Restaurant Nicholas
Subscribe to this tag25 Best Restaurants 2009
Our experts scoured the state to find elite dining establishments old and new. How did they fare? Read our Top 25 Restaurants list to find out. Feel free to comment on their findings.
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In The Heat Of The Night
I learned TWO things while working in a restaurant kitchen: First, you need about two solid days to prepare a decent suckling pig. Second, it’s hard work, with grueling hours. You couldn’t pay me enough to do it for a living. But for three nights it doesn’t take much arm-twisting to get me into an apron and in front of a blazing grill.
Open kitchens let you watch the flames and the fanfare from your table. You might see sauté pans jiggling above the stove, foot-long pasta dangling from tongs, and the head chef creating such a scene you wonder who’s getting fired next. Still, you can’t fully grasp the life of a kitchen unless you’re part of it. Then you discover that some chefs unwind before the dinner rush with a game of Frisbee in the parking lot. Or that another one winces when someone orders a burger for dinner. Or that some chefs verge on tears on a bad night, when customers complain and dishes get sent back to the kitchen. I discovered this, and much more, while visiting the kitchens of three top New Jersey restaurants. Two brave chefs even put me to work.
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