Opening a new restaurant can be challenging, and the statistics bear this out—three out of every five new dining establishments won’t survive a year. There are many reasons for this U.S. industry statistic: Profit margins are low, the hours are long, staff turnover is often high, and the competition can be daunting.
But Boschetto, a year-old Italian restaurant in Montclair, is trying to change up the model and make it more sustainable. The owners call their spot “fine fast-casual” because it offers counter service in a sleekly designed dining space with high-quality food.
“Business has been great. The town has really embraced Boschetto and this style of service,” says Robert Spina, one of the owners. “People are loving the food and appreciating it for what it is.”
Boschetto has quickly become a favorite for many local foodies with its large patio and appealing menu, landing a spot on New Jersey Monthly’s annual list of the best new restaurants this year.
Spina says Boschetto appeals to families because of the ease of dining and the quality of food, for both parents and kids. “The parents can have something to eat that’s a little bit more sophisticated, while the kids can have a pizza or a simple pasta, and then they can just leave when they’re done.”
Boschetto’s menu is regional, with dishes from all over Italy. Photo: Erik Rank
It’s also a great place for a date night, and couples often come in after the families leave, with a bottle of wine.
Order your meal at the counter, with the help of the staff. The menu is on a board above the counter, pizzeria style. After paying, you may leave a tip. Once you find a table, a server delivers your food on china with linen napkins; there are no trays on the table. Staff also clears the table. If you want to order more food, you must go back to the counter.
The food here is not what you’d find at your average New Jersey red-sauce Italian establishment, with checkered tablecloths and chicken parm. The menu is regional, with dishes from all over Italy, such as pasta with squid ink, clams, nduja (sausage) and chili, which hails from Sicily. Maiale Milanese, breaded pork cutlet, comes from Lombardy, the region around Milan, and is served with stracciatella, strawberries and arugula.
The menu also has small snacks, or cicchetti, as they’re called in Venice, as well as panuozzi, which are sandwiches made with freshly baked bread, plus pasta, pizza and calzones.
The prices range from $18 for pastas to $33 for the Milanese and $48 for the rib-eye—slightly less than a fine dining restaurant.
But here’s what makes Boschetto different from most other restaurants serving food of this caliber: on any given Saturday night, it can turn a table over four or five times. Most fine-dining restaurants turn a table over twice or, occasionally, three times a night. That’s a big difference in the amount of profit a place can make in one night.
Diners order at the counter and then a server delivers your food to your table on china with linen napkins. Photo: Erik Rank
Boschetto has 38 seats inside and 40 outside, and there’s rarely a wait for a table. The staff can get people seated and eating faster than in most restaurants, without rushing them.
Spina says they turn tables over in half the time a full-service restaurant can—you can be in and out in 30 minutes. While they’re able to save a lot of money in labor costs, as their servers do less, they still maintain a quality experience.
The dishes are also made with high-quality ingredients, such as the pomodoro salad of ripe, marinated tomatoes with stracciatella cheese, chunks of marinated bread, and chili. Their philosophy is that good Italian food is simple, so they use only three to four ingredients in each dish. “We use the best possible ingredients that we can find and let the ingredients speak for themselves,” he says.
Spina, who lives in Cresskill with his family, has worked at and owned restaurants in places like Hong Kong and New York City. He owns the restaurant with his partner (and brother-in-law), Ryan Held, and their Michelin-starred chef, Joseph Sergentakis. The concept was born post-pandemic, when restaurants had a much smaller talent pool to draw on.
“We wanted to invest in the back of the house and eliminate a lot of the variables that have plagued other restaurants, where you wait an hour for your check or you have unqualified servers,” he says. “How many great meals have you had ruined by bad service recently? So we’ve taken that out of the mix and let the food do the talking.”
Karen Schloss Diaz, a longtime New Jersey food consultant, believes the fast-casual, more upscale experience is a smart model for other restaurateurs to follow.
While other New Jersey restaurants haven’t caught on to this trend quite yet, it is happening in other parts of the country, including in California, Chicago and Texas.
“I’ve been to Boschetto multiple times, and I think it’s just a terrific concept. The quality of the food is pretty remarkable, considering how quickly they can get it out of the kitchen,” says Schloss Diaz.
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