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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.
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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.
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