No Good Burger Joint

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• Top 6 Cheeseburgers on Long Island

  Currently #4 · score 0

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• All American Hamburger Drive-In

  All American Hamburger Drive-In has been flipping burgers on Merrick Road in Massapequa since 1963, and the family that runs it has resisted the urge to change much of anything in the six decades since. There's no indoor seating — just a walk-up window, a handful of picnic tables out front, and a neon sign that's been drawing cars off Merrick Road since the Kennedy administration. It's the kind of drive-in most of the Island's other burger spots are, whether they admit it or not, quietly trying to imitate. The menu is deliberately short: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, and quarter pounders, each available with or without cheese, plus the option to double up into what the menu calls a Double Header or a Double Double. Add a hot dog, onion rings, or a grilled cheese and you've covered the entire board. The patties are thin, griddled hot and fast rather than built up gourmet-style, and the fries are peeled fresh on site rather than dropped frozen from a bag — a detail regulars notice even if they can't always articulate why the fries taste different from everywhere else on the Island. That stripped-down format is the whole point. All American isn't chasing a smash-burger trend or a truffle-aioli upgrade; it's running the same order-at-the-window, eat-at-a-picnic-table format it opened with in 1963, back when drive-ins like this one were common across Long Island rather than a novelty. Writers covering the place consistently reach for the same comparison — a genuine "Happy Days"-era throwback — because it's one of the only spots left on the Island where that description isn't an exaggeration. The restaurant has stayed a Massapequa fixture precisely because it never tried to become anything else. ABC7 New York profiled the drive-in specifically for having "been flipping burgers since 1963," treating the shop's longevity itself as the news. Roadfood.com and independent burger writers, including critic Nick Solares, have separately singled it out as one of the more honest examples of old-school Long Island drive-in cooking still operating, a distinction that matters in a region where most similar spots from that era have long since closed or been remodeled into something glossier. Generations of the same Massapequa families have grown up stopping there, which is part of why the restaurant's Yelp and Tripadvisor pages are stacked with reviewers recalling specific childhood memories of the place rather than just rating the food. For a Long Island cheeseburger list, All American Hamburger Drive-In is the essential "this is what a Long Island drive-in actually looked like" entry — a thin, fast-griddled patty served at a walk-up window with fresh-cut fries, in a Massapequa parking lot that's looked and operated essentially the same way since 1963.

• Reese's 1900

  Reese's 1900 sits on North Ocean Avenue in Patchogue, just off Main Street, in a building whose own documented history stretches back to at least 1914 — old photographs of the site show trolley tracks running past the front door, from the era when trolley cars carried passengers down South Ocean Avenue to the Great South Bay. The pub has occupied that same footprint for decades, evolving into the "true pub of the Old Style" regulars describe today, run for years by co-owners Joe Palmeri and Matt. Palmeri has bartended since he was 17 years old and is now in his sixties, which means his tenure behind the Reese's bar alone accounts for a meaningful chunk of the pub's operating history — a kind of institutional memory that's rare in a restaurant business where ownership and staff typically turn over every few years. That continuity shows up in the room itself: an unpretentious, old-style pub atmosphere built for regulars rather than engineered for Instagram, serving honest food at prices that haven't chased the rest of Patchogue's more upscale dining scene. The signature order is the 1900 Burger — a thick, richly beefy patty finished with blue cheese and bacon, served on a soft bun alongside a stack of thick-cut pub fries. Newsday's feedme section specifically singled it out as Long Island readers' top burger recommendation, a distinction based on reader votes rather than a single critic's opinion, which carries real weight in a region as dense with burger competition as Long Island. NextStop Magazine separately praised the pub for offering "great food at great prices, in a friendly and inviting atmosphere," and Greater L.I. magazine profiled Palmeri's own four-decade bartending career as a story in its own right, independent of the burger that made the pub famous. The pub's civic standing in Patchogue runs beyond food writing, too — Palmeri and Matt served as Grand Marshals of the 2024 Patchogue St. Patrick's Day Parade, the kind of hyperlocal honor typically reserved for businesses and people who've been genuine fixtures of a town's civic life for years, not for a restaurant chasing a viral moment. That combination — a building with documented roots reaching back over a century, an owner who's spent more than 40 years behind one bar, and a burger that Long Islanders themselves voted the best on the Island — is a harder set of credentials to fake than a flashy build or a trendy topping list. For a Long Island cheeseburger list, Reese's 1900 is the essential "old-style pub, reader-voted burger" entry — a blue cheese and bacon cheeseburger served out of a Patchogue building with roots reaching back over a century, by an owner whose own history behind the bar runs almost as deep.

• Boxcar Burgers

  Boxcar Burgers opened in January 2020 on Railroad Avenue near the Ronkonkoma train station, founded by Steve Cannon and Mike Dorian — Port Jefferson Station natives who've been best friends since they were 12 years old, and who between them have worked nearly every job the restaurant business offers, from dishwasher up through executive management. They built the concept specifically around Long Island's railroad heritage, working the theme into everything from the name itself to the interior design, under a tagline that sums up the whole pitch: "food that's off the rails." The timing turned out to be almost comically bad and then, eventually, good anyway. Cannon and Dorian designed Boxcar Burgers to catch the daily wave of commuters heading to and from the Ronkonkoma LIRR station — a captive, high-volume audience passing the door twice a day. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit within weeks of opening and emptied the commuter trains entirely, forcing the two founders to rebuild their customer base almost from scratch around local diners rather than the transit crowd they'd planned for. That the burger joint not only survived that mistimed launch but expanded to three locations, including a spot in the Smith Haven Mall food court, says something about the underlying product. The kitchen leans into quality, freshly baked bread and thick, well-seared patties rather than trying to out-gimmick the competition, positioning itself as a straightforward, ingredient-forward burger built by two self-described "working-class guys" rather than a chef-driven concept chasing culinary spectacle. The railroad framing isn't just a name slapped on a generic burger menu, either — Cannon and Dorian have said explicitly that they wanted to highlight Long Island's rail history in every detail of the restaurant, from the Railroad Avenue location itself to the boxcar-referencing branding throughout. That kind of specific, place-rooted theming is harder to find among the Island's newer burger openings, many of which lean on more generic "gourmet burger bar" branding that could be transplanted to any suburb in the country. Boxcar Burgers, by contrast, could really only exist in a Long Island train town. The Smith Haven Mall food court expansion is a particularly telling data point, since food-court operators are typically choosy about which independent concepts they'll bring in alongside established national chains — landing that slot suggests Boxcar Burgers had built enough of a track record at its original Ronkonkoma location to be treated as a proven concept rather than a risky local experiment, only a few years removed from a launch that could easily have sunk the whole idea. For a Long Island cheeseburger list, Boxcar Burgers is the essential "built around Long Island's own railroad history" entry — a thick, quality-driven patty served a few steps from the Ronkonkoma LIRR platform, founded by two lifelong friends who opened three weeks before a pandemic emptied their target audience and rebuilt anyway.

• P.S. Burgers

  P.S. Burgers has operated out of a small storefront on 2nd Street in Mineola since 2012, built around a premise that was still fairly novel for a Long Island burger joint at the time: a menu centered on 100% grass-fed beef rather than the grain-fed standard most fast-casual burger spots default to. Grass-fed beef runs leaner and carries a slightly different, more mineral flavor than grain-fed, and P.S. Burgers built its entire identity around that distinction rather than treating it as a footnote on the menu. The restaurant's stated mission is to draw from "the 4 corners of the world," and that shows up literally in the protein list — alongside the grass-fed beef, P.S. Burgers offers lamb, bison, turkey, and salmon patties, plus veggie and Beyond Burger options, letting a single restaurant serve a genuinely wide range of dietary preferences without splitting into separate menus. That range is unusual for a Long Island burger spot of this size; most independent burger joints on the Island pick a lane — classic diner, smash, or gourmet — and stay in it, while P.S. Burgers has built a following specifically by refusing to. The build style leans gourmet rather than smash: thicker, more deliberately constructed patties finished with toppings meant to complement each specific protein rather than a single house sauce applied across the board. That approach has made P.S. Burgers a regular stop for Long Islanders looking for something beyond a standard beef cheeseburger without leaving Mineola for a more expensive sit-down restaurant, and it's earned steady coverage from local outlets like Going Local Long Island and Burger Weekly specifically for that global, protein-forward menu structure. Operating from the same modest Mineola storefront for over a decade, without the kind of expansion into multiple locations that similarly popular Long Island burger spots have pursued, has let P.S. Burgers stay closely controlled by the same team that built its grass-fed sourcing relationships in the first place — a level of focus that shows up in the consistency regulars describe across reviews spanning more than ten years of operation. Sticking to grass-fed sourcing for over a decade also means absorbing a cost the restaurant could have quietly walked back at any point when grain-fed beef prices dipped — grass-fed beef consistently runs more expensive than the conventional alternative, and a small independent storefront choosing to hold that line for ten-plus years, across five distinct proteins rather than just the flagship beef patty, is a more durable commitment than a limited-time menu feature. For a Long Island cheeseburger list, P.S. Burgers is the essential "grass-fed, globally-minded" entry — a Mineola storefront that's spent over a decade proving a burger joint can serve lamb, bison, turkey, and salmon patties alongside a proper grass-fed beef cheeseburger without losing focus on any single one of them.

• Chubs Burgers Burritos and Heroes

  Chubs Burgers Burritos and Heroes grew directly out of a butcher shop. Ryan Jones opened the original Chubs Meats in 2014 with a specific goal in mind — a butcher counter where "everyone felt comfortable" the moment they walked in, built on quality, competitively priced, locally sourced product rather than a more clinical, purely transactional meat-counter experience. Five years later, in 2019, Jones expanded the brand into a dedicated Burger, Burrito, and Hero shop in Farmingville, taking over the former Moller's Sandwich Shop space on Horseblock Road. That butcher-shop pedigree matters more than it might for a typical burger joint: the beef going into Chubs' burgers comes from the same sourcing relationships and hand-cutting standards Jones built his original meat counter's reputation on, rather than from a generic food-service distributor supplying a generic pre-formed patty. It's the difference between a burger restaurant that happens to grind its own beef and an actual butcher shop that decided to start serving what it sells, cooked to order, on a bun. The Farmingville menu leans into that same quality-over-flash approach across the board — a build-your-own burger section sits alongside signature, overstuffed meat-lovers heroes and burritos, plus wraps and salads for anyone not there for beef specifically. It's a breakfast-and-lunch operation built for volume and consistency, the kind of neighborhood spot regulars stop into multiple times a week rather than save for a special occasion. Jones didn't stop at one expansion, either — the Chubs brand grew to include a food truck for catering and events and a second Chubs Meats butcher shop location in Ronkonkoma in 2021, with a third location following in Smithtown. Chubs Meats has been named "Best of Long Island Butcher Shop" six times and "Best Caterer" three times, recognition that predates and underpins the burger shop's own reputation rather than the other way around — Chubs Burgers didn't build a burger following and then add a meat counter for credibility, it built a meat counter's credibility first and then opened a burger shop to put it to direct use. That sequencing is worth sitting with, because it inverts the more common pattern among newer Long Island burger spots, where a restaurant opens first and sourcing claims get added to the marketing later. Jones ran a working butcher counter for five full years before a burger was ever on the menu, which means the sourcing relationships, the hand-cutting standards, and the six Best of Long Island wins were already established, independently verified facts by the time Chubs Burgers Burritos and Heroes opened its doors in Farmingville. For a Long Island cheeseburger list, Chubs Burgers Burritos and Heroes is the essential "actual butcher shop, not just butcher-shop branding" entry — a Farmingville burger counter built on the same sourcing and cutting standards as a six-time Best of Long Island butcher shop, serving thick, quality-driven patties to a neighborhood that already trusted the meat before the burgers existed.