Amuse

39 Elm Street, Westfield. Phone: 908.317.2640

Open for lunch Monday through Saturday from noon to 3 p.m. and Sundays for brunch from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dinner, Monday through Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. and Sunday from 5 to 8 p.m. BYOB.

Dress ranges from smart casual to festive. Prices: Soups and appetizers: $8 to $24. Entrees: $20 to $42. Desserts: $8. Major credit cards accepted.

Roasted bone marrow doesn’t need to shout. Its slithery texture, its unabashed tout of fat, its sturdy boat of a bone as conduit is so dominant a presence on a plate and on a menu that, without a word spoken, “French bistro” is conveyed.

Amuse, a spanking new French bistro in downtown Westfield, has bone marrow on the list of starters on its menu and it pops out at diners. Even before you see foie gras, steak tartare, escargot and frisee, your eyes light on “roasted bone marrow (with) sea salt, red onion marmalade, toast.” It’s so proper, it’s so right.

It’s also not surprising, for Amuse is the down-to-earth confection of Chez Catherine veteran C.J. Reycraft. A casual counterpart to the formality of Westfield’s longtime French fine-dining fortress, Amuse is new-school bistro, cheerfully decked in blond wood tables and chairs, with a handful of booths lining a rear wall and a modern “chandelier” that serves as a playful spoof to dripping candelabra.

Photo credit: Manny Carabel/MTC Photography

Amuse is Reycraft’s personal statement, a way of saying “bon appetit” without sounding haughty. It’s French bistro with an American look—clean-cut white tableware and linens, paned doors that serve as windows opening out onto the street, artwork in small doses. It’s a look that’s spare and calm, no frills, no ruffles, no fuss.

The food doesn’t appear fussed over, but it is carefully prepared. That bone marrow, stately and imposing with a pair of bones pitched in a cross formation on a stark white plate, comes with a riveting red onion marmalade that, rich and succulent as it is, actually serves to tame the silky marrow. Slather both atop the toast, then sprinkle with sea salt and understand why classics come to be: Some things are just too delicious to go out of style.

The frisee salad, topped by a perfectly poached duck egg, smoky-meaty lardons and crisp croutons, was spot-on. Poke open the yolk of the egg to let it ooze atop the bitter greens and lardons, then toss the lot into the Champagne vinaigrette. Super-size that salad and call it lunch. Or a post-theater midnight supper.

Reycraft’s foie gras is seared and served with brioche and a vanilla-licked pear compote that didn’t even approach sweet. The pear, just shy of ripe, was astringent enough to dial down the inherent hyper-richness of the fattened liver, and a flash of almonds brought crunch to every bite. Texture, in the right places and in the right doses, is something a smart chef understands.

Cashews brought that same touch to the mild ricotta-stuffed ravioli dressed in brown butter. The happy surprise here was a hint of tart-sweetness coming from a quick spray of chopped cranberries. I love dining out for such ah-ha moments: Why not just a touch, the barest touch of dried fruit with that pocket of cheese-filled pasta? It made the dish taste finished, complete and, ultimately, special.

A dining companion was tickled to find beech mushrooms perched on the plate of duck confit and butternut squash puree with a sprinkling of dried cherries. She loved seeing these creamy-tasting wild mushrooms she’s acquainted with from her native Japanese cookery, while I was just as happy to find them a yin to the yang of the preserved duck leg and thigh’s crackling skin that yielded to tender and intensely flavored meat. Too often, residual salt mars duck confit, but not here at Amuse.

The seared sea scallops, however, were seriously oversalted, as if someone in the kitchen had generously salted them and then another chef had unknowingly salted them a second time. The promising accents—hazelnuts and raisins, capers and browned butter—were obscured by the salt. We lapped up the sides of buttery pureed parsnip and Brussels sprouts as a cleanse.

The steak frites triumphed. Hard-fought simplicity is what this classic of beef-and-fries is about and Amuse’s take—employing a chewy, deeply beefy skirt steak, a hip-yet-comforting choron sauce and, for a kick, kohlrabi—is plain old cooked-to-a-T fun.

If you’re all about high-art desserts presented as high-wire acts that demand surgical tools to merely approach, Amuse’s finales may disappoint. I loved them, particularly a banana pudding so custardy that it made me wonder just what the ratio of bananas to eggs was in this pudding. Factor in a chocolate cookie crumble of a crust and you’ve got a very grand finale. A pair of tarts can’t be considered also-rans: The chocolate tart, lined with caramel and finished with a layer of dark ganache, came with a dollop of passionfruit ice cream that reined in the richness of the confection. The lemon tart, with a textbook-true lemon curd at its core, was paired with a snappy raspberry sorbet. Again, balance. Again, impressive.

Amuse charms with its unassuming style, devotion to classics that deserve the title and sophisticated home-spun character. Too often, chefs who lack experience and confidence feel the need to riff on classics in a way that deprives them of their soul. Chef Reycraft takes liberties, but only in ways that elevate the dishes. That’s a chef with a clear vision and the chops to see it through from concept to kitchen to table.

Wine Times

Amuse, very much a French bistro, is a BYOB. This means you should not tote along mass-manufactured bottles from the New World. Save Barefoot, Yellowtail and Cupcake for another time. (Though, frankly, I wouldn’t wish another time of that kind on anyone.) Amuse deserves a wine not so much from the trophy zones of Burgundy and Bordeaux, but rather the Languedoc, the Loire and the southern Rhone Valley of France. Since rose season is upon us, spring for a Provencal rosé—or, for typically less cost, one from Nimes. What you want is a true bistro wine that goes with a good variety of dishes. Carignan, anyone? Yes, if it’s from a good producer in the Languedoc. A Grenache blanc blend? Now you’ve got the right idea.

“Makeda ups the ante for restaurants that aim to do right by other than animal products.”

338 George St., New Brunswick. Phone: 732.545.5115

Hours: Lunch, Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from noon to 4 p.m. Dinner, Monday through Thursday from 4 to 10:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 4 to midnight and Sunday from noon to 10:30 p.m. The bar is open until 1 a.m. on weeknights and until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. It’s open until midnight on Sundays. There is live music on Friday and Saturday nights. Reservations are accepted, as are all major credit cards. Prices: Appetizers and salads, $7.50 to $15.50. Entrees: $24 to $37. Vegetarian entrees are $15 to $25.50.

I wasn’t surprised when a professor pal of mine at Rutgers suggested Makeda as our lunch spot: We both love learning, adventure at the table, and foods that take us away from anything resembling an edible routine.

Makeda, the first Ethiopian restaurant to make a fine-dining statement in New Jersey, is a natural for New Brunswick, a college town that plays home to both mainstream and ethnic restaurants, lavishing equal affection on well-played versions of the normal and the novel. My friend and I were in complete agreement: Why grab a sandwich billed on a thousand menus when we could gab over fare rarely offered elsewhere? Makeda it was.

It’s a restaurant that pops into my mind whenever I want to veer from anything standard-issue. It tends to delight newcomers even as it defies expectations, for the menu is a trip to a land of new ingredients and new juxtapositions of familiar foods.

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

The eating itself flies in the face of American tradition. The conduit of food between platter and mouth is Ethiopia’s beloved injera bread, a spongy, grainy number that’s something like a thick, large crepe in appearance, but tastes engagingly sour and is used to scoop up pretty much everything served at Makeda. That mild lemony flavor clicks on all cylinders with a variety of headliners, including lamb, chicken, seafood, beef and vegetables. Every time I’m at Makeda and wrap strips of faintly sweet lamb with vigorously seasoned onions in a torn-off piece of injera and warm to the scheme of everything-in-one-bite, I wonder why more contemporary chefs don’t steal from Ethiopia’s culinary playbook.

That’s exactly what friends who went with me one recent night to sample around Makeda’s menu thought. And if they were hesitant about diving into the communal platters concocted by the kitchen so we could better share the diverse dishes we’d ordered, they certainly didn’t act a smidgen shy.

Minchetabesh, ground sirloin infused with cardamom, garlic and ginger, and liberally doused with white pepper, is pan-seared with sliced onions to make it ready for rolling in the tangy injera. Though the concept may have you thinking hamburger, the finished dish is high-toned and beguiling. It offers the same attitude as the zil-zil, those strips of lamb marinated in Ethiopian honey wine with onions and garlic, then fried in butter which makes the meat crusty, but locks in the seasonings and juices. Cosseted in the injera, it’s something my dining companions can’t stop eating.

We can’t stop talking about how plain old delicious the doro wat is, a classic Ethiopian entrée of bone-in chicken parts that have done time in a lemon marinade before being briskly sautéed with the reigning triumvirate of fenugreek, ginger and garlic. The dish is finished with a dash or three of berbere, a feisty spice mixture that’s heavy on the ground chilies but tamed by baking spices – nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves. We slice the hard-boiled egg served with our chicken and tuck every component of the dish into the foamy bread. My pals have gotten the hang of what, only a short time earlier, was newfangled finger food.

Ethiopian food is vegetable- and pulse-centric, and Makeda ups the ante for restaurants that aim to do right by other than animal products. Take the mesir wat, lentils and onions slow-cooked with garlic and ginger in a berbere that’s calmer than the chilies-rich mixture used in the doro wat. It’s both comforting and cunning, a stew that’s decidedly rustic, but sophisticated in its layering of multiple warming seasonings. If you want more vigorously spiced lentils, go for the mesir azefah, which plays green lentils off a hotter backdrop of accents that include jalapenos, mustard seeds and white pepper. Served cold, it’s something you might want to share as a starter.

Speaking of which, appetizers aren’t part of a typical meal in Ethiopia. So the kitchen crew here, guided by owner Ogbe Guobadia, borrows from cuisines in North Africa, most notably Morocco, for its starters and even throws in a salad or two. Skip the salads, which truly do seem out of place, and kick off dinner with loubia, a sauté of string beans in lots of parsley given a lift from cumin, ginger and garlic. They’re pleasingly soft, as many vegetables are in the Middle East, Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, and work in tandem with the zaalouk, a perky chop of eggplant pan-fried with the same accents, then sprayed with fresh lemon juice before hitting the plate.

Photo credit: iStockphoto/Thinkstock

I usually snag the kefta when dining at Makeda, finding those Moroccan meatballs powered by crushed red pepper irresistible, but this time out I ordered a accented opener of shrimp simmered in peppery orange juice, then served with wedges of orange juice and tomatoes. The shrimp were overcooked and the orange not integrated into the shellfish. Next time, I’ll stick with the meatballs.

I wish Makeda wouldn’t stick to its all-American desserts. The folks here can do better than carrot cake that’s done too much time poorly covered in the fridge. Even if it’s something very simple—again borrowing from Morocco—such as cookies studded with nigella seeds or oranges in orange flower water, it would do more in keeping with the mission of Makeda. Right now, there are no grand finales at a restaurant that deserves a rousing finish.

Makeda, born in 1996, is a fixture in New Brunswick. People who live in the city, those who work at or attend Rutgers, are proud to show it off to visitors: It’s unlike anything else in the state, it sports a lively scene—especially on Friday and Saturday nights when live bands take center stage—and it proves restaurants in New Jersey aren’t always focused on Italian-American standards. Give Makeda an “A” for inspiration.

Editor’s Note: Andy Clurfeld is a former editor of Zagat New Jersey. The longtime food critic for the Asbury Park Press also has been published in Gourmet, Saveur and Town & Country, and on epicurious.com. Her post-Sandy stories for NBCNewYork.com rank among the finest media reporting on the superstorm’s aftermath and recovery.

Exotic Collegiate

If you ever went to Tumulty’s in the old days, Makeda may strike you as a brave new century in college town dining. It’s got the requisite large and happy bar and a space that, if the ceilings weren’t so high, could be called cavernous. But comparisons to a typical collegiate hangout stop there.

Makeda sports African artwork through its dining spaces, both in the private rooms and the main dining areas. A long banquette fronted by tables for two (or four) is upholstered in colorful fabric that avoids stereotype but feels vividly African. The wood and glass that define the spaces are angular and striking. It’s a scene that melds modern times with Ethiopian/African traditions.

24 North Ave. East, Cranford HOme • 908.276.3664

Reservations recommended.

Hours: Monday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. All major credit cards accepted. Dress ranges from neat-casual to festive. Prices: Salads: $8 to $10.

Tapas: $6 to $14, with a mixed selection of tapas at $24. Cocas (mini pizzas): $8 to $10. Paellas and entrees: $18 to $26. Side dishes: $6. Desserts: $7.

In the end, the matter of the Red Velvet cake was the cherry on top of a sweet evening. Cervantes, a Portuguese-Spanish restaurant in Cranford known more formally as Cervantes of Spain, is the real deal –an Iberian destination that tips to approachable authenticity. Its menu bursts with the key foods of the peninsula, from pulpo (octopus) to piquillos (the sweetest roasted red peppers on the planet) to pimenton (smoky, sometimes hot paprika) to potatoes in all forms (mashed and shaped into croquettes, fried like chips, cubed and tossed with jazzed-up aioli). It’s got a near-arm’s-length list of tapas familiar to anyone who has traveled in either Portugal or Spain or been to a big-city Iberian spot; a couple of Mediterranean-style pizzas; more than a half-dozen cauldrons of paella on tap; and a lineup of mild-mannered entrees that gently guide those schooled primarily in Italian or French cuisines into a related realm.

My Portuguese friend is enchanted. My Yankee/Joisey pals are too busy snatching seconds and thirds of the tapas to speak. As the table is re-set for entrees, they gulp and say, “You mean we have to eat more?”

Well, we did skip the Red Velvet Cake – yes, all-American Red Velvet Cake – but let’s talk about the really good stuff first.

Properly conceived and executed tapas, the small plates of Iberia, are more substantial, less precious than many modern American appetizers. Thoughtfully ordered, eight tapas can be a satisfying supper for a party of four. Here at Cervantes, where the bountiful plates of tapas range in price from $6 to $14, you get value and variety on top of roundly flavorful, easy-eating small plates.

Photo credit: iStockphot/Thinkstock

Take that octopus—and don’t be put off by the thought of an eight-armed sea creature. As prepared at Cervantes, it’s quite like all that calamari you’ve inhaled. Only its larger chunks of soft meat aren’t fried, but slowly stewed with Yukon Gold potatoes in olive oil and that smoky, sensuous pimenton. A fan of the classic Italian dish of scampi? Well, here, shrimp are similarly sautéed, perhaps with a more buttery olive oil than the often bitter ones from Italy and an extra teaspoon or two of minced garlic. With hunks of bread to sop up the sauce, you’re golden.

I was feeling mighty sunny myself as I poked through the poached egg sitting atop the dish of duck confit and potato hash and let the runny yolk ooze throughout the dish. Poached egg atop any meat is pure Portuguese, and knowing Cervantes served this riff on a classic was one of the reasons I’d called this dinner to order. Have this, learn from it and make it at home for company from, for the most part, prepared ingredients.

Photo credit: iStockphot/Thinkstock

Cervantes’ chorizo is what Iberians call their very own: It’s not stoked with heat, like some Mexican and American chorizo, but dense, rather than crumbly, deeply meaty rather highly seasoned. It’s served in a rich Rioja reduction that demands bread, or fried potatoes, and it’s yet another tapa that, combined with a vegetable, could do nicely as supper.

Whatever you do, don’t miss the patatas bravas at Cervantes. Think warmed potato salad dressed in a pimenton-licked aioli, a smoother, eggier take on mayonnaise. Six bucks! Heck, after you’ve tried it, you’ll want to buy it in bulk and put it on the menu for Fourth of July. The only miss on the tapas list were the two types of potato croquettes we tried, and not because the mashed spuds weren’t warm and fuzzy fun: The promised chicken in one, and the serrano ham in the other, were MIA in most of the gently fried balls delivered to us.

It’s hard to top good-eating tapas even in Spain and Portugal. My times on the tapas trails rarely were followed by entrees even half as memorable. But do check out Cervantes’ slow-roasted suckling pig, all gussied up in a chic tian of a presentation, a molded round of layered garlicky potatoes topped by carefully assembled meat that tasted like mild pulled pork. There’s a hint of orange in it, a tout to the Valencias so prevalent in the homeland, and that’s the dominant seasoning. Nicely cooked chicken breasts, with just a quick hit of lemon and a deft glaze of Rioja, were light on garlic and olive oil—and rightly so.

Pass on the traditional paella, plumped with chorizo, chicken, shellfish and vegetables: Like far too many paellas, it had overcooked clams, shrimp and lobster and dried-out rice. At $26, it’s also one of the higher-priced items on the menu. We took a chance on the daily fish special, sole in a standard-issue lemon-caper sauce. No need for you to do the same.

If luck is on your side, you’ll get our server, the gent from Lyon (yes, the one in France), who will shake off your request for Red Velvet Cake like a pitcher on the mound rejecting the catcher’s call. I had to ask: Why Red Velvet Cake on an authentic Portuguese-Spanish menu?M. Lyon shook his head. Come on, I beg, whose idea was this? Another shake of the head. Who is the chef?A very talented fellow from Mexico, M. Lyon said, though he didn’t know his name. OK, I say, I want to try this Red Velvet Cake. An even more violent shake of the head ensued.

We locked eyes.

“No, Miss,” M. Lyon said to me. “Not here.”

I was happy M. Lyon wasn’t a complete company man. Frankly, I don’t want to eat Red Velvet Cake in an Iberian restaurant any more than I want to eat patatas bravas at a catfish fry in Mississippi.

So we enjoyed a crunchy-crusted, orange-scented crème brulée (yes, my Portuguese pal said, crème brulée is served over there) and one of the few understated tres leches cakes (hey, our world is one big table these days) I’ve ever eaten.

And all the way home, we plotted our next round of tapas at Cervantes.

Cervantes is located in a modest brick structure astride the train station in Cranford. (Come after 6 p.m., we were advised, and parking is free in the train station lot.) It’s part bar/lounge, where there’s often a lively happy hour, and part dining room. When the weather’s amenable, there’s a patio for outdoor dining. Imagine sipping cava, Spain’s sparkling wine, on that patio this summer as a prelude to a round of tapas.

Problem is, on the night of our visit, only one cava was offered on the wine list. (And the producer’s name wasn’t even given.) Bringing in bubblies that are so right with a diverse selection of tapas would not only do justice to the food, but better serve diners’ needs.

Editor’s Note: Andy Clurfeld is a former editor of Zagat New Jersey. The longtime food critic for the Asbury Park Press also has been published in Gourmet, Saveur and Town & Country, and on epicurious.com. Her post-Sandy stories for NBCNewYork.com rank among the finest media reporting on the superstorm’s aftermath and recovery.

“I want to take everyone I know to this restaurant…‘This is how we should be eating!’ I want to shout.”

By Andy Clurfeld

Roosterspin Wine Bar & Eatery

251 North Avenue, Westfield. Phone: 908.233.7333

Open for lunch and dinner at 11:30 am 7 days a week: Sunday thru Thursday until 10:30 pm and Friday & Saturday until 12:30 am. For more information log onto info@roosterspin.com.

Defending Jersey’s restaurants is so 20th century, but we do it anyway. We do it because attacks are frequent and the attackers a mix of the ignorant with strong cravings for superiority and the wise who know our state’s chefs and restaurants could really, truly do much better.

This is our collective issue: the dichotomy in restaurants that brings us both brave brilliance and sorry retreads. Restaurants such as Cucharamama in Hoboken, A Toute Heure in Crefending Jersey’s restaurants is so 20th century, but we do it anyway. We do it because attacks areanford, Drew’s Bayshore Bistro in Keyport, and Zeppoli in Collingswood fortify our pride as we learn from, and feast on, the visions of their pioneering chefs. The same-old, same-old menus of countless copycats, be they Italian or Asian, traditional American or globally influenced, do little but provide the busy or the bored a supper away from the stove.

That’s why the emergence of a restaurant with both verve and vision—and extremely delicious food—is cause for celebration. Roosterspin in Westfield, which opened last fall as the sibling of Mono + Mono in New York under the stewardship of owner Mihae Cho and chef Hyun Han, may take off from an uber-trendy genre of modern Korean restaurants with must-offer dishes, but it does it with singular style and technical prowess in the kitchen.

Roosterspin rocks.

Often, literally. There are LPs galore as decor and a deejay at a computer taking requests. I somewhat hesitantly ask for John Coltrane and, within a minute, get a couple tracks of Coltrane. We take menus from a tuned-in server and receive a concise, but not condescending primer on how to navigate a rather novel bill of fare. We dig into a series of dishes that connect the accessible to the adventurous and fall in love with Roosterspin’s cuisine—and concept.

I want to take everyone I know to this restaurant, sitting pretty in a multilevel woody-modern/industrial-cozy space in the downtown district conveniently near the train station. “This is how we should be eating!” I want to shout. This is food we should know and food we can learn from, taking riffs from Roosterspin’s plates into our home kitchens. This isn’t rocket science, either; it’s fun eating, with some new ingredients and twists on techniques making that happen.

Take a simple dish, something as familiar as fries. Season them, give them a dipping sauce pumped with the taste of spirited kimchi, and let folks dig in to something old energized by something new. There is a drizzle of tame cheese to smooth the way, but the novice eater is already craving more.

It is time for another small plate, which is how you can start here or dine straight through. Slurp map chae, sizzling skinny sweet potato noodles spliced with beef, wild mushrooms and shards of Asian vegetables. Bright and unexpectedly light are the seafood patties known as seafood jeon, packed with calamari, shrimp and vegetables and bound by egg. If you are looking for something hearty, snag galbi LA cut, a signature dish here, is a perfect partnership of silky short ribs with rice cakes and vegetables served with a nod to beloved Korean barbecue. Looking for light? The mango salad, flush with pretty beets and sweet potatoes and dressed with sesame, is a dandy mix of flavors that you will have a hard time separating ever again.

OK, but the real reason you come here is to find out what all the fuss is over this Korean fried chicken business. Deep-fried twice to ensure super crispy skin and a desirable burning off of the fat, this is chicken at its best. You can get it with a soy/garlic sauce or a fiery hot sauce. Request a half order with one and a half with the other. Why choose?I took it with a side of fried pickled radish and smiled as I ate.

Roosterspin’s range does not stop with the basics. It serves forth Korean rolls such as the kimchi, with shrimp, kimchi, cucumber, crab and beets given a smack of crunch, then dappled with a smoky spicy màyo. Delish. Roosterspin does sliders in rice buns that demand attention—a spicy tuna tartar with cherry tomatoes and greens and a pop of addictive Korean red pepper paste, a beef bulgogi given the crunch of pickle and the zing of wasabi, and a chop of shrimp and calamari topped with calm tartar sauce.

I do not want to lose the lingering flavors of Roosterspin’s savory fare by ordering dessert, but we need to, right? Soba noodle pudding is serviceable and the green tea mochi de rigueur. No interference, thankfully.

You can be one of the Jersey restaurant bashers, sporting a chip on your shoulder, or you can support a truly thoughtful concept and check out Roosterspin. New is nutrition for the taste buds.

SEOUL FOOD

If Roosterspin whets your appetite for more traditional and authentic Korean fare, you might want to head toward southeastern Bergen County, to Palisades Park or Fort Lee.

Over the past two decades, Palisades Park has transformed itself into New Jersey’s unofficial Koreatown. Three in five of the 20,000-or-so residents are of Asian descent, with the vast majority hailing from South Korea. In terms of density and percentage, Palisades Park is now America’s “most Korean” municipality. The most popular restaurant in Palisades Park is probably So No Nan Jip on Broad Avenue. It features authentic Korean barbecue and is usually packed—often past midnight. However, you can duck into almost any eatery along the town’s main drag and find an authentic Korean meal.

Palisades Park’s next-door neighbor, Fort Lee, also boasts a large Korean population, as well as a robust commercial section featuring Korean shops and restaurants, which stretches from just south of the George Washington Bridge north to Englewood Cliffs. Two of the best are Gammeeok on Main Street and Dong Bang Grill on Palisade Avenue. Besides traditional Korean fare, Dong Bang Grill also does a brisk business at the sushi bar—which is saying something, considering the number of excellent Japanese restaurants in Fort Lee.

Editor’s Note: Andy Clurfeld is a former editor of Zagat New Jersey. The longtime food critic for the Asbury Park Press also has been published in Gourmet, Saveur and Town & Country, and on epicurious.com. Her post-Sandy stories for NBCNewYork.com rank among the finest media reporting on the superstorm’s aftermath and recovery.

Somewhat closer to home and also quite popular are Kimchi Hana, located in South Plainfield, as well as New Keum Ho Jung and Chung Sol Bat,both in Edison. —M.S.

Rediscovering the slow cooker in COVID times.

The irresistible appeal of a slow cooker is its convenience and simplicity. Turn it on, and it cooks dinner while you do other things. You have no pot to watch. It doesn’t burn or spill over. Just set it and let it do its work. Next thing you know, your kitchen smells heavenly, and you feel like your personal chef did all the work. One profound effect of the current pandemic stay-at-home culture is that we are doing more home cooking. In and of itself, this can be a good thing. However, it has also given rise to stress eating and weight gain. Remember the “Freshman 15,” the weight-gain trend on college campuses? The pandemic gives us a new trend being called “The COVID 19.” Two ways to counter unwanted weight gain are to stop eating junk food, and keeping lots of healthy foods on hand, especially plant-based whole food meals made with beans, whole grains, and vegetables.

The growing interest in slow cooking has come at a time when more and more people are focused generally on better health and healthy eating, and specifically on the benefits of a plant-based diet. When you factor in a widening awareness of world cuisine, we may well be looking at a game-changing culinary moment. This confluence of trends encouraged me to revisit a book I wrote nine years ago, Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker. In 2020, I authored a new book that features more than 225 recipes using only plant-based ingredients—with chapters on everything from breakfast to main courses, appetizers to desserts, and condiments and beverages. These are some of my favorites…

Root Vegetable Bisque with Herbs de Provence
6 to 8 hours

Traditional bisques are often thickened with rice, so I’ve added some to this recipe. The soup is puréed after cooking and then returned to the pot to serve. If you prefer a chunky rather than creamy soup, you can omit the puréeing step. Just don’t call it a bisque!

1 medium-size yellow onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
2 carrots, coarsely chopped
2 medium-size parsnips, peeled and coarsely
chopped
1 small turnip, peeled and diced
1 medium-size Yukon Gold potato, peeled
and diced
1/3 cup (63 g) raw brown rice
1 (14-ounce, or 395 g) can diced tomatoes, drained 4 cups (960 ml) vegetable broth
2 teaspoons dried herbes de Provence
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons (8 g) chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley,
for garnish

1. Combine the onion and garlic in the slow cooker. Add the carrots, parsnips, turnip, potato, and rice. Stir in the tomatoes, broth, herbes de Provence, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook on Low until the vegetables are tender, 6 to 8 hours.
2. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup right in the pot or transfer the soup, in batches, to a high-powered blender or food processor and puree until smooth, then return to the pot. Taste and adjust the seasonings, if needed. Serve hot, sprinkled with the parsley.

Holy Mole Red Bean Chili
6 to 8 hours

The rich depth of flavor from the mole sauce elevates a humble chili to new heights. I especially like the addition of chopped seitan in this chili, but you may substitute Soy Curls, tempeh, or jackfruit, if you prefer.

1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 small green bell pepper, seeded and chopped 3 tablespoons (48 g) tomato paste
2 tablespoons (10 g) unsweetened cocoa powder 2 tablespoons (32 g) almond butter
2 to 3 tablespoons (15 to 22.5 g) chili powder
1 tablespoon (17 g) minced chipotle chiles in adobo 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 (14.5-ounce, or 410 g) can diced fire-roasted
tomatoes, drained and juices reserved
1 (14-ounce, or 395 g) can crushed tomatoes 3 cups (768 g) cooked dark red kidney beans
or 2 (15-ounce, or 425 g) cans beans, rinsed and drained
8 ounces (225 g) seitan, chopped
2 cups (480 ml) water
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
Diced avocado, pepitas (green pumpkin seeds)
chopped scallions, and/or chopped fresh cilantro, for garnish

1. In the slow cooker combine the onion, garlic, and bell pepper. Stir in the tomato paste, cocoa, almond butter, chili powder, chipotles, cinnamon, and the juices from the diced tomatoes, stirring to blend.
2. Stir in the diced tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, beans, seitan, water, salt, and pepper. Cover and cook on Low for 6 to 8 hours.
3. Taste and adjust the seasonings, if needed. Serve hot, garnished with desired toppings.

A World of Beans

Because bean cooking was the intended use of the first slow cookers, it almost goes without saying that beans are a natural fit for the slow-cooking method. While many of us enjoy cooking a variety of different beans, it’s a safe bet that most of us have barely scratched the surface in terms of what types are available. Believe it or not, there are more than 13,000 different beans and legumes in the world. That’s a lot of beans!
Because beans take longer to cook than most vegetables, I prefer to use beans that I have already cooked in most of my recipes to avoid overcooking the vegetables. Another reason for using precooked beans in recipes is that it allows me to drain off the cooking liquid after cooking beans, making them more digestible. Cooking beans from the dried state in the slow cooker is both easy and economical. Here are some of the basics…

● A convenient way to prepare dried beans to use in recipes is to cook the beans in your slow cooker overnight on Low. They will be done by morning.
● A small piece of kombu sea vegetable added to the pot while the beans cook will help tenderize the beans while adding flavor and nutrients.
● Dried herbs should be added to beans during the final thirty minutes of cooking time. However, it is best to add fresh herbs after the beans are cooked for the best flavor.
● To keep cooked beans from drying out, cool them in their cooking liquid. For improved digestibility, be sure to drain the bean cooking liquid first before using the cooked beans in a recipe.
● Consider cooking a large amount of beans, portion them into airtight containers, and store them in the refrigerator for up to one week or in the freezer for up to six months.

Artichoke Risotto
2 hours

In order to achieve the right texture and flavor, this risotto requires a few minutes of skillet time before combining in the slow cooker. It’s not a bad trade-off when compared to all of the hands-on stirring involved in making conventional risotto. Using nutritional yeast makes this soy-free, although you can substitute a soy-free vegan Parmesan instead.

1/4 cup (60 ml) water, or 2 teaspoons olive oil 1 small yellow onion or 2 shallots, minced
1/4 cup (60 ml) dry white wine
1 1/4 cups (237.5 g) Arborio rice
3 1/2 cups (840 ml) vegetable broth, plus more
if needed
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves,
or 1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups (600 g) canned or frozen artichoke hearts,
thawed, chopped
2 tablespoons (7.5 g) nutritional yeast, or 1/4 cup
(33.5 g) Almond Parmesan
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
Freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup (30 g) chopped toasted walnuts, for
garnish
2 tablespoons (6 g) snipped fresh chives, for garnish;

1. Heat the water or oil in a medium-size skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in the wine and cook for 30 seconds, then add the rice and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.
2. Transfer the rice mixture to the slow cooker. Add the broth, thyme, and salt, cover, and cook on High until all of the liquid is absorbed and the rice is just tender, about 2 hours.
3. Stir in the artichokes, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, and pepper to taste. Taste and adjust the seasonings, if needed. If the mixture is too dry, stir in a little more hot broth as needed.
4. Serve hot, spooned into shallow bowls. Sprinkle each serving with the toasted walnuts and chives.

Why Slow-Cook?

• It’s a convenient way to prepare healthy home-cooked meals.
• It allows you to cook and serve in the same vessel, so it saves on cleanup time.
• It can have dinner ready and waiting for you at the end of the day.
• The slow, gentle cooking adds depth of flavor to foods.
• It keeps the kitchen cool on hot days.
• It’s an ideal way to cook beans and seitan from scratch.
• It doubles as a chafing dish or hot punch bowl at parties.
• It’s economical because it uses less energy than oven cooking and makes great leftovers.
• It can be used as a mini-oven to slow-bake cakes, casseroles, potatoes, and more
• It frees up stovetop burners when cooking for parties or for a crowd on holidays.

Rustic Potpie Topped with Chive Biscuits
5 to 7 hours

This rustic potpie features a top crust of tender drop biscuits that cook right in the slow cooker. The steam heat produces a soft and tender biscuit topping. If you prefer a drier texture to the biscuits, let the cooked potpie sit uncovered for about 10 minutes before serving. To make this gluten-free, use diced tempeh or extra-firm tofu instead of seitan and use a gluten-free flour blend. For soy-free, omit the soy sauce and use Soy-Free Sauce, or coconut aminos, or add some soy-free vegetable broth base or additional salt, and a soy-free plant milk.
2 tablespoons (30 ml) plus 2 teaspoons olive oil 1 medium-size yellow onion, minced
2 large carrots, peeled and minced
2 tablespoons (32 g) tomato paste
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
1 cup (124 g) plus 3 tablespoons (23.25 g)
all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons (45 ml) dry red wine
1 tablespoon (15 ml) soy sauce
1 cup (240 ml) vegetable broth
2 medium-size Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and
cut into 1/2-inch (1 cm) dice
8 ounces (225 g) cremini mushrooms, coarsely
chopped
8 ounces (225 g) seitan, cut into 1/2-inch (1 cm) dice Salt and freshly ground black pepper
3/4 cup (97.5 g) frozen green peas, thawed
11/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon (0.2 g) dried or (3 g) snipped fresh chives 1/2 cup (120 ml) plain unsweetened plant milk

1. Heat 2 teaspoons of oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and carrots and sauté for 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste, thyme, and marjoram and cook for 1 minute longer. Sprinkle on 3 tablespoons (23.25 g) of flour and cook for 30 seconds. Add the wine, soy sauce, and broth, stirring after each addition.
2. Transfer the onion mixture to the slow cooker. Add the potatoes, mushrooms, seitan, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper. Cover and cook on Low until the vegetables are tender, 4 to 6 hours. Taste and adjust the seasonings, if needed, then stir in the green peas.
3. In a large bowl, combine the remaining 1 cup (124 g) of flour, the baking powder, chives, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Quickly stir in the plant milk and the remaining 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of oil until just blended. Drop the biscuit mixture by large spoonfuls onto the surface of the simmering stew. Turn the heat setting to High, cover, and cook until the dough is cooked through, about 1 hour longer.
4. Serve within 15 minutes after the biscuit dough has finished cooking.

Variations: Instead of the seitan, use cooked chickpeas or chopped tempeh. You could also use sweet potatoes instead of the white potatoes, or add turnips in addition to the carrots, and so on. Different herbs could be used in the biscuits—instead of chives, try dill and a little dried savory, if you have some.

Happy Half-Century

The Rival Crock-Pot turns 50 this year. In 1971, Rival bought the “original” consumer electric slow cooker, the Naxon Beanery, which was originally developed for bean cooking. The Crock-Pot was marketed to working women as a way to make a home-cooked meal while they were at work, and they quickly put it to use in preparing pot roasts and other meat-centric dishes. A phenomenal hit at the time, the Crock-Pot fad faded, only to enjoy a resurgence some 30 years later. Since the early ’70s, more than 80 million slow cookers have been sold.

Coconut Rice Pudding
with Mango
1 1/2 to 2 hours

A favorite dessert in Thai restaurants, rice pudding with fresh mango is easy to make at home in your slow cooker. If you prefer a sweeter pudding, add up to 1/4 cup (50 g) extra sugar.

1 1/2 cups (300 g) raw jasmine rice
1/2 cup (100 g) granulated natural sugar,
or more to taste
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 (14-ounce, or 395 g) cans unsweetened
coconut milk
1/2 cup (120 ml) unsweetened plant milk, plus
more if needed
1 teaspoon coconut extract
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 large ripe mango, peeled, pitted, and chopped

1. Lightly coat the slow cooker insert with vegan butter or nonstick cooking spray. Combine the rice, sugar, and salt in the cooker. In a saucepan or the microwave, heat the coconut milk and plant milk just to boiling. Slowly add the heated milks to the slow cooker, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Cover and cook on High until the rice is tender, about 1 1/2 hours.
2. Turn off the slow cooker and stir in the coconut and vanilla extracts. Allow to cool, uncovered, for 10 minutes, then stir in the mango. To help thicken the pudding, stir it gently to let it absorb any remaining liquid; it will continue to thicken as it cools. If the pudding is too thick, stir in a little more plant milk until it’s the consistency you like. The pudding can be served warm, at room temperature, or chilled. To serve chilled, spoon the pudding into dessert glasses, cover, and refrigerate until cold.

A slow cooker is an easy way to prepare nourishing and comforting dishes such as chili, casseroles, stews, and hearty soups made with beans, grains, and vegetables. Preparing food in a slow cooker retains all the nutrients and condenses the delicious flavors. And because slow-cooked dishes can be made without oil, they are low in fat and contain no cholesterol, making them ideal for these challenging times when we may be prone to eating more. EDGE

Editor’s Note:
Robin Robertson is a veteran restaurant chef, cooking teacher and columnist. She has authored numerous cookbooks, including The Plant-Based Slow Cooker ($27.99 Harvard Common Press) and best-sellers Fresh from the Vegan Slow Cooker, Vegan Planet, Vegan on the Cheap, and Quick-Fix Vegan. For more info visit her web site robinrobertson.com.

In league with an extraordinary gentleman

Photography by Daryl Stone

Prologue

It is the winter of 2006. At a lively (read: heated) meeting of the James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards Committee, Alan Richman punctuates discussion with zippity-quick one-liners that smack of truth as they provoke laughter. A gavel invariably pounds on the conference room table, demanding order. At one point, Pete Wells, now the restaurant critic for The New York Times, leans over, nods at Richman and whispers to me, “Someone should follow him around with a tape-recorder.”

Eight-and-a-half years later, I finally take that excellent advice. I do so in Alan Richman’s hometown of Somerville, where the most decorated food writer in America’s history was born.

Present

Alan Richman, restaurant critic for GQ magazine, dean of food journalism and new media at the International Culinary Center in New York, author of the acclaimed book Fork It Over as well as thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, and recipient of the Bronze Star in the Vietnam War, is having lunch at Martino’s Cuban Restaurant on West Main Street in Somerville.  It is a hot summer day.

“Is this the $4 salad?” Richman asks. “It’d be $40 in New York.”

As he dissects the ingredients, chef-owner Martino Linares (above) comes over to the table to listen in. He personally took, and approved, our order.

“The (iced) tea is nicely composed,” Richman adds. “The lemon is already in it. It usually takes me 15 minutes to get the lemon right.”

Linares beams. “Good, heh?” he says.

“All of this might be as good as you say it is,” Richman replies, waving his arm around the food-laden table. Linares chuckles and hops off to sing “Happy Birthday” at another table.

The incognito restaurant critic continues.

“The two things I’ve always hated are empanadas and tamales. Empanadas are always grotesquely soft. But this one is great. It’s delicate. It’s also crunchy. Look at the crimping around the edges. The sauce is smoky.”

And then: “This tamale, the pork, is really good. You know, the Cubans in Cuba have forgotten how to cook. This is good cooking.”

Linares, birthday song sung, is back for more Richman, and he gets what he wants. “My girlfriend and I were looking for a place to celebrate her birthday. I’ll take her here.”

Alan Richman, 70, recalls flying to Cuba from Miami in a pre-Castro time and “eating coconut ice cream out of a coconut shell.”

“Ah! The best!” Linares, 86 going on 16, exclaims in approval.

“When I was a little boy,” Richman tells Linares, “we’d go to Miami Beach. I always wanted to stay in the Fontainebleau Hotel.”

“I cooked there,” Linares says. He’d first come to the States in 1950, volunteered for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, was captured and spent three years in a Cuban prison. After his release, Linares returned to Miami—and cooked at the Fontainebleau. Thus began his career cooking in big-city French and Italian restaurants in America.

The Cubano arrives, sliced and served jelly roll-style on a platter.

“This is like a Cuban hoagie,” Richman says. “Real roast pork! Look at this thing!

“You know what?” says the man who has won 16 James Beard Awards for his writing on restaurants and food. “I think this is the best restaurant in America.”

Martino Linares does a cross between a jig and a tango as Richman examines the sandwich’s layers.

“This Cubano needs a few more pickles.”

Past-Life Experiences

Richman was born in Somerville in 1944. Though his family moved north to Hillside when he was 5, then subsequently to the Philadelphia suburbs, his grandparents as well as other relatives remained in Somerville. The Richmans visited regularly, which may explain the food critic’s vivid memories of “a wall of comic books in a gas station” near his childhood home on Codington Place.

“It was the Mount Rushmore of comic books. I’d sit there for hours.”

His grandparents, Rose and Nathan Rabinowitz, belonged to the Orthodox temple in Somerville, where young Richman “sat through services in 107-degree heat.” Though his grandmother “wasn’t a very good cook,” she did make a “fine kuchin.”

At the time, however, Richman fixated on hot dogs and a certain gumball machine that spat forth, if you were lucky, “rainbow-colored gum. Or something like that.” Richman-the-boy “wanted that rainbow gum because, with that, you also got a candy bar.”

From his home base on Codington Place, Richman would go with his grandmother to the old Cort Theatre (“I saw the most boring movie there—The Quiet Man”) but avoid the Hotel Somerset, whose sign still reigns over part of downtown Somerville. “It gave me the creeps.”

Somerville residents never avoided Raymar’s Center, owned and operated by Richman’s Uncle Sidney until 1976. Now it’s called Redelico’s; owner Randy Redelico worked for Raymar’s. He says that Sidney Raymar taught him “everything I know about paint and decorating.”

While Raymar’s was at its peak, brightening homes in blossoming Somerset County, Alan Richman was a student at the University of Pennsylvania (“Candice Bergen was in my class”). After college, Richman joined the Army and, in 1966, was in the Invasion of the Dominican Republic. In 1969, he was called to service in the Vietnam War.

“I was in the world’s largest Army boat company. I used to ride on the Saigon and Dong Nai Rivers, the Mekong Delta.” He claims he “didn’t do anything brave,” though he rose to the rank of captain and was awarded the Bronze Star.

“I loved Vietnam,” he says.

Newspapers were his next stop. Richman became a sports writer (Philadelphia Bulletin), then a sports columnist (Montreal Star, Boston Globe). It was at the Globe that Richman pioneered long-form writing about sports. Sports writers tend to travel to cities where games are played, so Richman started eating in various restaurants in various locales.

By the time he was on staff at The New York Times, he was working on major-league national news stories. “I covered Three Mile Island. I covered the disappearance of Etan Patz.”

Then he went to People magazine, where he was “the first person hired to report and write their own stories,” not merely a hack fashioning an item out of dispatches from correspondents.

“I did a cover story on Oprah Winfrey. I sat in Grace Jones’s living room as she was having a breakup with Dolph Lundgren. I covered the comeback of Vladimir Horowitz in Paris. There was so much money then,” which meant Richman dined well wherever he traveled.

By this time, he was writing about things culinary as a hobby and doing a regular wine column for Esquire magazine. After five years at People, he moved onto GQ.

It wasn’t long before his singular voice in food-writing drew national acclaim.

In 1991, Richman won the very first James Beard Award for food writing. His name has been called out 15 additional times at ceremonies dubbed the “Food Oscars.” There have been numerous additional honors, ranging from citations from the International Association of Culinary Professionals to a National Magazine Award.

His unique combination of wit and wisdom has dominated the culinary world for more than a quarter-century.

Epilogue

Alan Richman doesn’t have a cell phone. Well, he sort of has a cell phone, but it’s “one of those throw-away phones drug dealers use.” He can call you, but you can’t call him, in other words.

He’s explaining this as we take a break from looking for the spot that possibly could’ve been the circa-late-1940s/early ‘50s gas station with the wall of comic books. We’re in another Somerville restaurant, though Richman finds this one as offensive as the cell phone.

“The purpose of cell phones is so people can incon-venience those they are planning to meet,” he says.

Pete Wells was very right.

FOR FUTURE REFERENCE

Alan Richman’s work can be seen in GQ, both the print edition and on the web site. For information about his classes at the International Culinary Center in New York, visit internationalculinarycenter.com.

Fork It Over, published in 2004 by HarperCollins, showcases the writer’s range. It’s a little bit memoir, with a whole lot of vintage Richman commentary.

When in Somerville, stop in for lunch or dinner at Martino’s Cuban, 212 West Main Street; 908-722-8602; martinoscuba.com.

Two distinct menus have made Rella’s a ‘shore thing’.

There is a rule of thumb in the restaurant business: Try to be everything to all people, and the best you’ll be is Applebee’s. The worst you’ll be is out of business. That being said, Rella’s Italian Tavern proves you can serve two masters, both literally and figuratively. The restaurant’s menu offers two ways to go (as its name implies), imaginative Italian cuisine or reliable tavern fare. Co-owner Sal Chiarella knows his way around both kitchens. He created and sold both the neighborhood go-to spot Harborside Grill in Atlantic Highlands and Fratello’s, a high-end Italian eatery in Sea Girt. Both are still going strong.

What Sal and his brother, Sam, learned from these successes was how to build a menu around both types of cuisine. The majority of patrons at Rella’s pick either Italian or tavern fare; a fair number mix and match. Our group—comprised of seven veteran Jersey Shore diners—agreed to explore the Italian side of Rella’s kitchen on a busy Thursday night.

If you are one of those people who skips the starters to save room for the main course, Rella’s definitely poses a dilemma. The entrée portions are ample, to say the least, however the front side of the menu packs a surprising amount of star power. Indeed, the descriptions don’t begin to do justice to items that shine once they hit the table. Case in point: artichoke Francaise. Nutty and tart, the lightly fried bite-size portions are packed with flavor without overwhelming the palate. Another winning item is the broccoli rabe and sausage stuffed bread. Out of the wood-burning oven and piping hot, it too is done with a surprisingly light touch. With sweet sausage on one side and peppery greens on the other, the two tastes speak for themselves, with just a bit of mozzarella to pull the whole appetizer together.

The hit parade continued with rack of lamb lollipops, a selection on the evening’s specials menu (but generally available). Enough for two, especially with the accompanying swirl of whipped potatoes, the two-bite pops are exceptionally flavorful and drizzled with a balsamic demiglaze.

Two members of our dining group had eaten at Rella’s before and raved about the eggplant rollatini appetizer (as well as the eggplant parmagiana listed among the entrées). We took their word for it and opted for the fried calamari instead. Lightly seasoned and domestically sourced, it is better than most but not extraordinary in and of itself. It’s the marinara sauce that’s the eye-opener. Fresh, tangy and uncomplicated, it plays a big part in the restaurant’s popularity. It elevates everything it touches.

At our table of seven, the home run starter, by unanimous agreement, was the blackened sea scallops salad. Served on a bed of mesculine with grape tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and toasted almonds, the scallops were meaty, flavorful and done to perfection. Often, these types of salads are overdressed. Not so the ginger-soy dressing. Interestingly, no one at the table thought they would have ordered this item solely from its description. However, several said they would return to Rella’s just for a second shot at the salad.

Pizzas at Rella’s are available in traditional and personal size, with design-your-own toppings as well as tasty combinations like the two we ordered—prosciutto & baby Arugula and a basic Margherita. The crust is thin and the ingredients fresh, emerging from the aforementioned oven and rushed to the table still bubbling. Rella’s also has a “pizza bar,” which saw a lot of action on this night, when the Rangers and Flyers met to open the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Hockey, for what it’s worth, is kind of a big deal here. From late October through the May/June postseason, Rella’s is a gathering place for NHL fans, who can position themselves in front of one of eight enormous flat-screens that we counted—including one in the main dining room. Our waiter, Nick, kept a close eye on our table but we also caught him keeping tabs on the action with his other eye. Later, he told me he was a hockey player as well as a fan.

The opening courses set the bar high for what followed—a parade of imaginatively conceived and prepared main courses served family-style. Rella’s prides itself on the big dish concept. It works well for some entrée choices and not for others. Chicken and fish can be tricky to get just right when you’re feeding an entire table. On this night, we agreed that individual orders would have been preferable for the herb-encrusted red snapper and chicken & sausage Scarpariello. That being said, both of these dishes packed plenty of flavor. The Scarpariello preparation is a classic country dish featuring copious amounts of herbs and garlic in a balsamic reduction, along with spicy sausage. Rella’s offers a choice of boneless or bone-in. Bone-in is the way to go. The snapper fillets sat atop a mound of delicious spaghetti squash and were finished with a sun-dried tomato beurre blanc. We did not sample the other fish special, Blackened Tuna.

It bears mentioning that the fish entrées at Rella’s are popular year-round. The Chiarella brothers have forged long relationships with local fishing fleets; when they hook a great swordfish or tuna specimen, Rella’s often get a heads-up via cell phone as the boats hit the docks. That being said, they choose not to compete with the summer shore restaurants on the lobster front. Although lobster may appear occasionally among the specials—and is always available in sauce form as a pairing with angliotti pasta—this is not one of those ubiquitous plastic-bib joints on the other side of the Manasquan River.

For our remaining entrées, we picked two pastas and the pork osso buco. Also, we deviated from our all-Italian strategy with the addition of chicken Murphy, which was not on the menu (nor among the specials), but which we were told could be made to order. Expecting a hefty breast portion buried under an avalanche of onions and peppers, we were pleasantly surprised at the level of restraint on the part of the kitchen staff, and the finesse with which the dish was prepared. The osso buco, a generously proportioned pork shank that falls off the bone, was accompanied by a mushroom risotto. We happened to eat at Rella’s on one of those chilly nights in April, so the heartiness of this dish was appreciated. On a humid summer evening, the carnivore in your party might look elsewhere on the menu—perhaps the New York Strip or even the breaded Veal Chop.

We selected two dishes that represented the extremes of the pasta spectrum at Rella’s: the house specialty (more on this in a moment) and goat cheese ravioli. The ravioli, ordered off the evening’s list of specials, was made in-house and combined roasted garlic and sun-dried tomatoes in a light, creamy arugula pesto sauce. Of all the entrées, the ravioli got the biggest thumbs-up. Even those among us who are not normally fans of goat cheese enjoyed an eyebrow-raising experience. As with the scallop salad, the description did not do this item justice. It was the evening’s hidden gem.

When asked which pasta entrée would be most likely to turn a first-timer into a regular, Sal pointed us toward the Sunday Macaroni. A bed of sturdy rigatoni supports a sauce that includes meatballs, brasciole, Italian sausage and pork spare ribs. The gravy itself has won the local Boss of the Sauce competition so many times that, rumor has it, Rella’s has been discouraged from entering it this year. The Sunday Macaroni may not appeal to diners who prefer a light touch, but to those who embrace the meat-eating experience, it is nothing short of an event. It hit our table family-style, so it is difficult to gauge what a single serving might look like. However, from a value perspective, it is hard to imagine anything at Rella’s topping this house specialty.

Which is an important part of the story at Rella’s. When Sal and Sam Chiarella decided to open their place in 2008, they agreed that they would offer a menu with lots of value. The day-to-day entrées are almost all between$15 and $25, while “higher-end” dishes only find their way onto the nightly specials if they can be offered within those price points. Starters range in price from $5 to $15, while desserts—though extravagantly plated—are also reasonably priced.

Ah, dessert. If possible, save room—just a little room. Italian restaurants can be pretty heavy-handed in this department, but not so Rella’s. The table produced a collective groan when Nick the waiter reviewed the dessert selections, but we were assured that two of the richest-sounding items were actually light enough to pass around with multiple spoons. Nick was a man of his word. The Almond Cake had a feathery texture and a complex combination of flavors. The Chocolate Lava Cake was also surprisingly light without being overly volcanic. Rella’s also offers Mama Rella’s Cheesecake (a family recipe) and a popular Tartufo.

ON THE TAVERN SIDE

Rella’s would not be the success it is (you can barely squeeze in on most Friday and Saturday nights) without a menu that brings in a diverse and devoted clientele. The space itself offers a number of different dining experiences. To the right of the hostess station is a pair of warm, subdued rooms featuring open hearths. To the left, it’s a less formal atmosphere, with cocktail tables, booths, a u-shaped bar and the aforementioned pizza bar and scattering of flat-screen TVs. The entire menu—specials and all—is available throughout the restaurant.

An important word about wings, if that’s your thing…normally, connoisseurs of bar food steer clear of chicken wings at Italian restaurants. At Rella’s, the patrons swear by them. Besides Buffalo and BBQ wings, the kitchen also prepares them with garlic and parmesan, as well as Scarpariello style. Sliders (with a choice of meatball, sirloin or chicken parm) are also popular.

Rella’s makes a wide range of paninis and wraps, as well as a signature Prime Rib French Dip. Pizzas of all sizes and varieties fly out of the wood-burning oven, as do calzones, with a selection of toppings above-average in both quantity and quality. The wine list has good options at all price levels and there are over a dozen beers on tap.

Editor’s Note: Rella’s Italian Tavern is located at 110 Union Avenue (aka Rte 71). In Brielle. The restaurant is open at 3:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, and at 11:30 on Saturday and Sunday. Rella’s has two spaces that can be reserved for private parties or business gatherings. Call (732) 528–0034 or log onto rellastavern.com for more information. Special thanks to Gary and Joanie Brown, Terri and Tim Russell, Maria Dabroski and Sarah Wilson.

If you haven’t tried these 20 amazing culinary treasures, then you have yet to experience the full flavor of our state

Photography by Daryl Stone

New Jersey, the bountiful. Our swaths of fertile farmland, our seafood-rich ocean and bays, our orchards ripe with fruits, our bogs famous for berries. And, most of all, our people, diverse and devoted to personal heritage, serving forth the foods of their ancestors and imaginations. Don’t knock New Jersey’s culinary riches when I’m within earshot, because I’m armed with decades of eating experiences that I’ll use to bring you down.

Here’s my thinking, based on 50 years of Jersey-centric chowdowns: I wanted to make this list about the Jersey I knew as a kid, growing up in Somerset County, and I wanted to make it about the Jersey I have watched my home state become during the 25 years I’ve written about food. I wanted this list to reflect New Jersey’s food culture, past and present. I wanted to touch as many diverse facets of New Jersey’s eating culture as possible. Most of all, I wanted this list to reflect high quality, in humble and haute form.

I also wanted it to be fun. To that end, it mixes restaurants fancy and super-casual. It sports specific ingredients and icons. It taps into the ethnic riches that bring us a veritable United Nations of eating opportunities. It spans the length and width of the state and taps places famous and little known. It spotlights foods I’ve been eating since I was a kid and a couple I’ve only just come to know.

Do you have additions to this list? Bring them on…because they’re all likely places I had to, with regret and remorse, 86 from this list of 20 in order to whittle it down to the ultimate must-eats in the Garden State…

A Toute Heure • 232 Centennial Ave. • Cranford 908-276-6600 • atouteheure.com

With 85 farms fortifying the kitchen, it’s no wonder the chefs at this true bistro of local ingredients seem to have an endless repertoire of gorgeous, delicious dishes. But it’s the menu’s list of “Mussel Pots” that brings me to my knees, mussels done both seasonally and soulfully, in portions with or without frites. Farm-to-table is what A Toute Heure is about, but the exquisite simplicity of its plates feeds my soul.

Alba Vineyards • 269 Route 627 • Finesville • 908-995-7800 • albavineyard.com

Alba, located in bucolic Warren County near the border of Hunterdon, is home to some of the most lauded wines on the East Coast. It’s a must-stop on any Jersey countryside tour, and it’ll have you plotting a move, if you live in a suburban or urban locale. Make sure to tote home Alba’s divine Red Raspberry Wine, for this dessert replacement/enhancement is nothing short of world class.

Allen’s Clam Bar • 5650 Route 9 • New Gretna •609-296-4106 • no web site

Ever since I first encountered the French Fried Lobster Tail at Allen’s, I’ve been curious about how the ’tails served here could be so large. I’m not exactly lightheaded when I eat them, usually having polished off some steamed clams and chowder, but I still can’t quite wrap my head around their size. There might be culinary chicanery of some sort, but I’ll keep doing what’s necessary to get to the bottom of this exceptional partnership of the sea king and expert deep-frying.

ARC Greenhouses/Mr. McGregor’s Greens & Herbs 440 Oak Road • Shiloh • 856-451-8800 • arcgreenhouses.com

If you’re lucky enough to come across the Mr. McGregor’s brand of greens in a specialty market, buy them. Don’t think, buy. In a vast expanse of meticulously farmed greenhouses in South Jersey’s Shiloh, the best greens sprout and then are snatched up by some of the region’s top chefs. There’s all manner of produce, but the little guys—peppercress, wasabi mustards, red amaranth—turn me into a hungry rabbit.

Aunt Charlotte’s • 3 West Maple Ave. • Merchantville • 856-662-0058 • auntcharlottescandy.com

Pretty, hand-painted chocolate, nonpareils, choice truffles—art meets sweet at this fourth-generation temple of confections, where folks make pilgrimages to fulfill their kids’ holiday wishes. There’s nothing not worth the indulgence, though there’s one item that likely will exceed expectations: Aunt Charlotte’s malted milkballs. Multiple layers take this humble candy-counter regular to dazzling heights of flavor you won’t believe till you try.

Cucharamama • 233 Clinton St. • Hoboken • 201-420-1700 • cucharamama.com

James Beard Best Chef Award-winner Maricel Presilla is not just a celebrated chef, but a scholar, a former Rutgers professor and culinary historian who specializes in the foods of Latin America and Spain. (Her “Grand Cocina Latina” won top honors in cookbooks at last year’s Beard Awards, cementing her place in the food world’s pantheon of superstars.) Her restaurant? Oh, it’s all that—and more. Eat through her menu and you’ll earn a doctorate in Latin foods. At the end of your “studies,” plan a feast with friends around Presilla’s roast suckling pig. A triumph of tradition.

Drew’s Bayshore Bistro • 25 Church St. • Keyport • 732-739-9219 • bayshorebistro.com

Chef-owner Drew Araneo, a multiple James Beard Award nominee, has a heartfelt menu of dishes inspired by New Orleans and Southern cookery. After trouncing Bobby Flay in “Throwdown,” Araneo and his signature dish winner Voodoo Shrimp became famous beyond Jersey’s borders. Justifiably so. Fans can’t resist ordering it time after time after time. Including me.

El Tule • 49 North Main St. • Lambertville • 609-773-0007 • eltulerestaurant.com

A Mexican-Peruvian combo, this Latin destination sports splendid takes on classics as well as more modern interpretations. I find myself in the mood for one or the other every time I eat here, but lately I’m leaning Peruvian: any of the ceviches, so resoundingly fresh, any of the quinoa dishes, particularly the Solterito de Quinoa salad, sprightly with vegetables and popping with the grain’s inherent nuttiness. Where has this food been all my life?

The Flaky Tart • 145 First Ave. • Atlantic Highlands • 732-291-2555 • theflakytartnj.com

The pastries, the cakes, the cookies, the buns, the mousse-y things whirled into artfully angular cups, the sandwiches on croissants, the quiches—oh, everything the lovely and talented pastry queen Marie Jackson does at the mecca she calls “the bakery” is sublime. But here’s a tip: Whenever the “Kerry Nolan Scone” is on tap, grab it. In fact, grab however many Kerrys there are. It’s a scone made of bacon, Cheddar, maple and apple, and it was great cook Kerry’s dream. (Name sound familiar?Kerry’s the morning news host on WQXR in New York.)

Jhupdi • 1679 Oak Tree Road • Edison • 732-906-2121 • jhupdirestaurant.com

One of the largest South Asian/Indian populations in America lives in and around this Middlesex County municipality, where there’s a wealth of Indian eateries. I’m invariably charmed by this South India specialist and its irresistible Thali platters, which offer a panoply of vegetarian selections from the state of Gujarat. Go for lunch one day, try a couple of the Thali platters, and find yourself wishing for seconds of bajri rotla and baigan bharta. And the cauliflower? Oh, my.

Melick’s Town Farm • 170 Oldwick Road • Oldwick • 908-439-2955 • melickstownfarm.com

In the late summer of 1977, farmer-freeholder George Melick introduced me to a white peach—one from his orchards in the village of Oldwick that date back to 1725. Eating that succulent peach changed my life. George and his wife, Norma (“Try a Jonathan apple, Andy”), opened a world of produce possibilities for me. They’ve done the same for generations of New Jerseyans. Now, with children Peter, John and Rebecca running the 650 acres they own (including 120 acres sporting 5,000 peach trees and 20,000 apple trees), the fruits of the Melicks’ labors continue to feed and educate.

Mitsuwa Marketplace • 595 River Road • Edgewater • 201-941-9113 • mitsuwa.com

What Disneyworld is to a 6-year-old, this Japanese uber-market is to me. Prime produce, fishes, prepared foods, sweets and even an aisle with serious sakes. I’m transported to the Far East and inspired to bring home the ingredients for a feast that, however faintly, mimics Japanese culinary artistry. I snatch up the prepared foods and learn by eating at home.

Mustache Bill’s Diner • Eighth Street & Broadway • Barnegat Light • 609-494-0155 • no web site

The first time I had a fried flounder sandwich at this landmark at the northern end of Long Beach Island, I was riveted. The fish was pristine, the frying flawless. Even the tartar sauce hit the mark. That’s because owner Bill Smith buys that flounder right off the boats, from the island’s fishing fleet. In fact, everything at this diner is homemade, except for the French dressing. (Ah, the “why” of that’s a long story.) No wonder this place won a coveted James Beard America’s Classic Award.

Nasto’s Ice Cream • 236 Jefferson St. • Newark • 973-589-3333 • nastosicecream.com

Born in 1939 and celebrating its 75th birthday this year, the ice cream king of New Jersey started with old-family recipes of Sicilian-style ices and gelatos and kept pace with its evolving neighborhood. Now there’s mango and sweet corn in the lineup, as well as sea salt caramel and passion fruit. While proprietors Frank Nasto Jr. and Frank Nasto III give a nod to their vanilla, I have to pledge my devotion to my first Nasto’s love, the incomparable Honey-Fig Gelato.

Rat’s Restaurant • 16 Fairgrounds Road • Hamilton • 609-584-7800 • ratsrestaurant.com

Named for the hospitable character Rat in the childhood classic “Wind in the Willows,” sculptor and Rat’s mastermind J. Seward Johnson’s pet book, this French-inspired spot is set in the Grounds for Sculpture’s Giverny-esque landcape. Sunday brunch, a grand buffet that elegantly defies the same-old, same-old norm, is prime time to fuel on fare both modern and comforting, then stroll through an artful wonderland that hasn’t, and can’t be, duplicated anywhere else.

Shanghai Bun • 952 Route 34/Matawan Mall • Matawan • 732-765-8388 • Shanghaibunmatawan.com

Chinese eateries abound in New Jersey. But Shanghai Bun is different, because of its Beef Sandwich. A few slabs of thinly sliced veined beef on a seeded bun that’s neither a burger bun nor a flatbread are spread with a secret sauce that’s a little soy and a little sweet and then topped with skinny batons of something allium and a flourish of fresh cilantro. It’s an enigmatic sandwich that enchants every time.

Valley Shepherd Creamery • 50 Fairmount Road • Long Valley • 908-876-3200 • valleyshepherd.com

A visit to the Sheep Shoppe at this expansive, idyllic farm deep in the Morris County countryside may well net you cheeses for a year. Or, if you’re like me, cheeses that should last a year but don’t stretch for a week. Valley Thunder? Tewksbury? A tomme or wedge flecked with nettles? OK, it’s agony, but I’ll go with…my original favorite, Oldwick Shepherd.

White House Subs • 2301 Arctic Ave. • Atlantic City • 609-345-8599 • whitehousesubshop.net

Since 1946, this little sub shop has been putting to shame anyone who thinks slapping meat on bread is making a proper sandwich. The folks here hollow out the sub rolls, they calculate the right ratio of meat to cheese to bread to condiments. They are scientists and artists. They make the one and only White House Special, with extra salami, provolone, ham and capocollo. They are New Jersey.

White Manna • 358 River St. • Hackensack • 201-342-0914 • no web site

The slider-size cheeseburgers on potato rolls energized with a slap or seven of sautéed onions are meant to be ordered in threesomes. If you order fewer, you’ve either just had gastric bypass surgery or really don’t enjoy eating. There are fine burgers throughout New Jersey, but these little gems have a singularly sensational flavor, the perfect coming together of beef, bun and condiments. Plus, the close-clustered space surrounding the sushi-counter-like center of operations is pure community.

Zeppoli • 618 Collings Ave. • Collingswood • 856-854-2670 • zeppolirestaurant.com

So where’s the Jersey Tomato on this list, you ask? Well, it’s a sad fact that too many of our farmed tomatoes today are being picked unripe and shipped out of state. But anything with tomatoes here at chef Joey Baldino’s peerless Sicily-centric Italian restaurant is worth ordering. And anointing for saintly qualities. I’m remembering the Panzanella Catania, a tomato-and-bread salad, with capers and a correct proportion of white anchovies. Bliss. Lucky us that Baldino left Philly for this side of the Delaware.

BLUE BY YOU

The Jersey Blue-Claw Crab, popping out of Jersey waters not far from you this summer. When the meat is sweet and the claws are fat with that meat, happiness is a certainty. What can you do with the crabmeat that our fisherfolk work so hard to catch? Make a sauce, with our Jersey tomatoes, and toss with pasta; make a salad, with our Jersey greens and lettuces; make a cake, with spices scored from our ethnic markets. Or eat it straight, as I do.

Editor’s Note: New Jersey’s bounty is both enviable and endless. We hope this list inspires you to make one of your own—and share it with us on our Facebook page.

A new book by columnist Rachel Weston digs into New Jersey’s agricultural bounty.

It’s a book about cooking, not a cookbook, Rachel Weston explains. The author of New Jersey Fresh: Four Seasons from Farm to Table is underselling her contribution to the popular American Palate series. Her book is not only the first of its kind within this regional collection, it stands alone as a thoughtful and engaging compendium of everything that bursts from the ground in the Garden State.

New Jersey Fresh begins by taking the reader inside the state’s farms and farmers markets, profiling people who have dedicated their lives to agriculture—some relatively new to the business, others who’ve been in it for generations. The bulk of the book is dedicated to produce by season.

Within each, every vegetable and fruit gets its due from Weston, who has crafted individual six-paragraph (or so) essays on fava beans, Swiss chard, nectarines, parsley and 50 other menu items. Those essays include tips and tricks for buying and preparing and, often, a look at how the state’s better restaurants serve them. At the back of the book is a collection of recipes from well-known Jersey chefs.

The History Press

“I was always interested in cooking,” says Weston.

She began her culinary journey as a girl, after her parents split, when she and her sister often cooked their meals while her mother worked. Her grandfather was a chef, so it was already folded into her DNA. An interest in journalism took her in a slightly different direction, however, as Weston worked for many years as a newspaper photo editor, including stints at the Asbury Park Press and Newark Star-Ledger.

BACK TO SCHOOL

In the early days of the recession, the Ledger offered buyouts to its longtime employees. Weston took the money and enrolled in Promise Culinary School in New Brunswick. The school is affiliated with Elijah’s Promise, an organization that aims to harness the power of food to “break the cycle of poverty, alleviate hunger and change lives.” From 2009 to 2014, she honed her skills at the Better World Café in Highland Park, the state’s first pay-what-you-can restaurant, which inspired Bon Jovi’s JBJ Soul Kitchen in Red Bank.

“I worked with an all-volunteer staff, many of whom came with no kitchen skills,” she recalls. “So I was always teaching. And at night, I taught at the culinary school.”

www.istockphoto.com

Weston was also thinking about putting her knowledge into prose. She reached out to her old newspaper contacts. The result was a weekly In Season column at nj.com, which in turn served as the inspiration for New Jersey Fresh.

The book was released in late spring 2015 and she’s been busy promoting it all summer and fall.

“I’ve really enjoyed meeting people during my appearances around the state,” Weston says. “One woman came up to me and said, ‘Rhubarb…what do you do with this?’”

From pages 51–52: I go a little rhubarb crazy and experiment like mad with new recipes every year. If you are lucky enough to have some rose bushes in bloom, rhubarb and rosewater syrup is wonderful as a base for cocktail or seltzer drinks. Drizzle some over your morning yogurt with chopped pistachios for a Persian flair. I like to bottle the pink syrup and give it as gifts.

As they say in food court…asked and answered.

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BUYING LOCAL

In getting to know New Jersey’s farms and farmers, Weston also became acutely aware of the impact that individual shopping decisions can have. “When you are making a purchase at a supermarket versus a farmers market,” she points out, “it has a huge influence on the local culture and economy.”

Not that it’s possible to patronize farm stands for every shopping trip, Weston admits, but it’s worth the extra effort when you can, both for you and the farmer.

The nature of information-packed books is that authors, to their frustration, end up having to leave a few things out. What’s not in New Jersey Fresh?

“I would have liked to have gone beyond produce,” Weston says. “New Jersey makes wonderful cheeses. We have meat from pastured animals. And there are wonderful artisan food products made with locally grown produce. This book just touches on these things.”

According to her devoted readers, something else is “missing”: Weston’s own favorite recipes. This is the constant chorus from her readers, she says.

“So I’ve started work on a cookbook.”

SALAD & SQUASH

New Jersey Fresh: Four Seasons from Farm to Table features signature recipes from some of the state’s top restaurants. Here are two that would be a good fit for virtually any holiday table:

Endive Caesar Salad

The Orange Squirrel • Bloomfield

2 endive heads

1 pkg. marinated white anchovies (appx. 12) ½ cup fresh grated Parmesan

Dressing

1 egg yolk

½ tbsp. salt

½ tsp. dry mustard

2 tsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. white wine vinegar

1 cup vegetable oil

½ tbsp. fresh ground pepper

1 tbsp. roasted pureed garlic

1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1. Whisk together the egg yolk and mustard. Slowly drizzle in oil while whisking to create an emulsion.
2. After dressing is fully emulsified, add lemon juice, vinegar, garlic Worcestershire, salt and Parmesan.
3. Cut apart endive. Dress each leaf individually and then stack about a dozen leaves, starting with the larger on the bottom and smaller on top, in a crisscross pattern.
4. Top with 3 anchovies per salad.
5. Sprinkle with grated cheese and black pepper. Option: add thin bread croutons as a garnish.

Acorn Squash Moranga Samba • Montclair

2 med. acorn squash

¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

2 med. White onions, diced

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 med. Butternut squash, diced 1 pt. heavy cream

1 13.5 ounce can of coconut milk 1 pound jumbo shrimp

¼ cup shaved Parmesan parsley & cilantro for garnish

1. Cut acorn squash in half and remove seeds, creating a bowl. Cover with aluminum foil and cook at 350 degrees (60 to 75 minutes) until tender.
2. Heat oil in a large skillet. Over medium heat bloom the onion with garlic and caramelize the butternut squash. When squash is tender, add the heavy cream and coconut milk and simmer.
3. Add shrimp and cook for another 4 minutes.
4. Pour the cooked butternut squash and shrimp mixture into the acorn squash. Garnish with parsley, cilantro and Parmesan.

Chef Francesco Palmieri/The Orange Squirrel

Editor’s Note: New Jersey Fresh (Arcadia/History Press, 2015, $19.99) is available at bookstores and other retail outlets around the state, and as an eBook. However, if you order directly from the author at racheljweston.com, you’ll receive your copy signed! Her web site also has a schedule of personal appearances and demos.

New Jersey’s craft brewery count reaches 36.

There are only two edibles I don’t much like, and those are coffee and beer. Coffee because I’m somewhat allergic to it and beer because, well, I don’t like the taste of it.

There, I said it. That’s how I can relate to people who shun olives or cilantro or broccoli or any of the other foods I personally find essential to happiness. I get I don’t like because I don’t like beer.

Bolero Snort

Then I met Jaret Gelb, the brewer. I love Jaret, and I love Jaret’s passion for brewing; his understanding of the techniques, a merger of art and science; his devotion to his baby, Dark City, the Asbury Park brewery that may well be open by the time you read this. I’ve loved listening to Jaret talk about beer and learning about the network of brewers—most of them in their 20s and 30s—that is behind the 36 functional breweries in the state of New Jersey.

Thirty-six? I ask myself as I talk to Scott Wells, who, along with Bob Olson and Andrew Maiorana, are the principals behind Bolero Snort, the Ridgefield Park-based brewery that has followers who can be described as intelligently fanatical, because Bolero Snort makes top-of-the-world-class beer that beer geeks line up to buy upon release. When did 36 craft breweries happen to New Jersey, birthplace of Ballantine?

Collaboration happened to Wells, Olson and Maiorana at a chance meeting in a Staples that Wells was managing. Olson came in wearing a Bolero Snort shirt.

“I was a craft brew nut and I was planning to go to Bolero Snort’s release party,” Wells said. The next thing Wells knew, he was helping out at Bolero events. Before long, he was saying bye-bye to Staples and on board full-time at Bolero. Brews become blood quickly in this burgeoning world.

Kevin Sharpe, Dark City’s founder and, along with Jaret Gelb, a brewer, talks the family talk when he explains how his baby was born.

Dark City Brewing

“I am very lucky to have a small team of business partners and support staff who I now consider my family,” Sharpe says. Everybody wears many hats, he adds. Everybody likely will continue to be so adorned as the brewery grows.

Spellbound, in Mount Holly, is another brewery the merry bands of brother and sister brewers in New Jersey respect. Who are these guys? Mike Oliver, John Companick and Scott Reading. They like to say they have been “collectively brewing for 50 years.” The Spellbound team focuses on “everyday beers” as well as “extreme styles, like imperial stouts, barley wines and gruits.”

Go to the pilot batch tasting room in Mount Holly to try beers you won’t find anywhere else: Peach Double IPA, Vanilla Maple Porter, Jalepeno Ghost Pepper IPA, White Sage Black Pepper Saison.

Scott Wells and Jaret Gelb touted Spellbound to me, as well as a Fairfield-based brewery called Magnify, which is run by two Eric(h)s: Eric Ruta, founder and president, and Erich Carrle, head brewer.

Dark City Brewing

Please understand, all these guys talk brewing on many levels, not the least of which are: taste, taste, taste, and principles, principles, principles. Magnify, for instance, has four core, year-round beers—Vine Shine IPA, Search Saison, Pale Ale and Black Wheat Ale—but releases “small-batch experimental and innovative beers every four to six weeks.” They keep things interesting.

However, their business model is all about ethics. Magnify self-distributes, so the folks who brew can deal directly with the folks who drink the brews. Magnify is committed to environmental sustainability, employing energy-saving equipment, using recyclable materials, donating spent grain to farmers. Magnify is also about community partnerships and synergy.

Dark City’s Sharpe hammers home the community partnership theme, as well. In fact, Dark City is “actually the nickname for Asbury Park,” he says. “We chose the name to pay tribute to the city’s rich history of periods of downtime followed by rapid revival. The city is currently booming like never before and we love where it is going, but we don’t want to forget where it’s been.

“Asbury has been a hotbed of musical, artistic and culinary inventiveness for most of its history,” Sharpe adds. “Never in history has it housed a brewery, and I wanted to bring that to the community.”

Magnify Brewing

Every beer geek I spoke with talked community on every level. Local isn’t just a buzzword for these folks; it’s religion. Wells, whose technical title at Bolero Snort is sales and events manager, has at his finger tips all the information I need about Bolero’s seasonal program (“We pump out a different beer every month”), as well as the background a neophyte needs to fill gaps (“New Jersey is one of the toughest markets in the U.S.; it was the last market Best Buy went into” and “A contract brewery is one without its own physical plant—it brews by contract elsewhere”), but he also has perspective.

“In New Jersey, we all work to help each other,” Wells says. When Spellbound, for example, celebrates a release, the brother/sisterhood gathers to help. “New Jersey breweries are learning to compete against the national brands—Founders, Dogfish.”

Magnify Brewing

Sharpe agrees: “New Jersey’s brew scene, compared to other states, is relatively young. [However], we have the population to support this growing scene.” Dark City and the other “newcomers to the Jersey scene are lucky…that there are a large number of folks who’ve acquired a taste for craft beer. We owe that to the pioneers [such as] Climax, Flying Fish and River Horse [as well as] the relatively young innovators like Carton and Kane.”

These newcomers take local’s yesterdays, fuse them with local’s today and make dreams come true about local’s tomorrow. I think I’m acquiring a taste for the stuff.

Thanks, Jaret.

Spellbound

BREW CRAWL

Bolero Snort Brewery • bolerosnort.com

65 Railroad Ave. • Ridgefield Park

Dark City Brewing • darkcitybrewing.com 802 2nd Ave. • Asbury Park

Magnify Brewing Co. • magnifybrewing.com 1275 Railroad Ave. • Fairfield

Spellbound Brewing • spellboundbrewing.com 10 Lippincott Lane • Mount Holly

Editor’s Note: Andy Clurfeld has been shouldering the load on restaurant reviews since the second issue of EDGE. During that time, she was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Public Service for her work exposing the flaws, injustices and abuses in New Jersey’s property tax system. Andy also has published in-depth reporting on a range of topics, including criminal street gangs, agriculture, politics and the environment. A longtime member of the James Beard Restaurant & Chef Awards Committee, she is a specialist in artisan wines and recently was appointed Wine Director at Buy-Rite Corporation, implementing educational programs, coordinating special events and developing artisan wine sections for select stores.

What’s in store for New Jersey’s adventurous eaters?  You name it.   

By Andy Clurfeld

Remember trying to guess the number of jelly beans packed into a big glass jar at a county fair? I was never good enough at math to come up with a reasonable jelly-bean-per-square inch count that I could multiply by jar height and width to hazard a reasonable count. I admired those who even approached a ballpark number. After speaking with dozens and dozens of culinary professionals as indoor dining in New Jersey was coming out of its long hibernation, I learned I’m in ample company in the “it’s anybody’s guess” department: Nobody in this COVID-canceled-it world can say with any certainty what the state of our restaurants will be as the year 2020 winds down. 

www.istockphoto.com

Although we may not know what’s in store, I’ve got a pretty good idea of what’s actually in Garden State stores, which carry a world of foods. So what I set about doing, rather than a review or profile a restaurant that might be in flux, in re-set, in one sort of modification or other by the time you read this, was to shop markets outside the general stock-up norm and see what’s available— specifically, what might bring to your home table the spirit of dining out.  

Mind you, I wasn’t looking for our old standby favorite, the rotisserie chicken. I wasn’t parsing the deli counters for cold cuts and three-bean salads. Nor was I grabbing prepared skewered beef cubes and bell peppers for the grill at the meat counter or marinated tuna chunks in the seafood department. I was hankering for more exotic tastes, a smack of adventure, a journey to another land on a plate.  

And I found those experiences at New Jersey’s bountiful ethnic mega-markets. 

Fattal’s Bakery

From the true super-size stores, such as Hmart (Korean/Asian), Netcost (Russian/Eastern European), City Fresh Market (Latin American), Seabra Foods (Portuguese/Brazilian), Mitsuwa (Japanese/Asian); Patel Brothers (Indian), Supremo (Latin American) and Kam Man (all-Asian), to the more intimate shops, including Chowpatty (Indian), Fattal’s (Middle Eastern), Nouri Brothers (Syrian/Middle Eastern), Piast (Polish), Makola African Market and The Greek Store, to the beloved neighborhood-centric Mexican and Indian corner stores, there’s a veritable United Nations of foods in our midst. 

Consider stamping your dining table much as you  would your passport, with a global menu of meals. I can vouch for finding food-shopping happiness at all the markets noted above—and experiencing the joyful, delicious meals that result with little or no effort. In fact, I often tell dinner guests who compliment my cooking that I’m not a particularly talented cook, but I am a very good shopper

Want some examples? There really are no recipes here…just mealtime put-togethers at a variety of  price points. 

Photo by Andy Clurfeld

Let’s start easy, seriously easy, with a completely ready-to-eat meal from Hmart, which has stores in North and Central New Jersey. We’ll progress to an elegant appetizer (or even an entrée) that’s assembled from prepared and purchased foods at Netcost. Then we’ll do what I think of as the two-step: quick and easy two-element bites that elevate your eating game.  

So rev up those taste buds and stretch your palate. 

Hmart sells myriad and many prepared foods, including sensational Korean kimbap rolls, which look like Japanese sushi rolls, but spotlight vegetables instead. Buy a package of those and partner with an “egg” roll, an omelet-like layering of scrambled-then-cooked egg punctuated by peppers and onions and lined with nori sheets, a skinny version of a handroll known as a “finger” roll, and a petite side of cucumber-sesame salad. Use the pickled vegetables that come with the rolls to garnish and punch up the prettiness of the plate

Piast Meats & Provisions

NetCost, with Jersey stores in Paramus and Manalapan, is world headquarters (well, my personal world head-quarters) for caviar and many other Russian and Eastern European foods. Now, caviar isn’t everyday fare for me, but when I want to do something special, I layer in a ring mold a few things I find in this uber-market’s extensive prepared foods sections (a chunky, creamy salad of potato, peas, onions, peppers; an egg-based salad; slices of smoked salmon) plus one of the thick, rich Russian sour creams NetCost sells (doctored with snippets of fresh chives and sliced scallions) and, slathered on top, a generous schmear of black caviar. You can welcome the New Year with this, or use it as the centerpiece of an intimate supper. Bring on the black bread from NetCost’s bakery department and plain crackers

While you’re browsing NetCost’s prepared foods bars, fill a tub with one of the excellent eggplant salads, maybe some silky chopped liver and/or a few soupcons of something mushroom. Why

Photo by Andy Clurfeld

You’ll need them to fill the pani poori (or puri) you’ll score at Chowpatty, my Iselin-based must-stop for cocktail party snacks, as quickie two-step hors d’oeuvres. Pani poori are a classic snack food in India—airy, crisp, hollow puffballs that you (carefully!) use a chopstick to poke a hole in and then stuff with pretty much anything. I do love using those NetCost salads, as well as chickpeas (rousingly seasoned), potatoes of all stripes, minced herbs and chilies (got a pesto lying around?), chopped-up smoked fish. Stuffing elements are endless; just make sure you fill your poori just before serving: They are delicate and most stuffings make them soggy after a while

Chowpatty Foods

More two-steps? Coming right up. Chowpatty is also my source for potato chips, particularly the chile-spiced ones, which form the base of the easiest of appetizers. Layer on top a slice of NetCost salmon or a dollop  of caviar. Or a swirl of Hmart barbecued beef or  jarred kimchi. Or muhummara (red pepper-walnut-pomegranate spread) or tabbouleh you forage at Fattal’s in Paterson

You get the idea. The Garden State has a diner-size menu of ethnic food shops open for exploration. Eat, learn, play in the kitchen

Try Something New

When you walk into an ethnic market, you’re bound to encounter a new food, or a familiar food presented in a new way. Play Marco Polo or Columbus or Magellan and explore. For instance, at Hmart, take a stroll through the produce department and you’ll find big and baby choys, musk melons and snow pears, honey apples and dragonfruit. Segue to the seafood department, and there will be icy bins of whole fishes and tubs of whole crabs. 

At NetCost, there’s a selection of at least a couple dozen caviars, a sea of smoked fishes, and herring enough to satisfy a famished Norwegian. There are scores of different breads, various styles of sour cream, and preserves that transcend anything Smucker’s makes. You already know same-old, same-old. Challenge your taste buds

Better Shop Around

Some of the markets in this story are located in towns near you, so you know about them already. Take note of those that aren’t…if you are traveling to another part of New Jersey for business or pleasure, take the opportunity to stop in and explore. Most are on or close to major roads and highways

NetCost • Manalapan and Paramus 

Hmart • Paramus, Cherry Hill, Fort Lee, Edison, Leonia, Ridgefield 

City Fresh • Union City 

Seabra Foods • Newark, Kearny, Harrison 

Mitsuwa • Edgewater 

Patel Brothers • Edison, Iselin, North Brunswick, Parlin, Plainfield, Perth Amboy, Trenton, Pennsauken 

Kam Man • Edison, East Hanover Chowpatty • Iselin 

Fattal’s • Paterson 

Nouri Brothers • Paterson 

Piast • Garfield 

Makola African • Newark 

The Greek Store • Kenilworth 

Andy Clurfeld, who racked up a lot of miles for this story, notes that while we do take-out from our favorite restaurants—while we support them in any way we can right now and as the future unfolds—eating more adventurously at home today will make all of us more appreciative diners when our eateries are again at full capacity. “If there’s one thing I’ve been hearing from chefs,” she says, “it is that, in the post-COVID Era, they can’t wait to cook at full tilt.  And then some.”

Chef Sam Byrne is making waves at Asbury Park’s Cross & Orange.

Starting around mid-May every year, the Jersey Shore witnesses a wondrous mass migration, as hungry visitors glide in for a meal or two before picking up and heading north. Just to be clear, we’re talking about people (not birds). For generations, residents of landlocked Northern and Central New Jersey have flocked to the beach towns in search of memorable dining experiences. In the old days, that translated as lobster, fried shrimp, steamers and pitchers of beer. To be sure, fresh seafood and water views are still staples of Jersey Shore dining. However, a handful of talented chefs are breaking this mold by creating innovative, important menus for those with greater expectations.

Which explains, at least in part, what Sam Byrne is doing in Asbury Park at Cross & Orange. Byrne, a native of Ireland, began working under some of Europe’s top chefs as a teenager in a career that included two years in Spain at El Bulli (regarded by many as the finest restaurant in the world) and stints in London and Paris. He arrived on our shores in 2011 with the goal of opening a restaurant that reflected the most outstanding elements of American culture and cuisine.

“My background in Europe opened doors to wherever I wanted to go,” says Byrne. “I came to the U.S. because I wanted a change, but also to create something totally new.”

According to Byrne, the Cross & Orange menu celebrates the remarkable diversity, work ethic and ambitions of 19th century Manhattan, paying homage to the “makers and doers who built the country.” The restaurant’s name references two of the streets that made up the notorious melting pot of New York’s Five Points neighborhood. As a tribute to that era, Byrne and his kitchen staff make everything from scratch, and delight in working unexpected ingredients into every menu item.

The owners of Cross & Orange, brothers Chris and Bob Fahey, grew up in the restaurant business. They worked in a number of bars and restaurants in the City and earned their spurs on the Jersey Shore with Edgar’s Pub in Manasquan, and at trendy Asbury Lanes, a few blocks away. They opened Cross & Orange in February on Cookman Avenue, the epicenter of Asbury Park’s culinary renaissance.

Initially, the brothers’ ambition was to up their game and stake their claim in the town’s red-hot restaurant scene. The first step was to secure a prime location, which they did, in the old Park Overlook building—which, as the name implies, overlooks a park (Lincoln Park). Next it was time to secure the services of a first-rate chef.  So they ran an ad. Their goal was to be extremely selective and find someone young, creative and ahead of the trends. Someone who, as Chris puts it, “would give us an identity.”

“When we first met Sam, our expectation of a chef was here,” Bob recalls, putting his hand at eye level.

“What we got,” says Chris, raising his hand a foot above his head, “was here.”

Byrne says he was being equally selective. He had come to Monmouth County to help a friend open a restaurant and was blown away by what was happening in Asbury. Initially, he had planned to work in Manhattan. “But as soon as I saw the building, I signed,” he says. The space is arguably the best in town in terms of its layout and energy. A long bar rises a few steps above the dining area, which is open to the adjacent park, about a three-minute stroll from the boardwalk.

Assembling the Cross & Orange menu was a collaborative effort. The Faheys wanted a place people “would feel comfortable coming to twice a week” as opposed to a destination restaurant, yet one that addressed Asbury Park’s ever-ascending taste and sophistication. They made big investments in staffing; the service is friendly and professional (several waiters have managed restaurants themselves), and the kitchen is driven and motivated. As for Byrne, his marching orders were clear: “Gears-forward, no holding back.”

Not surprisingly, it is the food at Cross & Orange that sets it apart. Bring your appetite and, just as important, your reading glasses, because it’s the small print under each menu item that demonstrates Byrne’s creativity and commitment to quality. The ingredients, he says, are the best he can buy, and there are always specials on the blackboard perched above the dining area.

“The meats are always prime, the lamb is from Colorado, the octopus is fresh from Portugal,” he says. “Now we move into summer, my favorite season, so I get to play off the shore with different types of fish and light dishes.”

“Sam learned the styles of the masters and developed his own way of cooking and presentation,” says Chris Fahey. “Once he earns the trust of our customers, we see them coming back to explore more of his cuisine—sometimes returning with a bigger group, or sometimes coming alone and ordering a couple of appetizers at the bar.”

Among the more intriguing starters are charred octopus, hand-cooked with a blowtorch and set on a bed of mizuna, olives and oregano; sashimi tuna tartare with pistachio and cucumber; PEI mussels with chorizo and barlotti beans in a minestrone broth; and a smoked bacon and watermelon salad featuring daikon, radicchio, chili and pork belly.

Meat entrees range from a 60/40 burger topped with garlic spinach, red onion jam and gruyere to an herb-crusted rack of spring lamb, and include all manner and size of steaks, both on the menu and on the specials board. Roasted Chilean sea bass, Nordic cod and other seafood specials are extremely popular. If Dover sole happens to be available, dive right in.

Editor’s Note: Cross & Orange is located at 508 Cookman Avenue. Summer hours and days of operation are posted at crossandorangeap.com. The restaurant is extremely busy on Fridays and Saturdays, so call for reservations as far in advance as possible at (732) 361–5502. Street parking in the summer is nearly impossible, so ask about nearby garage options when you call, even if you’ve booked through Open Table.

Two New Jersey restaurants are elevating the American Gastropub experience.

The menus at Morris Tap & Grill and Paragon Tap & Table have something very special in common, and it’s not the word Tap. Both restaurants—in Randolph and Clark, respectively—have built their kitchens on the immense talents of chef Eric LeVine. The East Hanover resident has racked up some serious hardware, including recognition as “Outstanding Chef of the Year” by the James Beard Foundation, Restaurant Guild International’s “Chef of the Year” Award, and the International Chef’s Association’s “Creative Caterer of the Year” and “Chef of the Year” awards. The two restaurants feature extensive lists of craft brews, imaginative spirit and craft-beer cocktails, local farm foods, cutting-edge burgers and an assortment of creative menu items and desserts.

“The great thing about both is that you will always have a unique dining experience,” says LeVine. “We’re always creating something new and having fun with the menu, and we work hard to keep it interesting and whimsical. It’s casual, it’s comfort food, but there’s always a twist.”

LeVine is known for his ability to make culinary magic happen no matter what he’s preparing, whether it’s a hand-crafted burger or a six-course prix fixe menu. “We’re not pulling food out of the freezer,” he points out. “We’re making everything from scratch, from smoking our meats in-house to making our own sorbet and gelato.”

That philosophy extends to the food truck-inspired selections at Morris Tap & Grill (regulars rave about the award-winning wings) or the rotating “retro” menu at Paragon. Picture a TV dinner menu with entrees like surf & turf with garlic broccolini and apple cobbler served, of course, in a traditional TV dinner tray. “Both restaurants have an amazing team of people who are all about taking the dining experience to the next level and making our customers happy,” he says.

One of those people is general manager Mike DeSimone, whose intense interest in craft beer quickly set the restaurants apart from their competitors. “I had craft beer experience, but I’d never been able to put a program together like we did at Morris Tap & Grill,” he says. “Initially, we weren’t really thinking that we’d have such an influence on the craft beer scene in Morris County, but we quickly realized that we were pioneers. At the same time we were building the restaurant back in 2011, New Jersey was launching its brewing culture.”

The timing couldn’t have been better. Customers were amazed to find so many local beers on tap, and flocked to the craft-beer events. Those events became a tradition at Morris Tap & Grill and gained instant traction at Paragon, which opened in 2014.

“I give Eric the flavor profiles of the beers, and he builds menus around them,” DeSimone says. Along the same lines, DeSimone makes sure his servers and bartenders are attentive and proactive when it comes to pairing craft beers and food. “We don’t just hand you a menu and walk away, we guide you through the process and suggest menu items that go particularly well with the beer you’re drinking. We also ask what you find appealing about a particular beer and recommend others to try.”

While the philosophy and concepts of the two restaurants are similar, there are some differences. Paragon is about half the size of the more established Morris Tap & Grill and the bar tends to be busier. It features a wider selection of New Jersey beers. Clark being more urban than Randolph, Paragon attracts a younger demographic, which in turn makes for a more casual atmosphere. “Paragon really brands the craft experience, whereas Morris Tap & Grill has a broader reach,” DeSimone says.

The confluence of skills and experience DeSimone and LeVine brings to Morris Tap & Grill and Paragon Tap & Table certainly helps explain the unique qualities of each location. DeSimone began his career in Hoboken, with stops in New York City, Philadelphia and Charlotte before settling in New Jersey.

CRAFT BREW FAST FIVE

New Jersey’s Craft Beer scene is bursting at the seams.  More than two dozen new breweries will open this year alone. If you’re just getting into this trend, here are five Mike DeSimone recommends…

Kane Head High IPA “Brewed in Ocean, it is a world class IPA that hangs with the best of that style from around the country.  Always fresh, which is the most important factor in this style.”

Carton Milk Stout “We don’t carry Guinness on draught, but nobody misses it once they have tried this creamy, lightly sweet & bitter Milk Stout from the boys in Atlantic Highlands.”

Bolero Snort “One of my favorite breweries from North Jersey. Their beer gets better and better. Blackhorn Black Lager is a masterful blend of hops and roasted chocolate malts. Singlehandedly got me drinking lager again.”

Forgotten Boardwalk “This beer is on fire! Since they opened a few months ago they have been everywhere. What The Butler Saw Witbier is amazing and will be on tap all summer along at both MTG & Paragon.”

Ramstein Double Platinum Blonde “A Weizen Bock from the local masters of the German beers styles. 96 on Ratebeer.com. Fantastic!”

In LeVine’s case, one might say that life circumstances bred him for success. His passion for cooking was sparked at age six (thanks to a Disney cookbook, he recalls) in his Brooklyn household, where money was tight. “My mom did the best she could, but I grew up pretty poor,” he says. “When it came to food, pickings were slim. You ate what you got, and that was it.”

LeVine was working in restaurants at age 12, and went on to work alongside chefs from Italy, Japan and France. He studied at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and, after graduation, cooked for celebrity chef (and EDGE contributor) David Burke at the River Café. LeVine ended up as chef de cuisine at the Marriott Marquis in New York City and, at the age of 23, he was already launching his own catering business.

At age 29, he was told he had cancer. Now in his 40’s, LeVine has been diagnosed with cancer a total of five times. While battling the negative side effects of his chemotherapy treatments in 2011, he was also battling it out on the popular Food Network cooking competition show Chopped…and won.

“You come out of the other side of all of this and start looking at things with a very different perspective,” he says. “I know now that it’s not about me, and I always try to put others first, whether it’s my family or my staff and customers. More than ever, I’ve learned to see past my own personal tastes and how I like to cook and eat, and focus on my customers and their dining experience.”

How has celebrity influenced LeVine’s work?

“Time goes by and you win awards and you’re on TV,” he says, “but at the end of the day, I’m not a ‘celebrity chef.’ I’m just a cook. And I’ve had to learn the hard way what’s really important.

“I’m always a work in progress…and, so far, it has been an amazing journey.”

Editor’s Note: Paragaon Tap & Table is located at 77 Central Avenue in Clark, just off the GSP.  Morris Tap & Grill is located at 500 NJ 10, about 10 minutes west of Rte 287 and a few miles south of Rte 46.  Eric LeVine has authored two cookbooks: Stick It, Spoon It, Put it in a Glass and Small Bites, Big Flavor: Simple, Savory, and Sophisticated Recipes For Entertaining.

PAYING IT FORWARD

Though chef Eric LeVine’s personal health struggles impacted every aspect of his life—including his approach to food and cooking—it also translated into a strong desire to help others in need. LeVine and his restaurants are closely linked with local organizations such as the Family Reach Foundation and the Community FoodBank of New Jersey; he frequently advocates for the American Cancer Society, and has been recognized with their prestigious Heart and Soul Award. He also teaches classes and seminars for organizations like the International Caterers Association to help aspiring caterers develop innovative methods of growing their business. “No matter what, it’s about people and doing for others…and hoping to help them make a difference in their own lives,” he says.

“Red snapper, flashy with a spinach pesto  and happily plated with roasted onions  and smashed potatoes pocked with olives,  took a liking to the shellfish-infused butter sauce the kitchen whipped up.”

A short stroll up Centennial Avenue in Cranford from landmark restaurant A Toute Heure sits the intriguingly named 100 Steps Supper Club and Raw Bar. Smile at this not-so-in-house joke. It’s the heel-to-toe step count from Mama Restaurant to lovingly conceived Baby Restaurant, as divined by owners Andrea and Jim Carbone.

A Toute Heure, never light on diner traffic—and diner traffic from near and far, given the restaurant’s stellar reputation as a place for exquisite plates of carefully sourced, skillfully prepared food—begged for offspring. The Carbones, and their executive chef Kara Decker, fielded pleas from their fans for more, for another place to eat and learn from the folks who understand so well how to give a restaurant a singular voice.

They didn’t want to shortchange A Toute Heure in the slightest; not their religion. They didn’t want to leave the neighborhood; it’s their home. They didn’t want to miss a beat, ever; their mission is pure, their ethic unshakeable. When a place up the street came on the market, they jumped. Rather, they took that 100-step journey and found the perfect partner for A Toute Heure.

Jennifer Lavelle/Courtesy of Andrea Carbine

Where A Toute Heure is intimate, 100 Steps is social. It’s the difference between a tete-a-tete and a party. But don’t think noisy and uncontrolled: 100 Steps is as smart food-focused as its parent restaurant. It’s the atmosphere that’s different, open and airy, casual in a bump-into-friends, strike-up-a-conversation-with-strangers way. Since it opened a year and a half ago, 100 Steps has become a spot where folks drop in for some oysters at the Raw Bar Happy Hour Thursday through Saturdays from 4 to 5:30, then return a day or three later with the family for the Sunday Supper menu. It’s neighborhood-y, even though—as with A Toute Heure—diners are traveling a distance to partake in the hospitality and soul-satisfying fare.

I came for the oysters, scarfing down in short order Wiley Points, briny, yet meaty, from Damariscotta, Maine; Island Creeks, which finished with a snappily sweet tang, from Duxbury, MA; and Fin de la Baies, subtle and coy, from New Brunswick in Canada. Maine came to our table again, in the form of a peekeytoe crab remoulade, a chop of the sweetest crab on the planet and cornichons, capers, parsley and lemon, all bound by an aioli brightened by crème fraiche. My, this was yar.

The scallop ceviche was rockin’. Given sizzle by a shot of Calabrian chili oil and calmed by a thyme-laced buttermilk aioli, this reinvention of a standard had an elusive element to it—a riff of umami powered by miso that tasted at once charred and sweet.

Jennifer Lavelle/Courtesy of Andrea Carbine

Clam chowder plumped by littlenecks and made hearty by potatoes not just boiled or baked but given the slow-cook of confit status, should be ordered not by the cup, but the gallon. If you’re an Ironbound regular and high on the classic shrimp with garlic staple found everywhere in that ‘hood, don’t pass up a chance to up your game with the local version: Here, shrimp is sautéed with pimenton, a smoked paprika, then given a bath in butter refreshed with cilantro and sideshows of tomato and arugula. Talk about eating and learning. While we’re on the subject, 100 Steps’ charred octopus is one for the textbooks, served as it is with creamy cannelini beans, slivers of red onion and a crème fraiche topper energized by more of that smoky pimenton.

Jennifer Lavelle/Courtesy of Andrea Carbine

Only the roasted cauliflower, mushy and overwrought with a bitter pesto and served with radishes whose pepperiness wasn’t the appropriate counterpoint, didn’t make the grade in our opening rounds.

But gnocchi, sitting pretty with shiitake confit in a miraculously light buttery fondue of a sauce topped with shreds of crisped sage, warmed us. I couldn’t stop myself from hoarding the entrée known as “K’s Braise,” as Provencal a rabbit stew as you can find this side of Aix, cosseted with polenta and dotted with green olives, pancetta and currants. Everything that should be there was there.

Red snapper, flashy with a spinach pesto and happily plated with roasted onions and smashed potatoes pocked with olives, took a liking to the shellfish-infused butter sauce the kitchen whipped up. If you have kids aboard, consider booking here on a Tuesday, which is Taco Night, complete with live music. Ours loved the fish tacos, stuffed with pollock, as well as the chicken tacos.

Jennifer Lavelle/Courtesy of Andrea Carbine

I only wish my own childhood included 100 Steps’ caramel banana pudding. Vanilla drop cookies! A pop of sea salt in the caramel! Modern meets Harriet Nelson. Chocolate But gnocchi, sitting pretty with shiitake confit in a miraculously light buttery fondue of a sauce topped with shreds of crisped sage, warmed us. I couldn’t stop myself from hoarding the entrée known as “K’s Braise,” as Provencal a rabbit stew as you can find this side of Aix, cosseted with polenta and dotted with green olives, pancetta and currants. Everything that should be there was there.

Red snapper, flashy with a spinach pesto and happily plated with roasted onions and smashed potatoes pocked with olives, took a liking to the shellfish-infused butter sauce the kitchen whipped up. If you have kids aboard, consider booking here on a Tuesday, which is Taco Night, complete with live music. Ours loved the fish tacos, stuffed with pollock, as well as the chicken tacos.

I only wish my own childhood included 100 Steps’ caramel banana pudding. Vanilla drop cookies! A pop of sea salt in the caramel! Modern meets Harriet Nelson. Chocolate cake with a fudge brownie base comes with sour cream ice cream and a fudge sauce and English toffee AND salted pecans. Can life get any better? Yes. Yes, if you remember to ask for peanut butter chocolate chip cookies in a to-go bag.

The name 100 Steps

Jennifer Lavelle/Courtesy of Andrea Carbine

might, for some, inspire all sorts of puns, gimmicky one-liners and general silliness. I can’t do that: It’s too hard to find a casual restaurant with this level of conscientiousness; any assessment must be serious. The folks behind the scenes here set the bar high with A Toute Heure, yet managed to hit the heights again with a restaurant completely different in attitude and atmosphere. As I left 100 Steps, I plotted: Some night, soon, I’m going to eat dinner at both 100 Steps and A Toute Heure. I can do it, I know I can.  EDGE

Editor’s Note: Andy Clurfeld has been shouldering the load on restaurant reviews since the second issue of EDGE. During that time, she was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Public Service for her work exposing the flaws, injustices and abuses in New Jersey’s property tax system. Andy also has published in-depth reporting on a range of topics, including criminal street gangs, agriculture, politics and the environment. A longtime member of the James Beard Restaurant & Chef Awards Committee, she is a specialist in artisan wines and recently was appointed Wine Director at Buy-Rite Corporation, implementing educational programs, coordinating special events and developing artisan wine sections for select stores.

“If you don’t try the salmon Franciscan when at Xocolatz, you’re missing the local favorite…It’s a dish with moxie.”

Xocolatz

235 Elmer St., Westfield. Phone: 908.232.3962

Open Sunday and Monday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Major credit cards. Reservations accepted. Prices: Appetizers: $7.95 to $15.95. Burgers: $10.95 to$16.96. Dinner salads: $8.95 to $16.95. Entrees: $15.95 to $26.95. BYOB.

Alex and Erin look a tad miffed. But mostly sad. We’ve scanned the menu at Xocolatz and their eyes have lighted immediately on the garlic shrimp starter. They want that; they really want that.

My response is immediate: “No!” I say, probably a little louder and more emphatically than I should, given that Xocolatz is a lovely restaurant in a lovely town (Westfield) frequented by lovely families. “We eat garlic shrimp all the time. You’ve had garlic shrimp in every restaurant in the Ironbound. No kids have had more garlic shrimp than you two. You have to try different foods.”

They are good kids, mind you, and they do try new and different foods all the time. Their parents, my dear friends Daryl and Shawn, have made sure of that.

The thing is, Xocolatz, born as a dessert and coffee shop a good dozen years ago, has grown into quite the modern-day global-cuisine all-American eatery: As suburban New Jersey has diversified, so has the menu at this popular must-stop in the downtown district. It’s got a definite Latin beat to its eclectic cuisine, but it tilts Mediterranean now and again, and doesn’t stint on old-fashioned comfort foods—updated, of course.

Courtesy of Xocolatz

There’s a lot to digest, in fact, on the menu, and Alex, 10, and Erin, 7, are willing to give it more than a look-see. I’m finding it hard to eliminate anything, frankly, from my own consideration. So I start softening my position regarding the garlic shrimp. They know it, it’s not something we need to try so we can understand a new food, a culture, a challenging flavor—which is why we’re dining out, after all—but, gee, I think, it’s OK to repeat a repeat now and again.

Alex and Erin smile. And agree to try whatever new foods Daryl and I pass their way on this night of let’s-give-it-a-try dining.

I told you they were good kids. Very good kids.

Courtesy of Xocolatz

The food at Xocolatz is very good, too. Including the garlic shrimp, which are moist, hopped up with garlic, brightened by smoky paprika and served with crunchy crostini that lap up the white wine sauce. We all love Bananas by the Beach, which sports sweet plantains layered with a snappy just-hot-enough chorizo and a chop of tomatoes. There’s a scattering of scallions to play with, plus a zippy mayo dashed with chipotle that keeps this app interesting.

Latin sliders are made with ground sirloin and that potent chorizo, so they’ve got more horsepower than your average mini-burger. The pickled onions and cilantro-flecked dressing only add to the starter’s appeal. I personally adore the empanadas, which we get filled with chicken: The pastry patties have a freshness and spirit too often lacking in local incarnations. The catch-all nachos are crowd-pleasers, coming as they do with a flourish of locally loved “campfire” chili, olives, scallions, avocados and chopped tomatoes.

Alex and Erin work hard at eating from all sides of the plate—meaning, we don’t push certain components of a dish to one side without giving them a fair try. In other words, every dish gets the It Could Be as Good as Garlic Shrimp treatment before it’s tried and judged.

Capiche, kids?

BYOB…WITH A TWIST

Xocolatz is a BYOB but its menu is fit for wine geeks. This is where you bring wines made from grapes that scare most folks. Gewurztraminer. Gruner veltliner. Tempranillo. Carignan. Mencia. Dishes here come full-flavored, so don’t be shy or ordinary of vine and wine when you make a date for Xocolatz. Ask your wine merchant for a wine that’s spicy, fruit-forward and/or acidic. Break out of your box.

Courtesy of Xocolatz

We’re told Bonnaire’s chicken is a signature dish here at Xocolatz, so we’re all over it. There’s a lot to devour: Chicken breasts get a dousing from a tropical-fruit salsa starring pineapple and peppers and sparked by nibs of pecans and dried cranberries. That’s layered with a coconut-passion fruit sauce, and all’s served with white rice and plantain chips. For a plate with a lot of flavors, it was neither messy nor fussy, but controlled and focused. The chicken liked all its fruited companions.

Courtesy of Xocolatz

I liked the ropa vieja, Spanish for “old rags,” which also intrigued Alex and Erin. Flank steak is shredded, kind of like pulled pork, and plied with piquant tomato sauce and slivers of onions. It’s my kind of comfort food, stuffed into flour tortillas and eaten in turns with rice, black beans and delish fried sweet plantains. If you don’t try the salmon Franciscan when at Xocolatz, you’re missing the local favorite: It’s a dish with moxie, given that the seared salmon is served atop mini sweet potato cakes and a pile of sautéed spinach, then surrounded by tomatoes and mushrooms. The binder is a simple white wine sauce, made aromatic by herbs and garlic. Again, the folks at Xocolatz risk pushing the boundaries of too-much-going-on; but they make it work.

Courtesy of Xocolatz

Alex is working so hard on the enchiladas Montes that I have to get a little aggressive to acquire my fair-share taste. No wonder: The pulled pork that stuffs the plump enchiladas is vivaciously seasoned and plays nicely with the accompanying queso blanco and avocado. The kicker? A terrific tomatillo sauce that unites the flavors exactly as it’s meant to do.

You’ve got to figure a restaurant born to ply the dessert trade wouldn’t stint on finales, and Xocolatz does not. They are not inventive, but rather standards served forth in generous portions. There’s a Key lime pie that isn’t quite as tart as it should be, and an Oreo cookie-chocolate mousse cake that taps into every possible chocolate on the planet (well, almost): Layered in this monster are its namesake sweets, plus fudge cake, dark chocolate, chocolate butter cream and cookie crumbs. Yup, mini Oreos sit atop the whole shebang. I’m thinking, as I watch Erin dive into the dessert, that the only thing it’s missing is a photo of Erin’s happy face as she eats it.

Courtesy of Xocolatz

Bread pudding’s core is brioche, so it’s rich and a smidgen sophisticated. I like the freshness of the blueberries and strawberries as a counterpoint to the caramel-sauced confection. I also find myself fond of the local take on flan, infused as it is with passion fruit and more of that caramel. Didn’t think of passion fruit and caramel? Learn something new every day. Right?

At a good restaurant, it’s always right to eat with an open mind. Just like Alex and Erin do.

Editor’s Note: Andy Clurfeld has been shouldering the load on restaurant reviews since the second issue of EDGE. During that time, she was a 2010 Pulitzer Prize finalist in Public Service for her work exposing the flaws, injustices and abuses in New Jersey’s property tax system. Andy also has published in-depth reporting on a range of topics, including criminal street gangs, agriculture, politics and the environment. A longtime member of the James Beard Restaurant & Chef Awards Committee, she is a specialist in artisan wines and recently was appointed Wine Director at Buy-Rite Corporation, implementing educational programs, coordinating special events and developing artisan wine sections for select stores.

Dan Lipow May Be Foraging at a Meadow Near You

By Andy Clurfeld

Right now, Dan Lipow is talking chanterelles. Don’t stop him. You’ll miss the opportunity to learn more about the princess charming of wild mushrooms than if you’d had an encyclopedia on the fruiting body of a fungus implanted in your brain while you slept. Because no tome on wild mushrooms—or most anything else that grows in the wild—can pinpoint for you the precise locations where such not-so-buried treasures lie like Dan Lipow can.

Ok. Chanterelles. This could be a great summer for chanterelles. As well as for, Lipow says, day-lily flower buds, purslane, wild ginger, elderberry, garlic scapes and sea beans. But you’re stuck on mushrooms?

“Local log-grown shiitakes, chicken-of-the-woods, milky cap mushrooms, lobster mushrooms—and more!”

“Makes me hungry,” Lipow adds.

Dan Richer, multiple-time James Beard Award-nominated chef of Razza Pizza Artignale in Jersey City, might say Lipow is always hungry.

“I’ve known Dan Lipow since 2006, 2007,” Richer says. “His love for food has kept evolving and intensifying. Fact is, my success has a lot to do with Dan’s support.”

Russell Farr, a soccer coach who lives in Morristown, hears the name “Dan Lipow” and immediately exclaims, “The ramps! The fiddleheads! The nettles! Dan’s selection is more than unique. It’s led me to a lifestyle. I started going to the farmers’ markets just to talk with him.”

Arirang

www.istockphoto.com

So who is this maestro of the meadows, the scavenger of the streams through the woods, the lord of the locavores? And what is The Foraged Feast, his burgeoning enterprise that, in short order, united the best foragers here in New Jersey with foragers in other prime-source parts of the country in order to bring wild things safely into home kitchens of the Garden State?

For someone who appears to live a kind of swashbuckling existence of thrashing out into territories less-than-tamed, Dan Lipow is warm and friendly, welcoming and inclusive, a natural teacher and a deep believer in connecting novice to expert.

He’s a good dude.

Born in New York City, raised in Connecticut and lucky enough to have a relative with a farm where he first encountered wild things, Toddler Dan was enthralled with the berry patch in his own suburban backyard.

Grain & Cane

www.istockphoto.com

“It was a mature patch, red raspberries and blueberries, and I used to pick the berries. A lot of berries,” he says. “My parents put in a vegetable patch. They put in a row of asparagus—we grew all sorts of stuff.”

A nearby apple orchard, trips to Long Island Sound for fishing, and “big, really big trees—there must’ve been morels there, with those big, old trees” occupied his time and mind. His family moved to Greenwich, and soon Teenage Dan was eyeing “massive oysters that we’d pop open” and “digging steamers and quahogs.”

Flash forward. He didn’t go to college right after high school, but strapped on a backpack and took off for Europe. It was 1987 and he was 18. “In Greece, a big gyro was 25 cents. All the stuff I ate there, I wouldn’t’ve eaten here. I hit 13 countries, going by ‘Let’s Go,’ ” the budget-friendly travel guides.

He returned to the U.S., worked in photography and went to Boston University for a year “so I could get into the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, California.” Three years there taught him much about California cuisine and even more about Mexican foods.

Soon, he was a sought-after photographer in New York City, traveling the world—and eating its cuisines. “I’d have an assignment, three weeks in Tokyo, for instance, and carte blanche for meals.” By the time Lipow was 30, he’d been to dozens of countries and “experienced food everywhere.”

He spent five months in Southeast Asia on a project of his own creation through the United Nations Human Rights Council. In consort with Habitat for Humanity,  he documented issues in children’s habitats, the conditions, the realities. He presented his work at a U.N. conference in the mid-1990s.

“Hard work and great food,” he now recalls.

But by the end of the 20th century, he’d met his culinary-adventuring dream:

A giant Puffball. A mushroom that can grow to the size of, say, a basketball.

A friend who knew of Lipow’s prowess in the kitchen said, “You’ve got to Iron Chef this thing.”

“I went to the Whole Foods in Chelsea and stocked up,” Lipow says. “I cooked and cooked with that Puffball. Roasted. Made stock. Sir-fry. Cubed it—sugar plum and pepper balm. That giant Puffball opened the door. It could make magic.”

Soon Lipow was tutoring himself in mushroom studies. He was also studying foraging, and going for hikes in New Jersey, Connecticut, upstate New York.

“I was good at identifying mushrooms, and bringing them back home and using them. I was taking it all very seriously; I’d suck up the information.”

Meanwhile, Lipow and his wife decided in 2005 to move to Maplewood, where he was even more clearly able to see and experience the seasons and the cycles of what grows in the wild.

“You don’t see that in New York City,” he says.

He began to realize he was a true forager, understanding what edible treasures were right there, if not in plain sight, at least able to be unearthed by the knowledgeable eye.

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“Knowing that about a forest is very powerful—knowing where the chanterelles exist. I want to find those [treasures] in that environment, understand the sense of place, the environment, the possibilities.”

He found his perfect world, “a world where you can’t stop learning.” And what he discovered in New Jersey is “its many, many terroirs; it’s not like everywhere else. There are lower and upper reaches, hillsides, valleys. Here in Maplewood, we sit in the Watchung Range. Sussex County has terrain a lot like Appalachia. Glaciers came down to just north of I-78.”

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Soon a sign in the window of Arturo’s in Maplewood attracted Lipow’s attention: “Home-cured duck prosciutto.” That sign was written by its then-chef/owner Dan Richer, who was splicing authentic regional Italian dishes into the old pizzeria’s menu. Kindred spirits in more than first name, the Dans started collaborating.

Says Richer: “Dan taught me where the ramps are. When garlic mustard is in season. What Japanese knotweed is.

Back when farm-to-table what not yet a thing, I learned how exciting a walk in the woods with my friend could be. He brought these things to my menu—and they bring joy to people’s meals. It’s all so special.

“When Dan was considering transitioning from photography to foraging, well, I thought that was a  no-brainer. I just told him to bring it to me, and I’d cook with it.”

A new career was born.

“I’d show up with wild maitakes and we’d roast them in Dan’s pizza oven at Arturo’s,” Lipow recalls. “I’d find things, I’d call him, and he’d say, ‘Bring them over!’ We’d then go in for tastings he’d make just for us.”

Those tastings, Richer says, expanded from private  to reservation-only Saturday nights. Then a second tasting night was added. Indeed, on the basis of those resolutely original, hyper-seasonally focused tasting menus, Richer was nominated for a James Beard Rising Star Chef Award.

Lipow found other chefs willing to follow the forager along uncharted paths in the Garden State. By 2016,  The Foraged Feast was rocking at a half-dozen farmers’ markets in New Jersey, and Lipow was working with other four-star foragers “as an aggregator… of the  best-quality foraged and cultivated mushrooms,” as well as seasonal foraged fare such as those cherished sea beans, ramps, spring onions, spiky Devil’s Club Shoots, green briar tips, Juneberries, and what to some is  pesky knotweed, but to Lipow is easily broken down  by stovetop cooking until it caramelizes to pure deliciousness.

Courtesy of Dan Lipow/The Foraged Feast

He’s caught the attention of revered chefs, including Justin Antonio of Summit House, who “purchases mushrooms from him all year long” and makes spotlight dishes that include “his wild watercress, which I puree and serve with grilled calamari, preserved lemons, his ramps and his fiddleheads. I use his maitakes in a salmon dish, with fermented Napa cabbage, and I also roast his maitakes with pastrami spice. He challenges us all the time. No one I’ve ever met has more knowledge of his product than Dan Lipow.”

Melissa Goldberg of Short Hills, the founder of the Farm & Fork Society CSA, is another fan who uses his mushrooms in virtually everything she cooks: “Omelets, tarts, soups—if I’m cooking, and Dan’s mushrooms are in my kitchen, I throw them in! Have you had the velvet pioppini?” She pauses to exhale. “In a tart? With pasta? He opens people’s eyes to the world of mushrooms. He has such a connection to the Earth.”

One recent night, Dan Lipow is talking about his culinary colleagues at Garden State Kitchen in Orange, where he has his warehouse and often mingles with artisans preparing foods for market. He’s talking about the chefs he forages for, the customers who are now friends, the satisfaction he gets from sharing food and stories.

“Food can get staid and boring if you don’t experiment,” he says. “But there’s inspiration all around.”

He takes a (rare) breath, then continues: “It’s always about looking for that great morsel—that morsel that someone makes into that perfect bite.

“You know, I’ve got these great porcini. I shaved them, drizzled with lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil. Sea salt, black pepper. It was so— I’ll send you  a photo.” EDGE

Editor’s Note: Dan Lipow is on Facebook and Instagram through www.theforagedfeast.com. He can be reached at The Foraged Feast through email: theforagedfeast@gmail.com.

AJ Capella and Anthony Mangieri on summer,  the shutdown, and the new normal.

By Andy Clurfeld

The world is a different place than it was at the start of this year, or even at the start of spring. Now, as summer dawns, it’s challenging to imagine what the traditional season of sun- and-fun capped by a lazy, long dinner at a favorite restaurant might bring. Restaurants? Some open, but differently; some closed, sadly permanently; most in a state of flux.

We speak to two acclaimed restaurant chefs, both New Jersey-born and bred and Garden State loyalists to their core.

Anthony Mangieri, nationally renowned and referred to as the Pope of Pizza, started his career in the early-, mid-1990s in a slip of a storefront in Red Bank, where he baked authentic Neapolitan breads. A few years later, he opened his first Una Pizza Napoletana in Point Pleasant Beach, before moving Una Pizza first to  New York’s East Village, then to San Francisco’s Mission District, next back to New York, on the Lower East  Side, and finally, home again, in downtown Atlantic Highlands. He is, rightly, credited with inspiring a new generation of pizzaiolos and showing pizza-eaters that his pizza, based on his otherworldly dough (starter born in 1996), is the original “transporting” pizza.

AJ Capella, a rising star in the culinary world, garnered respect and devoted fans during his turns at the Ryland Inn, Whitehouse Station; the Aviary in New York, and  A Toute Heure in Cranford, before taking the top chef spot at Jockey Hollow Bar + Kitchen in Morristown. Now 30, he’s spent half his life working in restaurant kitchens and developing a style that marries the soul of authentic European peasant cookery with globally accented high-style finishes. Mangieri and Capella, each working and percolating these past months, take stock and reflect, refresh and predict.

Anthony Mangieri’s Una Pizza on Orchard Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, has closed completely during the COVID-19-induced pandemic; however, Mangieri had, on Feb. 28, opened his new Una Pizza Napoletana at 91A First Avenue in Atlantic Highlands. That Una Pizza has remained open, serving takeaway pizza Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Expanded hours are planned as restrictions on commerce ease.

Mangieri:

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“This shutdown has given me time to reconnect. It’s a forced shutdown, but it’s given me more time with my family and to do things other than restaurant cooking.

“The issue is not so much the shutdown, but the reality of restaurants. What is that reality? For me, we’ve had to revert to minimal staff, which we can do and still do our pizza. But what is the reality for bigger restaurants with bigger staffs? The hardest transition at this time is for those restaurants.

“Do they go at half-capacity for six months? Most fine-dining restaurants will not come out of that. Elaborate menus need bigger staffs. I understand adapting to the time, but fine-dining take-away?

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“I had no interest in doing take-away; it’s a different product. I’ve never myself had delivery (food), ever, and neither has my wife (Ilaria, who is from Naples and has a background in classical music and communications). The shutdown didn’t change my business model, my approach. I’ve had to limit ingredients, because I can’t now get some of them. I’m now using mozzarella made in New Jersey, from a company that imports buffalo mozzarella from Italy and makes it here.

“So I make the amount of pizza I can myself handle, about 90 pizzas a day, and that’s what I’ll do. We’ll be open four to five hours a day, and I’m toying with the idea of taking some reservations (if dine-in restrictions are eased) so I can control things.

“I get to work at 7, 7:30 in the morning, prep for hours, then make pizza the whole time we’re open, then clean up. It’s intense—the mental and physical focus. To open with outside tables—that would cost lots and lots of money: new tables, umbrellas, staff going in and out.

“Right now, I’m excited about the new ingredients I’ve got—pepperoni, peppers, great basil.”

Anthony Mangieri starts talking about the great jars of imported tuna he’s been tasting, then about chocolate, and ice cream, and gelato. The best ingredients lure him, inspire him and, inevitably, propel him to share them. Always have, always will.

Capella:

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“I was in Italy when this whole thing started. I was in Bologna, late February, Modena, having Lambrusco at a winery, tortellini en brodo everywhere, eating mortadella every day! Gnocchi frito—everywhere. It’s fried dough that expands and hollows out. Super-thin, filled with air. It’s served like a bread.

“We were eating a lot of a tangy, creamy farm cheese that’s spreadable, soft, with thick curds. I was talking to Sal (Pisani, a cheesemaker who operates Jersey Girl Cheese, and a friend of Capella’s) and he told me he’d work on making it here.

“Anyway, we got one of the last flights back. I quarantined; didn’t go anywhere, didn’t leave my house except to walk my dog. Then the shutdown.

“We cooked and cooked at home. My girlfriend is a pescatarian, so I don’t eat meat at my house. Cooking at home was fun, not rushed.

“Now, I don’t know about high-end dining, which is what I’ve always done. I don’t think it’s going to be back any time soon. Takeout, yes, doing online groceries, yes. I’m organizing all of that now at Jockey Hollow.

“But I’m also thinking, ‘What can I be doing differently? How can I reinvent, say, a fast-food sandwich? I’m thinking, say, crispy lamb neck instead of a chicken sandwich. ‘Cause high-end restaurants, if they have to cut back from doing 400 or 500 covers to 125 people, that’s not workable. You’ll have to do take-out plus a grocery in the basement.

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“I’m thinking, coming up with ideas. A 10-, 12-seat café for high-end dining, plus take-out. All locally sourced foods on the menu. A two-sided place. I think a lot of opportunity can come out of this pandemic, and the new post-pandemic restaurant models will change. The days of high-end dining as we know it are over.

“I’m thinking of a menu with scallop ravioli, with a whole scallop inside, poached, with compound butter, as the ravioli cooks. A smoked duck egg custard. You know, a riff on chawanmushi, Japanese steamed custard. But finish it with a tiny dice of Taylor ham, top it with cheese and egg. Classic New Jersey!”

Then AJ Capella talks through a menu for this new-restaurant dream that fuses the world’s cuisines with the Garden State culinary traditions and ingredients. His food always will have a heartfelt New Jersey accent.

“Bulgogi jeongol, marinated beef cooked with a tangle of sweet potato noodles that mingle with mushrooms, tofu and vegetables, is a party in a pot.”

By Andy Clurfeld

Seoulville

45 West Main St., Somerville. Phone: 908.854.4100
Open Tuesday through Thursday from 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 9:30 p.m. Note: Seoulville takes a late afternoon break Tuesdays through Fridays and closes from 3 to 5 p.m. Closed Mondays. Major credit cards and reservations accepted. Prices: Appetizers: $6 to $15. Barbecue dishes: $23 to $29. Dolsot (rice bowls): $15 to $17. Soups: $13 to$17. Casseroles (jeongol): $35 to $38. Entrees: $14 to $32. BYOB.

Kimchi jjigae is the Statue of Liberty of soups, beckoning for generations to the tired, the poor of health, those huddled under quilts struggling to breathe free of wintertime colds and flus. It is potent of broth, fired as it is by spices seeping from fermented vegetables and long-simmered pork belly, and soothing of texture, with slices of tofu and slivers of tenderized cabbage, radishes and other roots turning up in every bite. Kimchi jjigae fortifies the ailing body as it restores the flailing soul. It’s a wonder of a dish, and Seoulville, a relative newcomer to Somerville’s ever-diversifying restaurant scene, nails it.

Seoulville is the result of a natural progression: In before-culinary-enlightenment times in Somerville (and many county-seat centers of New Jersey suburbia), you had your red-sauce Italian joints, your chow mein Chinese joints, your continental masquerading as classy (dress up and take out Aunt Gert for her birthday) or slumming (diners didn’t serve moussaka in those days), and little else. Then came the white sauce known as alfredo, Szechuan and something called “cuisine minceur,” or a lighter side of French cuisine that blew the lid off the butter-and-cream classics and made us feel virtuous and oh-so-nouvelle.

Photos courtesy of Brian Kim/Seoulville

Was it sushi that helped us shake off the shackles of the 1950s Germanic meat-and-potatoes diet? The advent of olive oil? The Eurail pass that allowed post-grads to travel and travel and eat and eat? All of that, for sure. During the course of a decade or two, Japanese, Mexican, Indian, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Mediterranean from many ports, island fare and, critically, strains of America’s own regional specialties, came to star on menus at everyday-style strip-mall restaurants throughout the Garden State.

Why it has taken more than a decade of the 21st century for Jerseyites to welcome Korea’s comfort foods to their backyards puzzles me. But after years of trekking to Fort Lee, Palisades Park and Edison, I’m grateful that Brian Kim and his parents Helen and Kenny were brave enough to bring Seoulville to at least one corner of New Jersey that lacked real-deal bibimbap.

Is there a food more comforting than this stew of a salad that flips crusty-topped baked mac-and-cheese on its fanny and actually weighs in as nutritious? Seoulville’s casserole of rice, beef (or chicken or tofu), slivers of mushrooms, carrots, spinach, daikon, a runny fried egg, a scattering of sprouts and, on the side, a cup of gochujang (a Korean chili paste embraced by millennials who spoon it on everything they eat while curled up on Klippan sofas) is filled with ingredients we know. Here, they’re re-assembled, cooked in a stone bowl that crisps some of the rice, and brightened by that smoky-hot-sweet-mysterious sauce it doesn’t take a prophet to forecast as the successor to salsa.

Brian Kim, the front-of-the-house man at Seoulville and the guy who truly wants to teach gochujang, kimchi jjigae and bibimbap to the uninitiated, is happy to guide you through the menu of classics tailored, in varying degrees, to American ways. Give a listen, give a try. You can eat your same-old any time.

For here, the chicken wings come glazed sweet and spicy—and that do-si-do of dolce and daring isn’t sticky and cloying, but invigorating to the meat. Which is the point. The seafood and scallion pajeon, a pancake that tilts in texture to an omelet crossed with a crepe, isn’t even a tad oily, allowing the shreds of shrimp and squid to take charge. My favorite starter is the fried tofu, batter-dipped cubes with taut, crisp crusts that squirt with milkiness. Eat a cube, with or without a brush of sweet soy glaze, then check out the banchan–small bowls of vegetables and condiments, including cubed radish, sliced cucumbers, pepper-licked potatoes, marinated mungbean sprouts–and enjoy the interplay.

Made for sharing, and worth the investment, is the Korean hot pot. Bulgogi jeongol, marinated beef cooked with a tangle of sweet potato noodles that mingle with mushrooms, tofu and vegetables in a broth that tastes meaty but is all about slow-cooking with shiitake mushrooms, is a party in a pot. Stir in a spoonful of gochujang; snag a leaf of lettuce from your bossam platter and pile some of the beef and vegetables inside, wrap and eat; mix some of your banchan with your bulgogi on a side plate. This food is all about customizing to your own tastes. Your own expanding tastes, I hope.

Speaking of bossam, Seoulville’s pork belly boiled in water scented (I suspect) with ginger and garlic, peppercorns and onion till super-tender—then seared and served with leeks and onions—is minimalist compared to some contemporary takes. But comforting it is, and if you ply it with the sauces and banchan, you’ll be well on your way to understanding not only how to eat Korean, but what you can do to charge up your own dining regime at home.

Grilled beef short ribs are a no-brainer to eat and love. Served on a hot plate, meant to be speared and fired and consumed without judgment, they’re one of Seoulville’s relatively shy dishes. So is the cod braised in a soy-based sauce and served with a splay of mild vegetables. It reminds me of a tame version of miso-glazed black cod, a dish made famous at Nobu—a dish that once seemed as foreign as, well, kimchi jjigae.

For weeks after that dinner, I thought of Seoulville. Its mission to serve as a bridge between mother country authentic and suburban Jersey educational did make me a little sad, however. I kept wishing the Kims didn’t feel that need to cotton to Western palates at all. But they are in it for the long haul, definitely wanting to take locals on a culinary trip. I stopped back with a friend, ostensibly for bowls of a couple of soups I’d missed, but really to see how the little place with the big heart was doing.

The room was nearly full at an early-dinner hour. I looked at the menu and chuckled. How could I not have ordered the famous “Hangover Soup,” arguably the most loved of Korean standards, my first time there? Its beefy broth, fortified with both soybean paste and red pepper paste and strewn with cabbage, sprouts and vegetables, might not have the infusion of jellied oxblood that the original must possess, but it scares my friend’s cold into submission. A seafood broth bolstered by that same spicy pepper seeps into soft tofu and infuses it with hints of shellfish, riffs of chilies; it makes for a soup I find magical.

Seoulville, a modest but pleasant storefront with subdued décor and the most welcoming of service, could be part of the natural progression of things culinary. It might just be what the good denizens of New Jersey had to work up to. But it’s also about a carefully orchestrated menu by the Kim family and a style of cooking that’s at once educational and experimental, yet purposefully easy to digest. We’re getting there.

BYOB

It’s possible my love for Korean food is fueled by its compatibility with wine. Specifically, gewurztraminer, the fruit-forward, spicy personality white wine that adores intensely seasoned foods—particularly ones plied with chilies. Bring to Seoulville your best gewurz, be it from Meyer-Fonne or Albert Boxler. In reds, consider an un-shy number from Spain, perhaps something from Rioja or the Ribera del Duero. Or a Priorat. You want something that allows its fruits and heft to be balanced by spice and a little earthiness; a high-alcohol, amped-up, resolutely “big” wine will be discordant with the nuances of seasoning in Seouville’s signature dishes.

“The ricotta gnocchi, lavished with black truffles and nibs of wild boar sopressata, was so sensational I did something I’ve rarely done when dining out on the job.”

By Andy Clurfeld

The Frog and The Peach

29 Dennis St., New Brunswick. Phone: (908) 846.3216 

Reservations and all major credit cards accepted. Open for dinner seven nights a week and for lunch Monday through Friday. Prices: Soups and salads: $9 to $14. Appetizers:$16 to $19. Entrees: $21 to $43. Sides: $9. Desserts: $12 to $14.

In the beginning, there was The Frog and The Peach…I wrote that sentence in my mind more than 25 years ago, when I started reviewing restaurants in New Jersey and concocting a sociogram of sorts that linked anyone and anything culinarily worthy in the Garden State. The Frog and The Peach was nerve central, chair of the brain trust, the heart that pumped inspiration and example to everyone else who served forth to the public. The Frog, born in 1983 on a bleak side street in New Brunswick and named for a Dudley Moore-Peter Cook comedy sketch, is where trends and some of the most respected, accomplished culinary and hospitality professionals in the state got their start. Industrial chic? Marquee status to local ingredients? Eclectic, boutique, artisan wine list? Fine-dining at a perfect-pitch bar? Check off a list that goes on and on: It all comes back to The Frog.

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The Frog today is owned by executive chef Bruce Lefebvre, who purchased the restaurant in 2012 from its birth parents, Betsy Alger and Jim Black. (Rutgers grads, of course.) The married couple had transformed the circa-1876 building at 29 Dennis St. that once housed the printing presses for New Brunswick’s newspaper, The Home News, into a multi-level theater for dining, where various stages could be set nightly for a variety of experiences. Tete-a-tete in an alcove? Communal dinner featuring cult wines in a set-off space? New and novel bites at the bar? Alger and Black’s revolution of continual evolution at The Frog also ignited their neighborhood: Once desolate and stark, with but one other restaurant and a synagogue nearby, the Hiram Square community is now desirable and swank, with brick townhouses that look plucked from Philly’s Old City and luxury condos that house Johnson & Johnson execs.

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The Frog as design guru/community activist/social conscience, however, is another story.

Lefebvre (facing page), schooled at Wake Forest, the Culinary Institute of America, post-college Frog kitchen and stints at New York City landmarks Aureole, Daniel and Lespinasse, is tag-teamed by general manager/wine director Jim Mullen, an alum of Georgetown, the Corcoran School of Art and restaurants such as the ground-breaking New York wine-and-food mecca Montrachet. There are well-informed front-of-the-house folks no matter where you step and a kitchen crew that seems eternally tuned to Betsy Alger’s famously exacting orchestrations. That’s the way of The Frog, back to the David Drake days, the Stanley Novack era and the Eric Hambrecht reign. Every one of these acclaimed chefs did time as top dog at The Frog.

The current menu under Lefebvre hits on all cylinders. It’s neither silly-obscure nor fearful of challenging diners who come here expecting to learn. There’s Le Quebecois veal tartare, given the sultry counterpoint of winter truffles more potent than the norm and pickled mustard seeds, a one-two punch of earth and warmth that cuts the richness of the veal and encourages a dab at the quail egg and a roll in the lardo. What could be too much luxury, particularly in a starter, is calibrated carefully—an exercise in control.

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Littleneck clams are partnered with a classic companion, pork sausage. But it’s the infusion of fresh ginger that elevates the dish, intensifying the flavors of both meats with a penetrating heat. Romanesco cauliflower, oh-so hip these days, is romanced by a fancy-schmancy duck Bolognese and a duck egg, then scattered with breadcrumbs. Intriguing, though its texture was off: I wanted to taste something crunchy or crisp to balance the plushness of the double ducks. Loved the concept of the octopus, billed as charred and Portuguese, even though it was served with a world of accents—enoki mushrooms, a chili-miso sauce, treviso, eggplant—but found the execution problematic: The chunks of octopus were alternately tough or mushy and the chili-miso sauce oddly without spirit.

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But the ricotta gnocchi, lavished with black truffles and nibs of wild boar sopressata, was so sensational I did something I’ve rarely done when dining out on the job:  I hailed a server and asked for another round. I had to taste more—immediately—of those near-weightless mini dumplings I once believed had reached their apex at the restaurant Vetri in Philadelphia, but have a new master hand in Lefebvre. Strewn amid the gnocchi are strands of mildly bitter greens, sweet roasted garlic and squash, deftly inserted accents that, again, serve to balance more forceful ingredients.

Opah, a warm-blooded fish that ranges from pale pink to rosy red when served raw but turns ghostly white when pan-seared as it was here, was brightened by two strong plate partners: a walnut paste much like the Georgian condiment satsivi, which brought a butteriness to the dish, and an olive-spiked brown butter that added a smoky salinity. Pompano took on a world of accents—taro, an avocado-coconut mash, sticky rice and kale soaked in chilies—and might have been more successful streamlined. Duck is done as a duo here these days, Long Island breast and quarter-size meatballs parked on the same plate with pretty cold-weather vegetables: pearl onions, squash and Brussels sprouts. The unifying component here is the duck jus, lush as it is with truffles and parmesan. That’s one delish sipper. Another twosome spotlights Iberico pork,

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cured ham from Spain and Portugal. The Frog’s Iberico indulgence is splendid, what with a silky-textured skirt steak sliced from the pig and soulful nutty-herby croqueta made from braised rib meat. Maitake mushrooms, an aioli laced with sherry vinegar and blooms of nasturtium complete the plate. 

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There’s lots of rum firing the flavor of the praline cake, which has an every-day-is-Mardi-Gras appeal. I was thinking the lemon-scented goat cheese tart needed a kick of another stripe to rev up its engine. But a confection that sounded ordinary—milk chocolate ganache isn’t exactly on trend these days—held my attention through the last fine bite. 

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We don’t seem to want to leave The Frog and The Peach on this night; it’s late and there’s been a huge “Beer vs. Wine” dinner party in the garden room that I wish I’d had the courage to crash, the staff is quietly, discreetly re-setting tables for the next day. We should go home. But we linger. We’re in the bosom of the mother culture of restaurants in New Jersey, and it just feels good.  

Eating my way through ethnic Montclair.

By Helen Lippman 

In the run-up to this year’s presidential election, we’re likely to hear a lot of divisive language about “foreigners” in our midst—so much so that one could easily forget that one of this country’s long-defining qualities has been the way it makes room for new people and cultures. Fortunately, we have places like Montclair to remind us. Craving Cuban black beans or an Indian samosa? You’ll find it here. Love Middle Eastern fare? Sample food from Greece, Israel, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Turkey—all within a walkable, small-town mile. As an added bonus, virtually all the restaurants are BYOB To tell you about a few of my go-to places, I’ll start, as my husband and I sometimes do, with the first meal of the day. Simit House Bakery & Co., a casual Turkish eatery on a corner of Church Street, calls its breakfasts “sunrise abundance.” You can order a ”petite” plate of tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and feta or a “hearty” serving with sausage, cured beef, hard-boiled egg and provolone added to the mix. I prefer menemen, a creamy egg dish with a kick from pepper paste, chopped tomatoes and onions. The namesake simit—a sesame seed-covered cross between a bagel and a pretzel that’s been a popular Turkish street food for hundreds of years—surrounds the eggs. Served warm, it needs no butter or jam. 

Owner Ibrahim Yagci, a native of Istanbul, says his aim in opening the bakery was to preserve the simit’s legacy. But the menu has grown steadily in its two-plus years of existence. The sausage-shaped potato roll—onion-flavored mashed potatoes juxtaposed with the crunch of spicy phyllo dough—has become another local favorite, as has the spinach pie. Sweets, salads, soups, sandwiches and Turkish coffee are on tap, too.

Uncle Momo, a French-Lebanese bistro a few blocks away, has a bountiful brunch menu (as well as lunch and dinner). Owner and chef Wissam Elmasri, who is Lebanese and attended culinary school in France, serves a mix of American, French and Middle Eastern fare. The crepes, made from quinoa, are light and airy.  The most unusual is Zeit W Zaatar, made with labne (yogurt cheese), cucumbers and olives, all seasoned with dried thyme. My two favorites—spinach & goat cheese and smoked salmon & spinach—are delicately flavored and topped with greens. Ruby red pomegranate seeds give the salad an unexpected zing.

Individual pitzas, so named because they’re made with fresh-baked pita rather than traditional pizza dough, are also worth a try. I especially like the lamb pitza, seasoned with parsley, onions, and a hint of cinnamon.  I’ve also become attached to the muhalabia, a milk pudding flavored with rosewater, and Wissam’s saffron rice pudding, a colorful twist on an old-fashioned dessert that’s wonderful with mint tea.

Ani Ramen, a trendy Japanese noodle house that opened in 2014, is a good place for lunch, snack or a casual dinner. Its success is not surprising, given that owner Luck Sarabhayavanija and his team tried hundreds of combinations of noodles and broth before settling on a menu. The result: A half-dozen ramens to showcase and about 20 more in the mix. “We have a simple chicken broth, a more complex miso, a brothless ramen with intense flavor, a wonderful vegetarian—our hidden gem—and our signature rich and creamy pork broth,” he says. 

My strategy is to share a bowl of ramen so I have room for other house specialties—the chili-charred, sea-salted edemame, the light and spicy kale salad and particularly, shrimp buns. Made of marinated panko shrimp (a house secret, whispers Sarabhayavanija) pickled cucumber, shredded cabbage and spicy miso mayo on a fresh-steamed bao bun, the taste keeps me coming back for more. 

Right next door is Spice II, a restaurant owned by Sarabhayavanija’s mother, Sheree, and my favorite of the three Thai restaurants on Bloomfield Avenue. Its bright red and gold décor and subtle smell of spice evoke memories of a long-ago trip to Thailand.  I usually start with the fried tofu, served with a piquant plum and peanut dipping sauce. The mango salad—a fruity blend with apple, pineapple and red onions in a chili-lime dressing—is another favorite starter, as is the lemongrass- and lime-infused tom yum soup. Many entrées can be tailored to taste, not just for spiciness or main ingredient, but also with a choice of basil, garlic or ginger sauce and a vegetable mélange. Chicken rama, made with carrots and broccoli in a peanut sauce that’s sweet and spicy, is a house specialty.  Feeling adventurous? Grab a few friends and head to Mesob, where the food cries out for sharing. It arrives on a pizza-sized communal platter, to be eaten not with fork or spoon but with injera, the spongy flatbread that doubles as an eating implement in Ethiopia. Friendly waiters keep replenishing your supply as long as there’s food left to be scooped up. Order carefully here. My husband and I often ask for chicken and lamb tibs—marinated and sautéed with onions, garlic and jalapenos—prepared “between mild and medium,” but which is quite spicy. If you prefer food with little or no heat, select dishes marked “mild.” Each entrée comes with two sides. Misia wat (spicy lentils) and kik aletcha (yellow split peas) are among my favorites. 

Costanera, a Peruvian restaurant whose owner/chef, Juan Placenia, was born in Lima but moved here when he was a tot, is two doors away. He graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, and everything I’ve eaten here—even the humble rotisserie chicken—has been top-notch. That said, fish and seafood take center stage. The restaurant features a raw bar and several ceviches, marinated in leche de tigre, the Peruvian name for the citrus and chili mix that cures the fish. But Placenia has a penchant for unexpected combinations, blending crab, ahi tuna and shrimp, for instance, in a single ceviche. Seafood entrees range from Asian-style shrimp to Peruvian seafood stew. Escabeche de pescado, pan-roasted cod with spiced pickled onions and yams, is my usual choice. Fried yuca, sweet plantains and quinoa salad, perked up with lime vinaigrette, almonds, tomatoes and the tartness of dried cranberries, are favorite sides. Dessert is a main event, too. The tres leches cake won’t disappoint, and the combinado classico blends the tastes of rice pudding and Peruvian purple corn pudding made with apricot, papaya and pineapple in a single parfait. 

If you love Paris—and who doesn’t?—save room for dessert at Le Petit Parisien. Crepes, salads and sandwiches are also served here, but the macarons, pastries and croissants create the biggest buzz. Macarons come in many flavors and hues, including raspberry, pistachio, blood orange and sour cherry. Little cakes and tarts are tempting, too. A strawberry passion fruit mousse cake, covered with tantalizing swirls and topped with a bit of chocolate wrapped in edible gold like a tiny treasure, catches my eye, but I order the flourless chocolate cake instead. 

Owners Limi Maldonado and Baptiste Chigot moved to Montclair directly from Paris, and the atmosphere here is as French as the pastries. “There are a lot of Francophiles in the area,” says Maldonado, “and they tell us they feel like they’re in Paris.” Indeed, anyone who has seen the lights of the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night and watches the blinking lights of the mini Eiffel Tower in Le Petit Parisien’s window can’t help but feel that way. 

BLOOMFIELD & CHURCH

There are dozens of exceptional restaurants in and around Montclair. These are some of my favorites on Bloomfield and Church. Call or check their web sites for days and hours.

on BLOOMFIELD AVE.

Ani Ramen House

401 Bloomfield Avenue 

973-744-3960 aniramen.com

Costanera

511 Bloomfield Avenue

973-337-8289

costaneranj.com

Fusion Empanada  

706 Bloomfield Avenue

973-707-7174

fusionempanada.com

Mediterranea

578 Bloomfield Avenue

973-744-1300

mediterraneanj.com

Mesob

515 Bloomfield Avenue

973-655-9000

mesobrestaurant.com

Spice II 

399 Bloomfield Avenue

973-509-2110

spiceii.net

Uncle Momo 

702 Bloomfield Avenue

973-233-9500

unclemomo.com

on CHURCH STREET

Fresco

15 Church Street 

973-337-8225 frescoonchurch.com

Le Petit Parisien

10 Church Street 

973-746-0288 lepetitparisienmontclair.com

Manny’s Diner

12 Church Street 

973-509-9600

mannysdiner.com

Mundo Vegan

20 Church Street 

973-744-5503 

mundovegannj.com

Raymond’s

28 Church Street 

973-744-9263

Raymondsnj.com

Scala del Nonna Ristorante 

32 Church Street 

973-744-3300

scalinifedeli.com/scaladelnonna

Simit House Bakery & Co.

2 Church Street

973-893-5970

simitlove.com