Thursday March 18, 2010SUBSCRIBE
New Jersey Monthly Magazine
Restaurants

Stacked

Emptying out a restaurant, piling up the remains of the day...

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Tortilla Press Cantina

Panico's

Can eating at a particular establishment in New Brunswick be considered a gamble? One of our dining critics certainly thinks so. more

Vine

Vine, a eclectic-menu establishment with a spacious and upscale ambience in Basking Ridge, offers a refreshing Southern Mediterranean option for jaded foodies. more

So Long, "Stringent" Process

Looking back with Ruth Cousineau, test-kitchen director for the late, lamented Gourmet. more

Eno Terra

After earning his stripes with restaurant royalty, chef Chris Albrecht triumphs at home. more

Bona Vita Osteria

This traditional Italian restaurant, which occupies a handsome storefront in downtown Summit, is run by culinary veterans. more

Oceanos

Oceanos, a Greek-accented seafood restaurant in Fair Lawn with a luxury yacht-esque ambience, aims for loftier standards. more

Fascino

Nearly seven years on, the DePersio family’s pride and joy continues to sparkle. more

Why Cupid Has Chopsticks in His Quiver

The Chinese Year of the Tiger (4707, not Woods) begins on Valentine’s Day. Here’s a guide to dumplings and other festive fare. (Photos by Brian Yarvin) more

Food: Iron Bounty

There are many fine Spanish and Portuguese restaurants in Newark’s Ironbound section, so inevitably when you select one to write about, there is dissension.

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Dough Boy

For our restaurant maven, making pizza is not easy as pie. more

The Original

A century ago, after crossing the Atlantic, pizza crossed the Hudson and established itself in Trenton as the tomato pie—and you can still get the real deal. more

Searching For The Soul of Jersey Pizza

This month, we attempted to answer a question that has befuddled philosophers for centuries—does pizza have a soul? Laura Schenone believes it might. more

Celebrity Pizza Picks

New Jersey-based celebrities dish about they favorite pizza joints around the state. more

25 Perfect Pizzas

We asked for your suggestions, then we started to eat—and eat. We logged more than a thousand miles, and concluded that these are the pies to pine for. more

Speak Quickly, And Carry a Big Spoon

Whether cooking at her Hoboken restaurants (or at the White House), hunting edible lizards in Peru or hairy chayotes in Weehawken, Maricel Presilla is an ebullient culinary force. more

Big Wing Wah

Can a Chinese and Japanese restaurant in Hillsborough, whose name translates to "big success," make a splash on the dining scene? more

Ebbitt Room

Curtis Bashaw recruited chef Lucas Manteca to run the Ebbitt Room, the AAA Five Diamond Award-winning restaurant at the Virginia Hotel in Cape May. more

Day Trip: Edgewater

A shopping and cultural center along the Hudson. more

Cookbook as Cliffhanger

Restaurant Nicholas’s handsome tome is for kitchens as well as coffee tables. more

The Dosa

South India's favorite finger food arrives in New Jersey. more

Doc's

Builder Don Luisi bids to make his hometown of Sparta synonymous with superb steaks and seafood. more

Za

An ambitious New American-style restaurant settles in Pennington. more

Fornelletto

A rustic Italian restaurant in the Borgata has developed a convincing wine cellar theme. more

Food: Help On The Side

Daylight savings has come and gone, which means Thanksgiving's right around the corner. You'd love to get into the kitchen and prepare a spectacular meal from soup to nuts, but your schedule's insane.

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A Soup Kitchen That Turns Out Chefs

Camden's venerable Cathedral Kitchen has been producing some accomplished chefs. more

Tomatoe's

While other Shore restaurants hibernate, Tomatoe’s in Margate kicks into holiday gear —and keeps the festive fires burning all winter. more

Witherspoon Grill

When Princeton restaurateur Jack Morrison snapped up a piece of prime real estate on Princeton Library Plaza in 2004 and dropped a substantial sum for the last available liquor license in town, it seemed he had a plan. Turns out, he didn’t. “It took months just to come up with a concept,” he says, laughing. “I like to pick a goal, then figure out the hardest route to get there.” more

Food: Cinnamon and Spice

The aroma is incredible as you enter Cinnamon Indian Restaurant in Morris Plains.

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Zylo

When Zylo opened in March in the new W Hotel in Hoboken (the first W in New Jersey), it was hobbled by amateurish service and no clear identity beyond its slick “Tuscan steakhouse” label. Half a year later, it has emerged from its growing pains as an appealing and even cocky young restaurant. more

Pig Heaven

The Mangalitsa pig has bounced back from near extinction to be prized by foodies for its beefy flavor and luscious fat. The only place Mangalitsas are being raised East of the Mississippi is, you guessed it, New Jersey. more

Food: Lo Fatt Chow

It’s hard to miss the Route 31 billboard for Lo Fatt Chow in the Ringoes/Flemington area-not for its design, but for its name.

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The Barkeep's Barkeep

Ray Foley’s recipe for success runs from punch to punch lines. more

Anton's At The Swan

The plush style harkens back to a time before casual was the mantra, but the food is fully contemporary. more

Hoboken's Tastebud Tour

The Hoboken Food Tour offers can't-miss culinary delights fit for the most discriminating palates. more

Farm2Bistro

The term bistro has been so abused it’s easy to forget its original meaning—a small, casual dining spot (originally in France) where locals can eat, drink, socialize, and perhaps enjoy entertainment. more

Equus

It may be immodest, but not altogether inaccurate, for Scott Cutaneo, chef-owner of Equus in Bernardsville, to brand himself Great Scott. The Staten Island native, 41, is something of a celebrity chef, hosting regular “Great Scott” cooking segments on TV’s Fox & Friends and Good Day New York. more

Glad Tidings

As crisp autumn winds begin to blow, grab your favorite sweater and head over to the charming Gladstone Tavern for warm mulled wine, Grandpa Chet’s pumpkin cake, and some neighborly cheer. more

Soulful Stirrings

Consummate queen of cuisine Julia Child once declared, “I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.” more

Pluckemin Inn

After a stressful year, the Pluckemin Inn reemerges with a sterling new executive chef and continuity in other key posts, from pastry chef Joseph Gabriel to owner Gloria LaGrassa. more

Sonic Boom

It began quietly in the fall of 2007 with the opening of Sonic’s first New Jersey location in Waretown. Millville and Rio Grande followed in 2008. more

Blackfish

Blackfish, a breezy, beach-chic establishment in Stone Harbor, serves up New American fare for the beach-going set. more

Topaz Thai

Nearly every Thursday since it opened three years ago, about six interns and residents from the New Jersey College of Medicine and Dentistry in Newark have driven north to Belleville for lunch or dinner at Topaz Thai. more

Food: Pick the Blossom

There is a blossom in bloom in a nondescript strip mall on Howard Boulevard in Mt. Arlington.

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Janice, A Bistro

The Sheridan Café, a circa-1949 Ho-Ho-Kus luncheonette, was bought in 2001 and restored, bistro-style, by locals Janice and John Tinari. more

Shogun Legends

From the moment you enter its castle-like wooden doors, Shogun Legends in Wall showers the senses. more

IndeBlue

Indeblue in Collingswood does not look like your average Indian tandoor house. Small and snug, with only 31 seats, it retains the shiny-blue and hazmat-orange surfaces of its predecessor, an icy-hip crêperie called 5th Corner. more

2009 Readers' and Critics' Restaurant Poll

The results of our 26th Annual Readers’ Choice Restaurant Poll. more

Cucharamama

Maricel Presilla’s Cucharamama (“Mother Spoon”) celebrates traditional South American cooking as lovingly passed down by women at the family hearth. more

Save My Restaurant

Owners learn to be careful what they wish for after inviting Gordon Ramsay and his reality TV series Kitchen Nightmares to right their ships. more

Savor City

Paterson, the one-time Silk City, is a Great Falls of ethnic eating. more

The Wizard of Zod

Why New York wants to grab New Jersey’s hugely talented, most idiosyncratic chef, and why he doesn’t want to leave—yet. more

Just Peachy

Celebrate a bounty of Jersey freshness at the Gloucester County 4-H Fair and NJ Peach Festival. It’ll knock the socks off anything shipped to your grocery story from California.

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Andrea Trattoria

If not for the luxury cars crowding the parking lot on Saturday nights, Andrea Trattoria in Newfield would look like any number of South Jersey roadside taverns. more

Controlled Chaos

They say you should never look at a restaurant's kitchen if you want to feel good about eating there.

But what about the back of a restaurant?

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Resto

What is “modern French,” the cuisine of Madison’s year-old Resto? In the hands of chef-owner Robert Ubhaus—an Edison native who trained in Paris, Italy, San Francisco, Long Beach Island, and at New York City’s French Culinary Institute—it’s above all “fine dining without the pretension.” more

Here Comes The Sun

Until yesterday and today, spring looked and felt a lot like what you see here. Click below to see full picture...

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Matt's Red Rooster Grill

The Red Rooster, a four-and-a-half-year-old restaurant in a converted Victorian in Flemington, is trying hard to bring big city sophistication to Hunterdon’s county seat. more

Oh! Calamares

Long before Miami chefs dreamed up Nuevo Latino fusion in the late 1980s, Peruvians had fashioned their own enduring fusion. more

Deep in the Heart of Jersey

Boyd Lafferty grew up in Cape May, then spent 28 years in the semiconductor business in Austin, Texas. While there he earned a PhD. in international business, but when he returned home in 2004 he was thinking strictly local. more

Kinkis: The Wings Beneath My Belt

A late-night stop in Atlantic City pays off in peerless chicken wings. more

Blu

Zod Arifai serves great food at prices that are simply unfair (to other restaurants that charge more for less). more

Max's Seafood Cafe

One thing that never flusters a 97-year-old restaurant is a culinary fad. So at Max’s—a handsome tavern founded by German immigrant Joseph Fred Leisinger in 1912—you won’t find sous-vide duck breast, tapas, or powdered olive oil. more

La Fusta

Beef cattle are so plentiful in Argentina, the legend goes, that gauchos barely have to reach out to carve a steak from a passing animal. As gruesome as that sounds, it illustrates the point that beef is an even bigger part of the Argentine diet than it is of ours. more

Nisi Estiatorio

The Mourkakos brothers lured chef John Piliouras from Molyvos, the New York restaurant he made famous, to Englewood, where he’s raising Greek cuisine to Olympian heights. more

Food Events

4/6: A Food for Thought charity event to benefit the Mental Health Association of Morris County will be held at the Hyatt, Morristown. 6 PM; $50 prior to April 3; $65 at the door. For more information log on to www.mhamorris.org or call 973 334-3496.

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Oliver A Bistro

Like the European bistros this cozy restaurant seeks to emulate, Oliver has an identity that can be linked directly to its owners. more

No. 9

In this historic village—a warren of narrow streets filled with eclectic galleries, shops, and cafes—No. 9 has managed the enviable feat of distinguishing itself. more

Bloomsday

Upstart Bloomfield is nipping at the heels of über-dining-destination Montclair. more

Treno

Wasabi Asian Plates and Sushi Bar

Ten East

Reared on Benihana, the Franconeri brothers of Bayonne build a glitzy temple of Asian fusion in their hometown. The decor rocks, sure, but so does the food. more

Vidalia

Painted Cottage Cafe

Caffe Piazza

Food

Olive and Fig

Bella Italia Ristorante

Bellisimo Ristorante

The Treehouse

Openings & Closings

The latest developments on the New Jersey restaurant scene

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State Street Grill

Elevation Burger

Health-conscious fast food. more

Napoli Pizza Trattoria and Cafe

Nomad Pizza

Redstone American Grill

Readers' and Critics' Choice - Restaurant Poll Winners 2008

Our critics do a lot of eating, and every August we look back and share the best of the best with you. And you do the same by voting in our Annual Readers' Choice Restaurant Poll. Discover which restaurants we honored and which are your favorites. more

Apron

Alstarz Sports Pub

Blue Eyes

La Strada Cafe

Milford Oyster House

Gen Hibachi and Asian Cuisine

Watering Holes Near the Water

You just got off the beach—hot, parched, and a little cranky. It’s only 3 pm, and your dinner reservation is not until 7. Waaaah! Where can you go for a cold one and a snack—in your flip-flops, with sand on your feet and salt in your hair? We’ve got the answers. more

Lilly's on the Canal

Simply Radishing

Anitas Asian Fusion

The Pour House