour cream and Dijon mustard. Instead of a beer, pair it with a juicy $12 cabernet that is nearly twice the size of a regular pour. 

"It’s crazy, [the tidbits] are one of the most popular items I sell. It’s unbelievable," Bonacore said. 

Just up the road, Rockville Centre has long been known for its old-school bars. Many sell T-shirts with illustrations of pubs like Monaghan's, Churchill's, KC's Rooftop, Centre Station, Lindsay's and The Dark Horse Tavern. With the exception of Lindsay's, which doesn't serve food, every one of these places makes tidbits. But the wood-paneled, checker-tiled MacArthur Park may have been selling them the longest. 

Owner Tom Mahoney Jr. says tidbits were on the menu when his father opened the joint in 1972. And before that, his dad sold them at a bar in Lynbrook called Rasputin's. 

"I've been eating them my whole life, I still eat them a few times a week," he said. "When I’m working, it’s easy to get an order of tidbits ... I can dip it in the sauce. Each tidbit is a two-bite piece." 

On a recent afternoon, the chicken tidbits ($24.79), stole the show. The slices of chicken breast are just right, and the mozzarella cheese is more generous than at other places. The bacon horseradish sauce tastes like Arby's, but better. A Smithwick's red ale from Ireland helps wash the whole thing down. 

A newer trend is to top the tidbits with corned beef, a specialty you'll find at Connolly Station in Malverne. Dublin-native Gerry Hughes said the corned beef is roasted for three hours at 450 degrees with beer and pineapple ($17.95). although not on the regular menu, corned beef tidbits are often a special at Johnny McGorey's Pub in Massapequa Park. They've even done an alla vodka chicken tidbit with a chicken cutlet and vodka sauce. 

"Everywhere you go in pubs now, they have tidbits," said co-owner Dave Baker one afternoon by the bar, as '90s alternative rock played on the speakers. "Somebody from New Jersey told me that you just can’t get them in New Jersey, they don’t do that. And if they do, they don’t call them that, they call them something else." 

Steven Devine, a rep from Boston Beer Co. who was there to promote a new Grateful Dead-themed pale ale, chimed in. 

"I feel like the tidbits are a Nassau County big thing. Even as you go further into Suffolk, it’s on less menus," he said. "I'm from Suffolk, so until I moved to Long Beach I hadn’t eaten them." 

But the best story about tidbits came from a reader, Rachel Wiesenberg, 42, a resident of North Merrick who's originally from Connecticut. She said she'd never heard of tidbits until she was doing her undergrad at Hofstra and met "a nice boy from Baldwin" who took her out to dinner one night. At the restaurant, she asked him what the tidbits were, and both he and the server were flabbergasted. 

"Never heard of tidbits? Where are you from? Connecticut, or Mars?" she remembers the server lamenting. 

That nice boy from Baldwin is now her husband, and Wiesenberg says that they still use that phrase to explain all kinds of things. 

By Andi Berlin

andi.berlin@newsday.comAndiBerlin

Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.