Finnbar in Frenchtown Takes Farm-to-Table Dining to New Heights

After nearly 30 years of living and cooking in California, 22 of which were spent at the legendary Chez Panisse in Berkeley, it took a bit of convincing to get chef Cal Peternell to move back East.

The recruitment campaign started in 2022, after artist and writer Jill Kearney purchased the historic Frenchtown Inn and needed someone to run the kitchen. Having left Chez Panisse to start his own restaurant in Oakland, only to see it shut down during the pandemic, Peternell wasn’t ready to jump back into running a restaurant, opting instead to finish his fourth cookbook while hosting his food podcast, Cooking by Ear.

Kearney was persistent, however, telling him he could focus on the kitchen, leaving others to run the restaurant. The clincher was a proposal to link the restaurant to Studio Route 29, an art center for those who are developmentally disabled, which Peternell’s wife, Kathleen Henderson, had recently launched. With a commitment by Kearney to give 70 percent of the restaurant’s profits to Studio Route 29, Peternell was in, and Finnbar was born.

“I like to have a mission that goes beyond the regular business of making money,” says Peternell, 61. “We’ve been supporting people with disabilities for decades. It makes for a richer experience.”

Since its February opening, the community has embraced Peternell’s produce-forward menu, not to mention the bar’s classic cocktails and small vineyard wines curated by general manager Ethan Stuart.

“People have been tasting and engaging with the wines, saying, ‘Wow, what’s that?’” says Stuart, 35.

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The menu changes daily, each night offering a handful of snack items, three salads, and a soup, four entrées and four desserts. The servers sample everything first so they can describe dishes to the customers.

At Chez Panisse, often credited with starting the farm-to-table movement, Peternell built relationships with the local farm community, following owner Alice Waters’s mantra to “be nimble and responsive to what the farmers are offering, and let the ingredients guide you.” Here, he’s established a similar network of New Jersey and Pennsylvania farmers and meat and fish purveyors.

The heirloom tomatoes and cucumbers from a Lancaster, Pennsylvania, farmers’ co-op were sublime, with their tangy anchovy, tapenade dressing. Vegetables also shone in the crunchy summer salad, a mound of thinly sliced zucchini, yellow squash and fennel on a bed of hummus with tahini dressing. The arugula salad, topped with silken burrata and a sprightly fava-bean salsa, was fresh and delicious.

Grilled Belgian endive with gribiche sauce (a cold egg sauce popular in France) and bacon. Photo: Courtesy of Emily Gass

Several snack items go well with Stuart’s Negronis and Manhattans, including the house-made focaccia with whipped goat cheese, and the paper-thin, fried shoestring potatoes with herby mayonnaise. Less appetizing are the garlicky green balls, a vegetarian twist on meatballs. These deep-fried balls of collard greens, kale, coriander and onions came with an overly thick crust.

The nicely seared sea scallops were tender and sweet, dressed in a spicy Romesco sauce. Our rigatoni was a little too al dente, but the mushrooms and snap peas provided an earthy sugo. The ground lamb kebabs were slightly undercooked, though the accompanying couscous and three-bean side dish was outstanding.

For dessert, we favored the peach and cherry crisp, with its flakey crust and crumbly topping. The chocolate cake was moist and rich, layered with cherries and a whipped cream frosting.

HOW WE REVIEW: Restaurants are chosen for review at the sole discretion of New Jersey Monthly. For our starred reviews of fine-dining restaurants, our critics visit a restaurant at least twice with two diners, always maintaining anonymity to avoid preferential treatment, and the magazine pays for their meals. Stars are assigned by the dining-section editor in consultation with the reviewer.

Four stars = extraordinary; three stars = excellent; two stars = very good; one star = good; half a star = fair.

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