Bernadette in Scotch Plains Brings City Flair to the Suburbs

When Melody DeGaetano moved to New Jersey from New York City, she searched for a relaxing place nearby to go for a cocktail and a delicious meal, with the same cosmopolitan feel she’d found in the city. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she decided to open her own restaurant. And so, in February 2024, Bernadette was born.

As a nutritionist who also owns a café in Scotch Plains called Black Drop Coffee, DeGaetano already had some food-related experience, so opening a restaurant seemed like a good fit.

Bernadette’s dining room is anchored by a large, beautiful bar. Photo: Laura Moss

DeGaetano opened Bernadette with her business partner, Ryan Hampton; she named the restaurant for her mother, Bernadette, who had passed away. Through a mutual friend, the pair learned about Roxanne Spruance, a Michelin-recommended chef from New York and a Chopped winner whose dining aesthetic seemed to fit with theirs. So they enlisted her to become a consultant for their new restaurant.

They decided to serve modern French-Mediterranean food, including tapas, partly as a way to differentiate themselves from the many Italian restaurants that exist in New Jersey. DeGaetano, who has traveled extensively through Europe, also wanted to bring the flavorful French, Spanish and Portuguese cuisine that she experienced in those countries to the menu.

“I wanted to bring quality over quantity to the restaurant,” she says. “Bernadette is very ingredient driven. We focus on seasonality and less is more, and we let the ingredients speak for themselves.”

The menu changes seasonally, and DeGaetano has relationships with local farmers to source the freshest produce.

The partnership with Spruance has proven to be a successful one. On a recent weeknight, the sleek and sophisticated dining room was packed.

The Cold Pressed cocktail, made with rosemary-infused vodka and gremolata olive oil. Photo: Laura Moss

My dining companion and I had a table by the front window, and, while the dining room also has a communal table and a large, semicircular bar, the noise level was not so loud that we couldn’t hear ourselves talk, as happens in so many other popular spots.

The menu consists of elevated small plates, tapas and entrées that are meant to be shared, making for a fun, communal dining experience.

The bacon-wrapped dates beckoned me, so we chose to begin with this iconic dish, served here with a diablo sauce, achieving the perfect combination of salty and sweet. DeGaetano says the item is so popular that they can’t take it off the menu. The yellowfin tuna tartare, another mainstay here, was served with oil-cured olives, ginger, chilies, jalapeños and wasabi. It was fresh, slightly spicy and citrusy. Another hit was the patatas bravas, made with sweet potato, chorizo and chipotle aioli.

Head-on prawns in garlic sauce. Photo: Laura Moss

Shrimp in garlic sauce is a classic Spanish dish, and the one served here didn’t disappoint. It was served with the heads on, in a spicy garlic-chili sauce. We found the duck-fat frites, however, to be too heavy and rich for our tastes.

One of the restaurant’s signature dishes is croquetas. There are three different types; we tried the jamon and Cabrales cheese option, served with a yellow Peppadew-chili sauce. They were slightly mushy inside, but still tasty. The next time I dined there, at the U-shaped bar, I ordered the melted leek and raclette croquetas, which worked better.

The roasted half chicken was surprisingly interesting. I often feel like ordering roasted chicken in a restaurant can be boring, but this one was a standout—tender and juicy, with crispy, golden-brown skin, served with wild mushrooms, celeriac, fines herbs and sherry.

The bavette steak, while well cooked, was oversalted and came with shoestring potatoes that tasted a bit like the potato sticks you can buy in a container.

The creamy and sweet honey panna cotta dessert. Photo: Laura Moss

Unfortunately, two of the desserts that we tried—the olive oil cake and the flourless chocolate cake—were disappointing. Instead, go with the honey panna cotta, served with fig jam, honeycomb and figs. It was smooth, creamy and delicately sweet.

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