My dad picked Murtha's Steakhouse off the hotel's list of local restaurants; at the time, I wanted pizza, but was too distracted trying to get an hour-long discussion of family history with my now-hundred-year-old grandma off my iPhone to find anything reviewed and approved by the Internet. At first, that seemed like a mistake -- we missed the restaurant the first time because the sign wasn't well lit and it looked like an Irish dive bar, not a steakhouse. When we got inside, we got trapped in the vestibule while a party went from the bar side to the restaurant side; despite calling ahead we had to wait at the bar, where there were no beers on tap since the compressor was out. At that point, I was thinking we were at a side-of-the-highway neighborhood place, nothing that should have tricked us into visiting when we wanted some good steak.

My first clue I was wrong was how crowded it was -- the bar was full, the restaurant was full on a cool Saturday night in January. My mistake started to sink in when I read through their quality beer list, and when they served my Smithwicks with a chilled glass, I switched my mode of thought from "two stars working up" to "five stars working down." They stayed up there at five for the rest of the meal. My dad got his martini served in a small bottle for him to pour himself, which I'd never seen before but gave him a generous amount to drink. At the booth, the bread dish came with these awesome garlic rolls -- oil and garlic pieces, so tasty it was hard to avoid filling up on them alone. I had a seafood bisque, steak (rare) and shrimp (scampi), all of which were very nicely done, along with sweet potato fries, which were good. It was enough to fill me despite having had little since lunch. I was pretty happy. The service was friendly and the interior was nicely done and welcoming. (My brother, it's worth noting, thought his burger was just okay, and my dad wasn't happy that his steak -- which he wanted well done, no juice -- he's my opposite in that -- was medium rare; my mom was happy though with hers and with her desert).

Murtha's is a bit of an undiscovered gem. I'm not surprised, given that it's out of the way in a less-than-welcoming physical locale. For anyone coming to visit Ronkonkoma in the future, whether you're here for your grandmothers hundredth birthday or something else, here's a review -- if you go to Murtha's, you'll know you won't be taking a chance.