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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.
VS
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.
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