Blu won a place on New Jersey Monthly’s annual Top 25 every year since 2007, the year the list was established. In Readers’ Polls in the annual August Best Restaurants issue, Blu often won Best of the Best, Best American and Best Seafood.
"Arifai was masterful with seafood," agrees Eric Levin, NJM’s senior editor and food editor. "His touch was delicate, never bullying the tender proteins, yet bold in conception. His crudos of scallops and fin fish contained marvelous contrasts of texture and a beautiful balance of mellow, sweet and sharp flavors. His seafood dumplings in coconut chili broth, a perennial favorite, will be sorely missed.
"But if one dish will be missed most," Levin predicts, "it will be Blu’s duck breast with caramelized turnips, braised red cabbage and fig-red wine emulsion. Zod always recommended it medium instead of the trendy rare or medium rare. He was right. I have never eaten duck as perfectly cooked or as ideally paired with accompaniments as Blu’s."
Next Door—which was literally next door to Blu and shared a kitchen with it—received three stars from NJM reviewer Karen Tina Harrison in 2008. “I wanted a simpler place where I could serve comfort food at low prices, where restaurant people could go and relax after work,” Arifai told her.
Next Door fulfilled that mission, winning Bang For the Buck and Best Burger honors from the magazine’s panel of food writers and critics in the Best Restaurant issues.
Next Door, a 38-seat BYO, won NJM’s 2011 Great Burger Showdown. In a blind taste test before a panel of five judges, Next Door’s burger beat those of nine other restaurants around the state known for their burgers.
During the competition, judge Josh Ozersky, author of the book The Hamburger, declared, "This is a perfectly constructed burger. We haven’t had one where the cheese and bun just perfectly complement each other and create a transparency. Not only that, but look at the crust. It’s perfect mahogany from edge to edge. I ate more than I needed to. It’s just so easy going down."
After that triumph, Arifai began listing his 10-ounce, $14 burger (which comes with semi-melted white sharp cheddar and caramelized onions) as The One. No argument there.
A former rock and roll bass player, Arifai is a self-taught chef. In Levin’s 2009 NJM profile of Arifai, leading New York restaurateur Ed Schoenfeld said, “Because he’s self-taught, Zod’s food is not derivative of other chefs.”
According to today’s press release, "The restaurant closures will enable Arifai to travel throughout Europe and Asia for three months and to finalize plans for a new concept that will open in NYC in Spring 2016. He’s also considering offers for projects outside the U.S. as well as in Montclair."