Our handpicked Long Island restaurant reviews — a small, curated set we keep adding to. A fresh pick lands every Thursday in your free Briefing.
📷 The Lobster Roll · Amagansett
📷 The Lobster Roll · Amagansett
"You don't go to the Lobster Roll for the roll. You go for the parking lot, the picnic table, the late afternoon. The roll is incidental." — Long Island TodayRead the full review →
The best restaurants on Long Island aren't a mystery — they're the ones with the weekend line, the parking-lot ritual, the counter that hasn't changed in thirty years. We review a small number of them properly instead of listing eight hundred of them badly: one full review a week, written by people who actually eat there, added to the handpicked directory below.
Where to start depends on what you're hungry for. By cuisine: the grandma slice at Umberto's of New Hyde Park for pizza, Strathmore Bagels in Ronkonkoma for the morning line, The Lobster Roll in Amagansett and Noah's in Greenport for seafood, and Munday's walk-up window in Huntington for ice cream. By meal: our ranked guides cover the best lunch on Long Island, the best diners, and — because Nassau brunch is its own sport — the Best Brunch in Nassau County. The East End runs on roadside seafood and North Fork oyster counters, and every town hub in the town guides lists the top-rated spots nearby. For the island-wide rankings by category — pizza, bagels, brunch, BBQ, date night — start at Best of LI 2026.
You don’t go to the Lobster Roll for the roll. You go for the parking lot, the picnic table, the late afternoon. The roll is…
A name you’ll find in a dozen Long Island towns — the Ronkonkoma shop is the one to beat.
The grandma slice that grandma slices everywhere are trying to be.
The line is the line. Nothing changes — and that’s the point.
Oysters til close. The North Fork on a plate.
One cut, cooked one way, sliced for the table. You order the steak for two and stop thinking about it.
A New England clam shack that got lost and stayed in Rockville Centre since 1939. Sit at the counter. Get the clams.
A seventy-year egg counter that turns tables faster than any diner in Nassau. Come early, come hungry, tip well.
A North Fork roadside classic since 1950 — the roast turkey, the mashed turnip, the parker rolls. Time did not touch this place.
A twenty-seat BYOB in a St. James strip that cooks like a Manhattan bistro and charges like a diner. Book ahead — it fills.
The Main Street bistro Port Washington leans on for a good brunch, a long lunch, and every anniversary in town.
A red-and-white drive-in that has griddled the same thin, crispy-edged burger since 1963. Order at the window, eat in the car.
The Long Beach sushi counter locals will wait an hour for. No reservations, no shortcuts — just the fish.
The Smithtown breakfast institution with a weekend wait that wraps the building — and pancakes that justify it.
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Our editors handpick and review the Long Island restaurants that are actually worth the drive — from the roadside Lobster Roll in Amagansett to Peter Luger in Great Neck and Noah's oyster bar in Greenport. The full curated restaurant directory spans seafood, pizza, steakhouses, sushi, and North Fork comfort food across Nassau and Suffolk, and the community-ranked Best of LI 2026 leaderboard shows the #1 pick in every category.
Long Island is diner country, and the classics still win: Thomas's Ham & Eggery in Carle Place has turned tables for over seventy years, Maureen's Kitchen in Smithtown draws a weekend line that wraps the building, and Modern Snack Bar out in Aquebogue has served North Fork comfort food since 1950. For the full rundown, see our guide to the best diners on Long Island.
For a great Long Island lunch, it's hard to beat a grandma slice at Umberto's of New Hyde Park, whole-belly fried clams at the counter at Bigelow's in Rockville Centre, a bialy from Strathmore Bagels in Ronkonkoma, or a burger off the hood of your car at The All American drive-in in Massapequa. All of them land in our handpicked directory.
For brunch, La P'tite Framboise on Port Washington's Main Street is the Nassau go-to for eggs Benedict and moules-frites on the sidewalk, and the North Fork bistros make a long Sunday easy. We keep a dedicated Best Brunch in Nassau County guide, and the Best of LI brunch rankings cover the top spots county by county.
Every Thursday — one restaurant, one quote, one reason to drive there. Free forever.