$1 burgers (and good company) at Port Jefferson's Tara Inn

Jim Riley has been coming to Tara Inn in Port Jefferson since 1978, a year after it opened, and figures he’s there five times a week. The local contractor appreciates the bar’s fair prices ($6 for his draft pint of Smithwick’s Irish ale) and the kitchen’s absurd prices, which include the $22 Wednesday prime rib special, the $15 Thursday lobster special—it comes with a cup of clam chowder—and, most famously, the $1 burger, available all the time. But, he said, “You can eat and drink in a lot of places. The company is the main reason I come.”

He’ll never forget that a fellow customer, Tom, who he barely knew at the time, helped his son get his first teaching position. “And I’ve been trying to pay him back ever since. The people here, we are more like a family than friends.”

Everyone agrees that the familial tone was set by owner Joe Higgins. At 94 years old, he’s stepped back from running the business but can still be found holding court at the bar most Fridays.

“My father always wanted everyone to feel like they were sitting in his living room,” said his daughter Tara Higgins. “If there was a pot roast lunch special, he’d remember to save the ends of the roast for a customer who liked them but wasn’t coming until later.”

When Higgins and his wife, Pat (who died in 2022), were casting about for a business name, they chose Tara because it had a nice Irish ring to it, and it also honored the sixth of their eight children, who had been born two months premature and was her father’s “miracle baby.”

Tara went on to be a law clerk at the New York State Supreme Court in Riverhead as well as a judge for the village of Port Jefferson. “But I could be elected the next president of the United States,” she observed, “and I’d still be introduced as Tara of Tara Inn.”

Tara is a frequent presence here but it’s her sister Kate Higgins who, since 2014, has run the place. She inherited her father’s gift for inspiring community as well as his organizational skills and exacting standards. Watch her make a turkey club sandwich, for example.

“You start by putting two slices of white bread in the toaster,” she explained. “As soon as they come out, you put the third one in. You spread mayo on the bottom slice, then the tomato, so it lies flat, then the bacon on top of that, then the second slice of toast, more mayo, turkey and lettuce. By that time, the third piece of toast should be popping up, you spread mayo on that. Dad always said to make the sandwich quickly so when you serve it, the toast is still warm.”

By the time Higgins opened Tara Inn in 1977, he already had decades of experience behind the bar and stove. The family had moved to Long Island from New Jersey in 1966 and Higgins had become co-owner of a deli on Main Street two blocks south of the water, where Revival by Toast is now. “A lot of people he met in the village took him under their wing,” Tara recalled. “Port Jefferson is a place where families go back three or four generations—he was the new guy.”

When the deli partnership broke up, Higgins was approached by the owner of 1519 Main St., which was up the hill a mile south. Would he be interested in taking over a vacant space? Now, the semi-vacant storefronts surrounding Tara Inn give off a vibe that could charitably be described as dodgy but, back then, Kate explained, “uptown” was the vibrant area of Port Jefferson. “Before [developer James] McNamara built Chandler Square and Danfords near the water, this was the nicer part of town. There was a butcher, a diner, a hardware store.”

The inn’s immediate predecessor was called the Anchor Club, but the building’s history is documented in framed photographs hung in the bar and dining room. Before the Anchor, it was Al’s Ten Pin Inn and, before that, Vincent’s Ten Pin Inn. Yes, there was originally a bowling alley in the 3,200-square-foot basement. Now it’s used for storage and one of the two kitchens, but photos testify to its service as a reception hall for Knights of Columbus meetings and the occasional wedding in the pre-Tara era.

Tara Inn has always been divided into a bar and a dining room but, when it first opened, the emphasis was on the dining room, which was decked out with real china and green-and-white-checked tablecloths (with matching curtains) that Pat made herself. But, Kate said, “that didn’t really take off” and so Higgins began to lean into the bar business. 

With no dishwasher, he relied increasingly on paper plates and plastic utensils. Soups, still a menu mainstay, assumed primacy because “if he was behind the bar and he got a food ticket, he’d have to go into the kitchen to cook. He started making soup so people would have something to eat while he made lunch.”

Initially, monthly rent was under $1,000 but within a few years it had more than tripled and, in 1985, Higgins bought the building. The decision was critical for the business’s sustainability, Kate said. “Believe me, we wouldn’t be selling dollar hamburgers if we were paying rent.” But, she hastened to add, “I pay the same prices everyone else does, and I buy top of the line—the four-ounce burgers are from Butcher Boy in Mount Sinai, the buns are Arnold Brick Oven.”

She recalled a brief period around 2015 when they did raise the price of the burger to $2 and “the you-know-what hit the fan.” Noted Tara, “It was almost the end of Western civilization.”

“Look,” she continued, “the business model here is to do volume, and no one is going to get rich. But Dad worked like a dog—and Mom worked equally hard at home—and they managed to send eight kids to college. It was really important to Dad that we keep things as inexpensive as possible.”

One dividend of Tara Inn’s affordability is the diverse crowd it attracts—blue collar, white collar, a couple of clerical collars, too. “Some people think we are a biker bar,” Kate said, “and we do get the occasional biker, and people see the bikes right out front.” But customers are just as likely to be medical workers from nearby Mather Hospital, students and professors from Stony Brook or scientists from Brookhaven Lab. Jim Simons, the billionaire founder of Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, was known to sit at the bar.

Tara Inn is also the kind of place that keeps customers for life. “Dad called it the chain,” Kate said. “A couple meets at the bar in their 20s, they get married and have kids. The whole family comes for lunch after soccer practice, then the kids grow up but when they come back to visit Port Jefferson, they meet their friends for a drink here. With the kids gone, the parents can come back to the bar.”

One mature couple who can often be found at the bar is Carmella and Harry Radenberg, of Rocky Point. Harry figures in one of Higgins’ favorite stories: Shortly after the inn opened, somebody broke a pipe in the urinal. “Another customer who knew me told Higgins, ‘Don’t worry—Harry will take care of it.’ It was my first time there, but I went into the bathroom and fixed it. And I didn’t give Joe a bill.”

Thus began an enduring friendship that culminated on Harry’s wedding day. “Judge Tara married us,” he said. “That was at Insignia in Smithtown. But afterwards, we all came back here to Tara Inn.”

Tara Inn, 1519 Main St., Port Jefferson, 631-828-5987