There is a moment in the life of every neighborhood when a particular address stops being merely a location and becomes a landmark. It happens quietly—the way a cast-iron skillet develops its seasoning, the way a leather hide darkens into its first honest patina. For Kings Park, that moment arrived in 2016, when Mark Torkelsen—a man who had spent his entire professional life in the hospitality trenches—opened the doors of Legends Bar & Grill at 34 Indian Head Road, just steps from Main Street and the Kings Park LIRR station. What was once a former watering hole called Past Times was reborn, and in the years since, Legends has quietly become one of the most talked-about bar and grills on Long Island’s North Shore. Not because of hype. Not because of celebrity endorsements. Because of consistency, community, and the unshakeable conviction that a neighborhood deserves a place where the burgers are serious and the welcome is unconditional.
I know something about this. Twenty-five years running The Heritage Diner in Mount Sinai—just a short drive east on 25A—has taught me that the restaurants that endure are never the ones chasing trends. They are the ones that understand a fundamental truth: a restaurant is not a business that serves food. It is a place that serves people. Legends Bar & Grill understands this truth at the molecular level.
The Resurrection of Indian Head Road
Kings Park is a hamlet of roughly 17,000 souls nestled in the Town of Smithtown on Long Island’s North Shore, a community whose history stretches back to the 1860s when Episcopal priest William Augustus Muhlenberg established the Christian farming settlement originally called Saint Johnland (Long Island Hub, 2024). It is a place defined by contradictions that make it beautiful—the haunted grandeur of the old Kings Park Psychiatric Center looming over the same bluffs where Sunken Meadow State Park’s 1,287 acres of coastline meet the Long Island Sound in one of the most stunning panoramas in the Northeast. Kings Park produced MLB All-Star Craig Biggio and three-fifths of progressive metal legends Dream Theater (LongIsland.com, 2024). It was once in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most bars per capita in a single town. This is not a community that takes its watering holes lightly.
When Torkelsen chose the Indian Head Road location—within walking distance of the LIRR station and the heart of Kings Park’s compact commercial district—he was making a statement. The space had history. It had ghosts. One memorable Tripadvisor reviewer, writing under the persona of a “Vagabond Philosopher,” described walking in and finding that the old establishment had been transformed into something entirely new—a space filled with energy, warm lighting, and a clientele that actually dressed well and traded genuine banter with the bartenders. The phoenix metaphor is overused in restaurant writing, but here it fits. Legends rose from its predecessor’s ashes not with a whimper but with a sizzle.
The Menu: Where High-BTU Meets High Concept
The term “bar food” has been weaponized over the decades to mean something disposable—frozen wings under a heat lamp, nachos assembled with the care of a gas station attendant. Legends has spent nearly a decade dismantling that expectation.
The menu is built around what I call the “high-BTU American canon”—burgers, wings, steak egg rolls, loaded nachos, bar pies—but executed with an attention to detail that separates craft from commodity. The Steakhouse Burger ($23) is the flagship: a substantial patty prepared to your specification, presented on a proper bun that understands its structural responsibilities. The Spicy Burger adds pepper jack, avocado, jalapeño, and chipotle mayo for those who believe a burger should push back a little. The Buffalo Misfit ($22) has developed its own cult following. And then there is the Breakfast Burger—cheddar, bacon, and a sunny side up egg crowning the patty—which ET Week Media Group described as “absolutely delicious” when they profiled the restaurant (ET Week, 2021).
Food science tells us precisely why these burgers work. The Maillard reaction—that 112-year-old chemical process first described by French chemist Louis-Camille Maillard in 1912—occurs when amino acids and reducing sugars interact at temperatures between 280°F and 330°F. The reaction produces melanoidins, the dark brown compounds responsible for the crust, and hundreds of unique flavor compounds including butyrates, which give seared beef its characteristic richness (Wikipedia; Schweid & Sons, 2024). When a kitchen understands this science—when a flat-top runs at the right temperature and the patties hit the surface with proper technique—you taste the difference. Legends’ kitchen clearly understands this.
Beyond the burgers, the Signature Orecchiette—Italian sausage, broccoli rabe, and orecchiette pasta with extra virgin olive oil—surprised ET Week’s reviewer with its old-world authenticity. The Orange-Ginger Grilled Salmon arrives with garlic mashed potatoes and baby spinach, an unexpected refinement for a bar and grill. And the Veggie Burger—quinoa, black beans, lentils, tomato, and garlic aioli—signals that Legends takes all of its guests seriously, not just the carnivores.
The Rainbow Cake and the Art of the Signature
Every enduring restaurant needs its signature moment—the dish that becomes shorthand for the entire experience. At The Heritage Diner, it is the morning rhythm itself, the convergence of familiar faces and the smell of a fresh griddle. At Legends, it is the Rainbow Cake.
Dense, moist, and arrestingly colorful, the Rainbow Cake has become the restaurant’s most Instagrammed item, the dessert that first-time visitors order on the strength of reputation alone. ET Week called it “beautifully presented” and noted that it “delivered on the promise of popularity” (ET Week, 2021). The Red Velvet Cake and the Salted Caramel Drizzle option provide alternatives, but the Rainbow Cake is the icon—proof that a bar and grill can possess a pastry identity as vivid as any dedicated bakery.
In my years working with English bridle leather at Marcellino NY, I have learned that a signature is not about flash—it is about a single detail executed so well that it becomes inseparable from the maker’s identity. The way J&E Sedgwick tans their hides in oak bark for fourteen months to produce a leather with unmatched character, Legends has developed its cake into something that transcends dessert and becomes brand architecture. That is not an accident. That is craft.
$126,000 and Counting: Legends in the Community
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Legends Bar & Grill is not what happens inside the restaurant, but what flows outward from it.
Since 2018, Mark Torkelsen has hosted an annual Holiday Fundraiser that has become one of Kings Park’s defining community events. The format is celebratory—live music, raffle prizes, Santa and Mrs. Claus arriving on a firetruck—but the mission is serious. Local businesses sponsor the event, and donations in the form of cash and toys go directly to Kings Park families in need, often through partnerships with the Smithtown Children’s Foundation (ET Week, 2024).
The most recent fundraiser alone raised $39,000, bringing the cumulative total to $126,000. Every dollar has gone back into the community. Let that figure settle for a moment. A neighborhood bar and grill, open since 2016, has channeled more than six figures directly into the hands of local families who needed it most. The list of holiday party sponsors reads like a directory of Long Island’s small business ecosystem: Canfield Ruggiero LLP, Prime Wine & Liquor, Ciro’s of Kings Park, Kashi Japanese, Cusumano Custom Homes, Certified Cesspool, De Monte Plumbing, and many more. This is what economists call the multiplier effect in action—one business creating a gravitational field that strengthens the entire commercial fabric of a community.
As someone preparing to launch Maison Pawli with my wife Paola in 2026—a boutique real estate venture rooted in the conviction that community infrastructure drives property value—I can tell you that this kind of sustained civic investment is precisely what transforms a neighborhood from a collection of addresses into a genuine place. Legends is not just feeding Kings Park. It is building it.
The Atmosphere: Your Third Place, Redefined
The sociologist Ray Oldenburg coined the term “Third Place” to describe the informal public gathering spaces that exist between home (the first place) and work (the second place). Barbershops. Pubs. Diners. Cafés. These are the spaces where community actually happens—where social capital is generated through the unplanned encounter, the overheard conversation, the familiar nod from behind the bar.
Legends is a textbook Third Place. The outdoor patio extends the experience into warmer months. The bar area hums with the cadence of game-day energy and weeknight decompression in equal measure. The staff—names like Danielle, Ashley, and Todd surface repeatedly in reviews—are remembered not as servers but as personalities, people who make regulars feel known and newcomers feel invited. Reviewers on multiple platforms consistently cite the warmth of the front-of-house team as a distinguishing feature, which tells you something important: Torkelsen has built a culture, not just a staff.
The Kings Park Chamber of Commerce lists Legends under both “Restaurants/Catering” and “Bars/Entertainment/Nightlife,” which captures the duality nicely. This is a place where you can bring a youth hockey team for a post-game celebration, host a baptism catering package, watch Sunday football with a beer flight, or simply close out a Tuesday with a quiet drink and the Buffalo Mac n Cheese. The range is the point.
Catering, Party Packages, and the Off-Premise Expansion
One of the clearest indicators of a restaurant’s maturity is its catering operation. Any kitchen can serve a walk-in. Feeding an off-site event—maintaining quality, consistency, and presentation outside the controlled environment of your own space—requires a fundamentally different discipline.
Legends’ catering menu builds on its core strengths: shareable platters of wings, sliders, pretzel bites, and signature items scaled for groups. The $99 and $199 catering package specials lower the barrier to entry for budget-conscious hosts. The Party Packages offer reserved space, customizable food and drink menus, and add-on options for entertainment or themed décor—a turnkey solution for birthdays, reunions, corporate events, and everything in between. One reviewer described ordering a catering package for a baptism and being “blown away” by the pretzel appetizer and chicken Parmesan entree.
Delivery infrastructure is robust: DoorDash, Uber Eats, GrubHub, and Seamless all carry the Legends menu, extending the restaurant’s reach well beyond Indian Head Road.
The Verdict from the North Shore
Legends Bar & Grill holds a 4.4-star average across major review platforms, with 72 reviews on Yelp and a top-ten ranking among Kings Park restaurants on Tripadvisor. But the numbers only tell part of the story. It is the texture of the reviews that reveals the truth. Guests describe bartenders by first name. They return for specific dishes. They bring out-of-town visitors. They mention the cleanliness—always a tell for how seriously an owner takes the invisible details. One Tripadvisor reviewer simply declared that the wings at Legends were the best they had tasted anywhere in the world.
From my vantage point five miles east on Route 25A, I watch the North Shore dining landscape with the eyes of someone who has survived recessions, pandemics, supply chain collapses, and the relentless churn of consumer attention. The restaurants that make it to decade two are always the ones that understood something their competitors did not: longevity is not a function of novelty. It is a function of reliability. Legends Bar & Grill, approaching its tenth anniversary, has the infrastructure, the community investment, and the culinary identity to be around for decades to come.
Kings Park already knew this. Now you do too.
Legends Bar & Grill 📍 34 Indian Head Road, Kings Park, NY 11754 📞 (631) 663-3419 🌐 legendsbarandgrillkp.com 📸 Instagram: @legendsbarandgrill_kp
Hours: Sunday – Wednesday: 12:00 PM – 10:00 PM Thursday – Saturday: 12:00 PM – 11:00 PM
Order Delivery: DoorDash · Uber Eats · GrubHub · Seamless
Catering & Events: Party packages and catering available. Contact the restaurant directly for custom event planning.
Multimedia: 🎥 The Science Behind the Perfect Smash Burger — Maillard Reaction Explained — A deep dive into the high-heat technique that defines great American burger cookery.
Peter from The Heritage Diner writes about food, craftsmanship, and the North Shore communities that sustain both. The Heritage Diner is located at 275 Route 25A, Mount Sinai, NY. Marcellino NY handcrafts bespoke English bridle leather briefcases at marcellinony.com.
