Signature Dish: Tuscan Hills
Welcome to a new Q’Stoner food feature, Signature Dish! Once a week we check in with Queens restaurants and ask the owners about the all-time favorite dishes they serve. If you know of a dish you’d like to see featured here, please email emily@brownstoner.com. The Spot: Tuscan Hills, 115-20 Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills. The Deal:…
Welcome to a new Q’Stoner food feature, Signature Dish! Once a week we check in with Queens restaurants and ask the owners about the all-time favorite dishes they serve. If you know of a dish you’d like to see featured here, please email emily@brownstoner.com.
The Spot: Tuscan Hills, 115-20 Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills.
The Deal: Forest Hills restaurant Tuscan Hills specializes in not just Italian cuisine but Tuscan cuisine. Throughout the space are small stories about the birth of the restaurant. For example, when the owners took on a renovation here they didn’t know they’d find a beautiful brick wall hidden behind layers of sheetrock. Also look for the horseshoe which has brought the owners good luck.
The Dish: Since opening, the most popular dish on the menu has been the Caciucco alla livornese, a variation on a traditional Tuscan fish stew in a tomato sauce. Where a traditional fish stew is served with a few pieces of bread, at Tuscan Hills the stew is baked under pizza dough. The restaurant features Tuscan red and white wines that pair well with the dish, the Vernaccia di San Gimignano as the white and the light red Rosso di Montalcino.
The Caciucco alla livornese is served on the dinner menu.
Fhguy I’d like to hear about places in FH that you DONT like to eat at. You couldn’t be more wrong about independent restaurants in Forest Hills serving good food due to their longevity in the neighborhood, along with loyal customers coming back. The T-bone diner is one of the most vile places to eat in FH and they’ve been around forever, with plenty of customers that come back for more in spite of the bad food. There’s more like the T-bone here in FH but I won’t mention names, most of us who live here know of the bad places to avoid, while others don’t care and keep coming back for more.
I never said that places that have longevity serve great food. What I said was that if an independent restaurant is packed every weekend, they usually have great food. Having longevity and being packed on the weekends are two very different things. T-Bone diner has a lot of longevity, but I walk past there all the time on the weekends and it is never crowded. In fact, T-Bone seems to have less and less customers over the last few years. Just because T-Bone lasted this long, that doesn’t mean that it can keep surviving with less and less customers. They may have very low operating costs (like very low rent or ownership of that building) that have enabled them to survive. But given their dwindling amount of customers, I doubt that T-Bone will be able to survive much longer.
There may be no good diner’s in Forest Hills, but in nearby Rego Park there is the Shalimar diner which I recommend. Very good food, reasonable prices, and a free parking lot. And only a few blocks away from the Rego Mall, which has some excellent shopping.
The Shalimar diner serves a great Greek salad! Their burger platters are delish too. Both are under $10 and can’t be beat for tasty eats.
TBone Diner on Queens Blvd. is easily one of the worst in Forest Hills, but the other old time diner on Austin St. is also very bad. A decent diner and a good Italian pizzeria are desperately needed in Forest Hills, in the meantime there are some solid choices in nearby Rego Park.
By your logic Mickey D’s is the best place to eat in FH since it is always packed throughout the day and night. How is it you’re the only person who posts that places like Nicks Pizza and Gloria Pizza, as well as a few others are always packed and busy on the weekends? I live in the heart of FH and pass all these places almost everyday, yet I never see how busy they are, weekends and weekdays??
I don’t think it’s fair to conclude that Tuscan Hills is not “authentic” based on how they prepare one dish. It’s possible that in Tuscany there are different ways of preparing Carpaccio.
I don’t claim to be an expert in Tuscan cooking. But I can tell you that I’ve been to Tuscan Hills many times and every dish I’ve tried there has been excellent. Even if you don’t like how they prepare that one dish, it is possible that you will like many of their other dishes. Of course, it is up to you whether or not to give Tuscan Hills a try. But if you never try it, in my opinion you are missing out on one of the best restaurants in Forest Hills.
Ewww, that’s gross! Good to know they’re not authentic before wasting a trip.
My comments aren’t any more “overly positive” than yours are “overly negative”. I am just stating my opinion about Nick’s Pizza and Gloria. And you are stating your opinion. We just disagree about these places, that’s all. But there are obviously many, many people who agree with me about Nick’s because it is an extremely successful and popular place that is packed with people every weekend. Gloria has been open for a much shorter time than Nick’s, but it is already pretty successful, judging by how busy it is every time I go there.
I also forgot to mention another great place for pizza in Forest Hills–Dee’s on Metropolitan Avenue. Dee’s not only has great pizzas but they have a large menu of other food, including pastas, burgers, salads and entrees. Besides their delicious pizzas, I’ve always liked any dish I’ve tried at Dee’s.