“The duck mix in the little tacos enjoys a two-step dance with the broccoli pops that escape convention with that hint of chili  in the sesame sauce.”

By Andy Clurfeld

Just

Route 9 South, Old Bridge, next to the Emporium International Market

Phone: (732) 707.4800 

Open Monday through Thursday from 5 to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 5 to 11 p.m., Sunday from 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Prices: Soups and salads: $10 to $13. Starters:$10 to $13. Entrees: $22 to $38. Side dishes: $6. Desserts: $8 to $12. Reservations and major credit cards accepted. There is a serviceable wine list and a more creative cocktail list.

I am power-shopping at Emporium International Market, snagging a vacuum-packed, hot-smoked whole mackerel and asking the kindly woman behind the seafood counter to dole out a quarter-pound of caviar, which will cost me $10 and elevate the hors d’oeuvres at my next night’s dinner party from nice-enough to all-luxe. I’ve already had wrapped a pound of peppered slab bacon, which I’m cooking in my mind: Tiny dice, fry, remove bacon-nibs, add a huge amount of greens, sauté, top with the little bacon bits, eat.

I am snapped into the here-and-now by the members of my dine team. We’re booked for dinner at the restaurant next door and it is now post-time for chow time, they remind me. It’s 7:30. The Emporium is open ’til 9:30. I want to get back to finish my shopping; I feel as though I’ve only just tapped this market on Route 9 in Old Bridge with all manner of Eastern European foods and a distinct Russian accent. But dinner in two hours? Fat chance.

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Seven minutes late for our reservation, we spill over into Just, the singularly named spot that shares an address with the Emporium, and apologize profusely to the hostess. “I was shopping,” I start to say as the gal smiles and replies: “No problem. It happens all the time.” I bet it does. The owner of both the market and the restaurant, Igor Maller, is a native of the Ukraine who emigrated to New Jersey and, once upon a time, operated a club in Moscow. International is his way of life. Putting together the one-two punch of a market aimed at adventurous home cooks and a restaurant whose menu runs the global gamut is a no-brainer for the culinary juggernaut: Maller’s vision of geographical borders and boundaries is that they don’t exist. Unite, fuse, take ingredients to their natural conclusions, and prove that even if politicians can’t seem to bring about world peace, the big table of the world proves we all eat many, many of the same things, just in different guises.

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The conductor of Just’s culinary orchestra is chef Jonathan Vukusich, who reins in the far-reaching menu by believing in the taste-good factor. His food is approachable and, often, fun. He elevates comfort foods, street foods, iconic foods to date-night dine-out levels. He cares about deliciousness and design in equal proportions and executes his plates with panache. In the airy dining room that is often filled to the max, the vibe is merry and bright. It’s a happy scene.

We are happy to embark on a world tour with the starters. There’s a take on Tater Tots stuffed with shrimp, crab and a binder of mozzarella and goat cheeses. There’s a sesame-flecked tuile molded into a cone and filled with sushi-caliber tuna and wasabi’d tobiko. There are mini soft-shelled tacos plumped with Peking duck and shreds of cucumber and scallions, then swished with a citrusy, slightly sweet hoisin sauce. There’s broccoli fried Korean-style, then splashed with a heat-licked sesame sauce. Funny how the tuna cone, with its now-conventional forward-flavor Japanese accents plays off the soothing taste and texture of the seafood-cheese nuggets; intriguing how the duck mix in the little tacos enjoys a two-step dance with the broccoli pops that escape convention with that hint of chili in the sesame sauce.

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The kitchen also has fun with avocados, fashioning them into an Eastern Med-North African salad by torching, then plating them with chickpeas, nutty-tart pickled garlic and a burnt orange vinaigrette that achieves the kitchen’s goal of unification: Don’t count out the intrinsic flavor of an everyday orange to ratchet up the tastes of a creamy, mild avocado, earthy chickpeas and good old garlic. For it does…especially in this fired-up incarnation.

One of my personal favorite spices is sumac, the sour-tangy-tart red berry that is picked from a bush in the Middle East, dried and ground into a powder or flaked. Its inherent balance, not to mention vibrant color, makes it a fine choice when lemon won’t do. Here, at Just, sumac powers up shrimp and scallops that are served over couscous flecked with vegetables. A coconut curry sauce infused with tomato takes a shine to Chilean sea bass: The velvety curry is cut by the acid in the tomato, and the result is a balanced accent for the mild, yet rich fish. Hamachi sashimi, however, is overwhelmed by shiitakes and peppers sautéed in a sauce of coconut and ponzu that’s incongruously sweet. It was wrong for the fish.

The pork shank special, relatively tame in a brandied mushroom sauce, isn’t one of Just’s top-tier entrees, but the accompanying pork-fried orzo, with its smoky nibs, should be sold by the quart. Short ribs could be partnered with the broccoli app: The meat is slow-roasted in a Korean barbecue sauce and served with a super-smooth puree of potatoes that cozies up to salsify. Tasty stuff.

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Desserts follow suit here, meaning you’re not going to get simple or plain. An apple tart cosseted in puff pastry is given a condiment of its own in a honey-quince foam. Vanilla ice cream, too. The pastry’s a little thick, a little heavy, but the apple-honey/quince partnership is a natural. What do you get when you layer chocolate fudge, toasted meringue and a graham cracker custard? A S’mores crème brulee. Didn’t you earn that badge on a Scout camping trip, Skippy? You also can face-off with Oreo zeppoles, which you will either love or choose to ignore. The requisite uber-intense chocolate confection is dubbed “Mona Lisa,” and it’s a layered cake of dark chocolate mousse, ganache and whipped cream swirled with raspberry preserves. It’s more obvious that its sly-smile namesake.

As I figured, we’re at Just way past Emporium International Market’s closing bell. But that’s okay. I leave feeling as though the shopping prelude and the eating opera is exactly what this excursion to a tucked-away world is supposed to be about.  

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NEW TWIST 

Shortly after you are seated for dinner at Just, you will be served pretzel buns with honey-Dijon mustard butter. These are clever and addictive. The pretzel bun is much like a soft pretzel, and definitely on the Amish end of the soft pretzel spectrum. The butter, softened and speckled with mustard seeds, isn’t too sweet, but there’s a definite smack of honey.

You must slather the butter—in my case, in frosting-like proportion—onto the pretzel, eat and repeat. The repeating process is likely to, well, repeat itself.

A loving look at the science of wine.

By Mike Cohen

The wide appeal of wine encompasses devotees along a remarkably broad spectrum. From the ordained Court of Master Sommeliers to the masters of the supermarket special, wine has the capacity to leave an indelible imprint on the human mind. No wonder people like me can wax on endlessly about the aromas and flavors from our favorite gulp. To non-oenophiles, this may seem like so much inside baseball; they wonder, isn’t it enough that it tastes and smells good? Yes, of course it is. But that’s not what drives the wine industry, and certainly not what reaffirms our interest each and every time we open a bottle and drink the night away. Perhaps the better question is, “Is there any science behind this phenomenon?”

The answer is Yes. Indeed, chemistry has given us a whole new set of toys to play with to define what it is that we love so much about wine. 

FOLLOW YOUR NOSE

As we begin to nose (or smell) a wine, there are primary aromas from grapes, both fruity and floral. Secondarily, aromas arise from fermentation. These are called esters. In young wines, these esters impart pear and banana characteristics. If the wine has undergone malolactic fermentation (where the grape’s tart taste mellows to a softer-tasting lactic acid), battonnage (a stirring of dead yeast cells and other particles that remain in a wine after fermentation) and oaking (which adds aroma compounds to a wine) extracts enter the picture with creamy diacetyl and woody vanillin aromas. Finally, there are tertiary aromas from the aging process. Wines typically contain some dissolved oxygen, but if they are barrel-matured, they absorb additional oxygen. All this leads to what is considered beneficial oxygenation with the formation of aldehydes, creating that unique and hard-to-describe signature of a finely aged wine. 

Once in the bottle, maturation changes the volatile compounds. It’s basically an anaerobic process that reduces the oxygen content of the wine. Full-bodied reds need this maturation process to balance out the aromas and flavors that define this segment of the wine industry. Tertiary aromas are what take us away from simplistic descriptors of wine. 

We all know that guy who says something like, “I’m getting hints of saddle leather mixed with Havana cigar, woodland floor, and autumnal garden.” Well, that guy might actually be dead right. There happen to be over 400 wine odor compounds (many with catchy descriptions) that have been identified in small concentrations that pierce the olfactory threshold. Compounds in grapes that are precursors of wine flavors include free amino acids, phospholipids, glycolipids, aldehydes and phenols. Alkyl esters, a result of fermentation, are important compounds that give secondary aroma characteristics. Terpenes present in grapes are unchanged by fermentation and therefore contribute to primary aromas. Young wines made from grapes with a high terpene content include muscat, gewurztraminer and riesling. Their nose screams of primary fruit and show overt grape-like aromas. Other compounds unchanged by fermentation include the pronounced black currant or cassis aromas of cabernet sauvignon.

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ON THE TIP OF YOUR TONGUE

Relatively speaking, our ability to taste wine is almost a dead end. The tongue can only perceive four sensations: sweetness, bitterness, salty, and acidity. Yes, I know people argue there’s a fifth one, umami—aka a mouth full of soy sauce—but it’s not my thing, so let’s stick to what we do know.

Sweetness can be detected on the tip of the tongue but cannot be smelled. For example, muscat varieties have fragrant and aromatic nose qualities that are reminiscent of sweet table grapes, but the wine, when tasted, may be bone dry. Sweetness perceptions may also be found in higher alcohol levels, and when vanillin is present in oaked wines. Thus, a high-alcohol wine stored in barrel may actually taste sweeter than the actual level of residual sugar in the wine. A technique to understand this is pinching the nose while swirling a wine around the mouth to perceive it’s actual stimulation to the tip of the tongue. Also, the higher the acidity of the wine, the less sweet the wine will be, as acidity impacts the taster’s perception of sweetness.

Residual sweetness in wine is due to fructose, post-fermentation. White wines can contain between 0.4 to 300 grams/liter, while red wines fermented dry lie between 0.2 to 3 grams/liter. However, it is not unusual for New World reds to contain up to 8 grams/liter of sugar to soften any bitterness imparted by phenols. These would not be considered sweet red wines, but rather balanced.

Acidity, often considered the most critical aspect when it comes to tasting wine, is perceived on the sides of the tongue and cheeks as a sharp, lively, tingling sensation. All wines have it—whites greater than reds, cooler-climate wines more so than warmer climate wines. Sugar and acidity in wines are inversely related, so as one goes up the other must come down, and vice versa. The greatest acid present in wines is tartartic acid, although malic and citric acid account for some sizable concentrations. Other acids may be present, including acetic acid (aka vinegar). Acid has the ability to negate sweetness in a wine’s palate, and plays a huge role in dessert wines. 

Tannins, another compound found in grapes, also give tactile sensations in the mouth, making the teeth and gums feel furry and dry. They are often a key component in big red wines that offer what is called “grit” and complexity to the taste. Tannins are polyphenols taken primarily from grape skins, but also found in stalks, which impart a greener, harder nature, so whole-cluster wines will have this incorporated into the taste. Oak is another source of tannins, often a more subdued character with a more aromatic side to it. 

Tannins bind and precipitate proteins. This is why red wines match so well with meats and cheeses. This combination causes wines containing tannin to congeal into strings, or chains, thus changing our perception of the wine as it mixes with the food proteins. It is often assumed that white wines contain no tannin. This is untrue. They are there, but at lower levels than red wine. White wine is pressed pre-fermentation, and the solids are settled out. Unless there is any period of skin contact post-crush and pre-press, the phenolics in the skins will have a limited impact. Whole cluster pressing may make up some shortcomings on tannins, but typically it is oak aging that gives white wines their tannin character.

QUALITY NOTES

Nose and taste are just two of the components we consider when evaluating the quality of a wine. Also coming into play are flavor, balance and length and price. Quality will present itself as an unbroken line of attack on the senses. From the initial nose, followed by the first mouth sensation and then on to the finish, a quality wine will develop and change in the glass and gain complexity as it changes chemically. There will be a clear, individual personality about the wine that defines its origins and maintains this footprint through repeated tastings. This is the holy grail of wine quality. And quality can be further broken down into two areas of concentration: natural factors and production factors. 

For example, climate has a considerable influence on the quality of wines produced. Cooler regions may not fully ripen grapes and often are subject to considerable variability—producing wines of sometimes questionable quality. Grapes from these regions will produce lower sugar levels and higher acid levels than grapes in hotter climates. Red grapes from cool climates will have weak concentrations of compounds, green tannins and raging acidity. In these regions, chaptalization (adding sugar to boost alcohol content) and deacidification (the removal of wine acids prior to fermentation) are often used to make up for climatic shortcomings. Hot regions have their problems, as well. Grapes may ripen quickly, with high sugar levels, yet without time for sufficient flavor development—in essence getting burned out. Growers able to place vineyards in the ideal mix of warm and cool climates will obtain the best of both worlds. This favors flavor development and balance of sugars and acid. Climates that have a large diurnal variation also produce the same outcomes. 

The role played by soil cannot be understated in the quality of a wine. The most important characteristic is the ability to control water supply, either by holding or drainage. Quality wine is not produced from poorly drained vineyards. The texture of the soil will affect the vine’s ability to absorb water, nutrients and minerals, and can be altered by preparation and vineyard management techniques, such as the addition of gypsum. Compaction should be avoided to allow oxygenation of the soil. The pH of the soil must also be considered. Though it may seem counterintuitive, vines grown in high-acid soils will produce grapes with a lower acidity than those grown in a low-acid soil.

Soil and drainage also impact aromatics. Historically, it was believed that poor (low N) well-drained soils were best for growing wine grapes. However, recent research in Bordeaux indicates that a relatively high nitrogen content

will increase aromatics of varietals such as sauvignon blanc. Research at the University of Bordeaux has determined that top chateaux in and around Bordeaux have high percentages of acidic gravel and pebbles. These soils are naturally poor in nutrients and deficient in magnesium, due to high levels of potassium. This imbalance contributes to low vine vigor and yields. 

THE HUMAN FACTOR

I am a transplanted New Jerseyan who teaches a wine course at the College of Charleston, and you just got the chemistry and geology overview. There’s also a “people part” of the class, and it’s just as important to master. Over the millennia, the human species has vastly diminished its smell world. We’ve traded our olfactory acuity for enhanced color vision. DNA coding for olfactory proteins are no longer important for humans, as this sense—as well as taste—are largely restricted to food choices. Our senses are bombarded constantly by a mass of information and it is the higher brain functions that extract from this sea of data the features we wish to zero in on. This is called higher order processing. 

Think of all the aromas that bombard your senses from a glass of wine. How do we process this and come to our simplistic descriptors of wine? Flavor processing incorporates smell and taste to identify nutritious foods and drinks, and to protect us from eating things that are bad for us. Flavor processing is tied to memory and emotion. We remember the way a great cabernet smells and we like the pleasing taste. Neurologically speaking, the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain transforms taste and smell and forms the sensation of flavor. Add in touch and vision and now we have a complex unified sensation that the brain tells us is a nice, hedonistic experience.  

Remember the old slogan Better Living Through Chemistry?In my book, that’s what a great bottle of wine is all about. 

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STRESS TEST

Vines, like people, work best under stress. Growers have no control over rainfall, but they do over irrigation. Many growers practice deficit irrigation. Neutron probes are inserted into the soil to indicate when water is required. Stressing the vines causes the roots to synthesize abscisic acid (a kind of plant hormone), sending this to the leaves and deceiving them into reacting as though there are drought conditions. Shoot growth stops and all energy goes into ripening the fruit.  Moderate water deficit can double or triple the concentration of the precursors of the varietal thiols that are released during fermentation. Timing of stress is also critical. It is beneficial for sauvignon not to be stressed, especially if pyrazine aromas are desired in the wine. Unstressed cabernet sauvignon also produces very pyrazine-dominated wines.

Where on earth do you get this stuff?

By Andy Clurfeld

Courtesy of Razza

Dan Richer, the multiple James Beard Award-nominated chef at Razza Pizza Artigianale on Grove Street in Jersey City, may have skipped his graduation ceremony at Rutgers to go to Italy, but he’s been the university’s biggest booster as a restaurateur. You’ve heard of Richer’s renown Project Hazlenut Pizza? No? Well, look it up on The New York Times web site and understand why the newspaper’s restaurant critic Pete Wells gave Razza a three-star review in 2017. The background according to Richer: Before the 1900s, the hazelnut tree was prevalent in New Jersey. Disease wiped it out. Oregon became the hazelnut capital of America. But, with hazelnuts in demand, a worldwide shortage ensued. Enter Rutgers, with its prominent school of agriculture and Dr. Thomas Molner, the head breeder of what soon would be known as Rutgers Project Hazelnut. Molner and his crew worked, and worked hard, to revive the hazelnut in New Jersey. What they produced, Richer supported – by purchasing the crop. He made—of all things—a pizza of hazelnuts. A pizza! Who knew? “The Project Hazelnut Pizza has hazelnuts, a little fresh mozzarella and ricotta and a few drops of local honey,” Richer says. It’s brilliant. Unlike anything you’ve ever tasted. And pure Garden State. “Now there are more than 10,000 hazelnut trees in New Jersey under Rutgers’ supervision.”

Travel down Ryders Lane in the New Brunswick-Millstone environs and take them in. Extraordinary. And it’s thanks to a famous chef that the hazelnut, Dr. Molner and Rutgers are getting their due.

Who are the other farmers and food artisans Richer relies on to keep Razza riding high?

“My neighbors at Cedar Hill Farm, on Red Hill Road in Middletown, Agnes deFelice and her son Gary deFelice,” Richer says. The deFelices grow strawberries on their farm for Razza and, during that precious three-week season in spring, Richer picks them up on his way to the restaurant and takes in the aromas of still-warm-from-the-sun strawberries all the way from Middletown to Jersey City. “On Day One, we do strawberry salad. Day Two, we have to put them in the fridge, so we make strawberry jam or a topping for dessert. I just guarantee Agnes and Gary that I’ll buy whatever they pick. It’s worth it. The season is so short. I just pray they don’t sell their land to developers.”

What and who are the favorites of other restaurateurs and chefs?

Mark Pascal & Francis Schott • Owners • Stage Left Steak and Catherine Lombardi • New Brunswick

“Dreyer Farms in Cranford is a seven-acre farm in an area that has become surrounded entirely by suburb. Family-run for generations, they have a great farm market for consumers and they also work well with restaurants, letting us know what is coming in and making sure we are able to take advantage of it.

“Mike Baker is a lawyer first and a farmer second. He owns 4½ acres in East Brunswick, and basically grows us whatever we ask for. We have a meeting every year at the end of winter and decide what the plantings will be for the coming year. He supplies the lion’s share of our heirloom tomatoes—also a tremendous amount of herbs that we use.”

Courtesy of Common Lot

Ehren Ryan • Chef-Owner • Common Lot • Millburn

“We use a few local farmers for very specific items and they are all very seasonal. We love what they produce—in season. First is Malcolm Salovaara, of PK’s Four Brothers Farm in Bernardsville. This is a family-based farm who raise mainly pigs and chickens. The chickens are some of the best I have eaten anywhere. They are very seasonally driven, so the chicken season is from around April to October. We use the chickens with ramps, morels, spring items that bode well with the flavor of their chickens.

“Second is Dan Liplow, [who operates] the Foraged Feast, all over New Jersey. Dan is our forager and mushroom guy. During spring, summer and fall, Dan will search out interesting ingredients for us to test in our dishes. He brings sassafras for us to use, which we turn into root beer. Wild garlic roots, wild watercress. He also brings us black current wood for oils. During the winter months he has access to cultivated mushrooms that are by far are the best-tasting mushrooms.

“Third is Colleen Gilmore, of Buds and Blooms in West Milford. Colleen has a small farm that supplies us with all different types of herbs, edible flowers, small heirloom tomatoes and other little items. We sit down and chat about what can she grow for us—bronze fennel, Thai basil flowers, chive flowers, etc. The quality of the herbs and flowers is second to none. So pungent, so much flavor, and they look so bright.”

Courtesy of Osteria Radici

Randy Forrester • Chef-Owner Osteria Radici • Allentown

“We use Korean grapes and pears from Evergreen Orchard Farm in Yardville. We compress the pears with stracciatella from Italy and preserve the grapes for our semifreddo. We use potatoes and cabbages from New Sung Sang farm in Millstone. We hay-smoke both the cabbage on a pork dish and purée the potatoes as a thickening agent in spaghetti, with mussels.”

Bruce Lefebvre • Chef-Owner The Frog and the Peach • New Brunswick

“We love Valley Shepherd Creamery in Long Valley. The owner and cheesemaker is Eran Wajswol. (Valley Shepherd) has more than 500 sheep, 100 goats and 50 cows. Eran uses traditional European methods to produce many kinds of cheeses from grazed animals’ milk. They milk the female ewes on their unique rotary milking carousel, which you can see firsthand by taking one of their tours in spring. They also age the cheese in a hillside cave. We have used so many of their cheeses over the years, including Oldwick Shepherd, Crema de Blue, More Beer, Oldwick Shepherd, Nettlesome and Carameaway. Valley Shepherd Creamery also has a shop that is open to the public.”

Shanti Church Mignogna • Co-Owner Modine and Talula’s • Asbury Park

“We get fresh greens year-round from Lew at Thompson Family Farm. He grows beautiful hydroponic greens right in Wall, which is like 10 minutes away from our restaurants. A few years ago, we asked him to put together a mix with tatsoi and mustard frills for Talula’s and I’m pretty sure his ‘Asian mix’ is one of his best-sellers now. It’s always awesome when farmers are willing to grow specific things you ask them for.

“At Modine, we have put a lot of thought into our meat program. Our chef Chris is a skilled butcher, so we have the ability to source larger cuts of meat and break them down ourselves. He’s been working with Fossil Farms since opening. All of our eggs, beef and pork comes from them. We get whole Berkshire and Duroc pigs that are pasture-raised, completely naturally, which means without hormones or antibiotics. It’s pretty cool that our meat is completely traceable and comes from less than 100 miles away. Also at Modine, we love getting the freshest, most delicious local oysters from our good friends at Barnegat Oyster Collective! It’s a family-run business and they represent 12 local shellfish growers in the Greater Barnegat Area. You can always find their oysters on our menu, either raw with a seasonal granita and/or broiled with chipotle bourbon butter.”

(Shanti quotes oyster-grower Sarafina Mugavero of Forty North Oyster, who says: “The number of oyster-growers has grown just in the past few years because more restaurants and retailers are supporting a burgeoning local agriculture industry.”)

Courtesy of A Toute Heure

AJ Capella • Executive Chef A Toute Heure • Cranford

“I use a lot of farms. I think it’s important to support the community you live in as well as small businesses. I extend that theory to other purveyors, not just farmers. [I use] Breadsmith in Cranford and Dan Lipow’s Foraged Feast. Roamin’ Acres in Lafayette raises Berkshire pigs, and one of the products they do is prosciutto. Cured in the same way prosciutto in Italy is treated, salt-cured for 18 months. I have eaten many prosciuttos and cured hams, and the flavor of this one is remarkable. The color is vibrant red, the fat is pure white, and there’s a slight crispiness to it. It is hands-down my favorite cured ham.

“It’s funny how the food world in NJ is seemingly large but, in reality, quite small. Everybody knows everybody.”

“Chef Juan Placencia has branched out from his cozy Peruvian restaurant Costanera in Montclair to open this self-styled Pan Latin beauty.” 

By Andy Clurfeld 

Midway through the cachapa at Somos, I’m realizing it is the ultimate every-meal food. A corn pancake that’s more flavorful than those based on wheat, it’s not in need of a blast of sweet nor a slather of dairy to entice. It requires no wake-up call from a caffeinated beverage to wash it down nor a counterpoint of anything chilled to stimulate the taste buds. Its inherent sweetness is mitigated by starch, balanced by moisture and toyed with by a chef who understands its potential intuitively and by virtue of practice. 

All photos courtesy of Somos

This cachapa, a homey number that spans all but the rim of a white dinner plate, is topped with a warming stew of leeks and mushrooms punctuated by pops of corn kernels and given a quick flourish of cilantro and cojita. The crowning glory? Tangy tomato jam, plopped not so much artfully as purposefully in the shape of rough quenelles atop the whole thing. The ensemble has a charming peasant-y quality to it, and its potential as breakfast, lunch or dinner makes me happy chef Juan Placencia has branched out from his cozy Peruvian restaurant Costanera in Montclair to open this self-styled Pan Latin beauty in North Arlington. 

Somos is large. You enter to a posh tavern of a space that shows how architect-designer Michael Groth likes playing with geometric shapes as much as Placencia likes stretching the parameters of traditional ingredients and classic dishes. Banquettes make little rooms out of a cluster of four round tables set for two. Semi-circular high-tops align to form the outline of another, larger circle. Chairs with short backs belly up to a bar softly lit from both the floor and the underside of the counter. There are arches as doorways and shelving and also as ornament and decor. You segue to a dining area that’s far less dramatic, set with light wood tables and chairs and lighting that’s not about creating a scene. That’s the purview of the food. 

You can eat the cachapa all night, if you’d like, or you can pry chunks of black bass from slivers of red onion in a ceviche that’s brightened by a vivid soup of tomatillo flecked with nibs of avocado, snips of cilantro and the suspicion of chilies. Grab the tortilla crisps angled on top to scoop up the tomatillo broth—or ask your server for a sauce spoon. The ahi tuna ceviche is richer and more spirited, with its base of coconut milk plied with rocoto and lime. In this one, use the strips of fried plantain to sop up the sauce. I couldn’t ask you to leave behind the chicharron de pescado for the chicken-filled croquettas: The silky cod crusted in quinoa and topped by both a chop of tomato salsa and an aioli infused with sweet piquillo peppers is a terrific table partner for the pert fritters deftly fried and synched to the tune of aji amarillo chile peppers. 

Though little at Somos weighs in as heavy in the startertapas round, working a couple of salads into your meal is all-around wise. I think Placencia’s warm quinoa salad ranks as the standard by which all other main-dish tosses should be judged: It’s served slightly warm and the elements that mingle with the tiny seeds—kabocha, Bartlett pear, Brussels sprouts, chorizo, tomatillo— are either chopped or crumbled so as not to overwhelm the focus of the salad. The signature Somos salad starts with large leaves of Bibb lettuce and tops them with a haystack of spiralized carrots and onions, as well as avocado and, yup, more quinoa. The best part of this one? A vigorous sofrito vinaigrette that lifts familiar ingredients. 

If you wish, you can stop here, with a full slate of small plates that will evolve and change with the seasons and the desires of Placencia and his chef de cuisine Roberto Carnero. The main courses are scaled back in quantity and also achievement. Peruvian pot roast is shredded and served with wide noodles in a spare sauce of tomato, carrot and even green peas. Chicken is roasted with achiote, plopped on mashed potatoes and a messy splay of limp jicama slaw dressed in something that gave it a garish magenta glow. Branzino, grilled with little seasoning, was a snooze alongside yuca fries with far less personality than mainstream French fries, plain white rice and a metal ramekin of bland pico de gallo. The patatas bravas, which we paid for as an extra side, needed more of the good romesco aioli. But they had flavor.

Don’t expect the pineapple tres leches to look like any tres leches you know: Here, it’s served as a layered parfait in a clear, tall glass, with a zippy coconut-rum sauce and chunks of passionfruit laced within—and a toasted mashmallow-y substance on top. My dining companions really liked it, as well as the squash doughnuts drizzled with a cinnamon-streaked fig relish. Me? I could’ve returned to bliss with the cachapa.

For when you find that one-in-a-million dish that does it all, you stick with it

Behind the Scenes at Somos

Juan Placencia is a bona fide star chef in New Jersey. Born in Lima, Peru, he came to the United States as a toddler and got his first whiffs of the restaurant life at the places his parents owned and operated. If you know Oh! Calamares, now in Kearny, you know where Placencia got his start. He went to culinary school and then, in the early aughts, worked at top restaurants in Manhattan, including Gramercy Tavern and Eleven Madison Park. Before opening his own restaurant, he did turns at Gotham Bar & Grill and Del Posto, to learn more about the operational side of things. In 2010, he opened the BYOB Costanera in Montclair. Somos opened in the late fall of 2018. The chef’s team includes chef de cuisine Roberto Carnero; the architect-designer Michael Groth; general manager Brian Bode; and beverage consultant Rachael Robbins. They are the “we are” at Somos—which translates as just that.

SOMOS

185 River Road, North Arlington 

Phone: (201) 621.0299 • somosnj.com 

Open weekdays, except Tuesdays, for dinner; open Saturday and Sunday for lunch and dinner. Major credit cards and reservations accepted. Prices: Tapas and starters: $7 to $14. Main dishes: $17 to $27. Sides: $4 to $5. Desserts: $8 to $9. There’s a cocktail list ($11); glasses ($8) and pitchers ($26) of sangria; wines by the glass and bottle; and beers on draft and by the bottle.

Outstanding in the Field Returns to Riverine.

By Andy Clurfeld

Chef David Viana looked quite at home where the buffalo were roaming, on the plains of Warren County where Riverine Ranch sprawls across 62 verdant acres in a hamlet known as Asbury. Viana and his crew from Heirloom Kitchen in Old Bridge were working under a tented outdoor kitchen and on grills set up astride the bustling space as ranch owners Courtney and Brian Foley gave tours of Riverine, introducing some of the 150-odd buffalo and their products—meats, cheeses, yogurt, butter—to 250 guests who had journeyed from all parts of New Jersey, plus New York and Pennsylvania, to take part in the ultimate in farm-to-table dining: the national Outstanding in the Field (OITF) program.

Viana, himself a nationally recognized chef who this year was nominated for a coveted James Beard Award as Best Chef in the Mid-Atlantic region—and the Foleys, a teacher and an electrician originally from Queens (who in 2004 moved to Washington Township in Warren to farm)—were anointed by the Outstanding in the Field hierarchy as worthy of hosting a dinner. This is a big deal.

OITF, founded by Jim Denevan in 1999 as a “traveling celebration of people and place and the origins of good food,” had stopped in New Jersey once before, last year, at Riverine. Folks had such a good time at the buffalo farm, OITF decided to come back. The Foleys reached out to Viana, who brought his Heirloom crew (Sean Yan, Kendall Szpakowski, Katherine “Kat” Norat, Rob Santello and owner Neilly Robinson) to the farm to do what they do best: Make the most out of from-the-farm ingredients. The 250 diners were waiting—and had been since seats to the long table set in the signature OITF arc had gone on sale the first day of spring last March, and sold out shortly after. It’s a competitive sport, acquiring OITF dinner reservations; there are those who follow the flow of the transcontinental dinner party as it serves forth starting in the early part of the spring in the warmer climates and continues through fall, touching down in colder parts of the country. Demand is such that, after a break for the OITF home team during the holidays, there’s now a winter session of dinners in the warmest parts of the country. 

After cocktails and passed hors d’oeuvres, after sampling Riverine’s extraordinary buffalo milk cheeses and visiting the cave where some cheeses are aged, the congregation segued to the arc’d table and took a peek at the chefs. There was Viana (above), turning hunks of buffalo over on a charcoal grill, while his team prepped platters of Riverine buffalo tartare served with crusty toasts of bread from his pals at Talula’s in the “other Asbury” (Asbury Park, that is, down the Shore). They’d amped up the opening round served at table with pickled vegetables from Hauser Hill, a farm based in Old Bridge, and cornbread and corn butter from Thompson Family Farm in Wall. A salad of tomatoes from Hauser and buffalo mozzarella from Riverine came with microgreens, while gnocchi made with smoked Riverine buffalo ricotta took a liking to condiments constructed with Hauser carrots, onion and apple. It’s all served family style, with guests and their new best friends quickly settling in at the table. On this night, buffalo roast was carved and plated with chimichurri, polenta and corn, and a suitable finale of roasted pepita pavlova came with Forbidden Rice meringue laced with Riverine buffalo milk. “It’s a pretty big undertaking,” Viana says, noting that it takes a good week to prep and cook outdoors for the huge crowd. “It’s not easy to cook for 250 on a charcoal grill! But we’d do it again in a heartbeat. It’s all about people coming together at the table…there’s an energy that’s palpable.”

Courtney and Brian Foley (left)

For Courtney and Brian Foley (left), it was a “fantastic opportunity to work with the people from Heirloom Kitchen.” And, adds Brian, a chance as well to share our “passion for water  buffalo.”

In the lead-up, the Foleys hosted Viana and his crew at Riverine, giving them tastes of the various buffalo meat and dairy products and sending them home with samples. The chefs then worked up a menu for the OITF dinner in conjunction with farms and artisans Viana often works with at his restaurant. After that, “we just straightened up the farm a bit,” Courtney says with a laugh. “Our buffalo are very friendly and very photogenic.” Top that off with delicious from-the-farm fare and you’ve got a dinner for the ages.

Simply Outstanding

• Riverine Ranch is located at 247 Cemetery Hill Road in the Asbury section of Washington Township. The Foleys sell their products out of a store on the farm, which is open Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. For information, call (908) 319-3356 or visit riverineranch.com.

• Heirloom Kitchen is located at 3856 Route 516 in Old Bridge. For information and reservations to its dinners and cooking classes, call (732) 727-9444 or visit heirloomkitchen.com.
• Outstanding in the Field’s dinners can be tracked on its Web site, which also offers links for reservations: outstandinginthefield.com.

“Duck is Viana’s signature dish, and no matter the micro-season, he works what’s fresh and what’s purposeful into his nightly duck program.” 

By Andy Clurfeld

When it comes to people with one-of-a-kind voices, New Jersey has given birth, or a place to work and live, or prominence to more than its share of singular talents.

Think Sinatra. Springsteen, of course —now a newly minted Broadway star. Count Basie, Whitney Houston, Queen Latifah, Sarah Vaughn, and Patti Smith. Then there are Einstein and Edison; Yogi Berra and Derek Jeter; Vince Lombardi and Bill Parcells. And also Annie Oakley, Shaq, “Marvelous” Marvin Hagler, Philip Roth and John McPhee, all peerless in their respective fields.

Now consider that Alice Waters, impresario of the ground-breaking Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA, founder of the Edible Schoolyard initiatives and modern-day instigator of eating local and organic food, is from Chatham.

Yes, Alice Waters, whose influence on what and how we eat today is comparable to The Beatles’ influence on rock, is Jersey born and raised.

Time to take your medicine, Garden State denizens. Time to toss to the curb the cliches of New Jersey’s mass-produced culinary past promulgated by those intent on keeping original voices at bay while promoting the same old pizza and pork roll places, the overstuffed hoagies and subs and leaden bagels, as well as the ‘dogs, doughnuts and diners that give credence to out-of-town critics’ rants.

For there’s a new breed of chefs in New Jersey, and they are skilled, savvy and seeing things clearly now.

Leading the way are nationally regarded chefs, such as Dan Richer of Razza in Jersey City; Maricel Presilla of Cucharamama and Zafra in Hoboken, and Drew Araneo of Drew’s Bayshore Bistro in Keyport, as well as critically acclaimed voices with relatively new restaurants that include Ehren Ryan of Common Lot in Millburn; Greg Vassos of Brick Farm Tavern in Hopewell; and Randy Forrester of Osteria Radici in Allentown.

Factor in the wealth of ethnic restaurants that reflects the vibrant cultures and communities rooted in this, one of America’s most diverse states, adding both talent and a gastronomy that extends to all parts of the globe, and you have a collective table that groans glorious. It’s a simple mix of good ingredients and good people.

Photography courtesy of Heirloom Kitchen

It’s just what the doctor ordered as a prescription for eating in 2018.

David Viana, now chef-partner at Heirloom Kitchen in Old Bridge, could be the poster child for the vanguard born out of old guard.

He is Portuguese, raised in the traditions of the table, and took in the ways of professional cooking at some of the best restaurants in Europe, New York and New Jersey. Anthony Bucco, executive chef at the empire that is Crystal Springs Resorts in Sussex County, lauds Viana as the “most talented, gifted chef” he’s worked within a pro kitchen. Visionary chefs including Vassos and Ryan are honored to be part of collaborative dinners with Viana; young chefs, notably Jon Boot, now at Ryland Inn, Whitehouse Station, and Sean Yan, current pastry chef and assistant to Viana at Heirloom, are inspired by his food. 

Because it’s unlike any other.

I’ve eaten a half-dozen dinners in as many months that either Viana created or collaborated on and find his voice to be, at present, the most original in the Garden State.

Viana starts with a main ingredient as his inspiration, be it duck or spring peas, apples or porcinis, scallops or cauliflower, and builds from there. His accents challenge and enlighten, yet they stop shy of being fussy. They are always artfully applied.

Photography courtesy of Heirloom Kitchen

Art on a plate scares me. I’ve seen and tasted too much artifice. Viana’s washes, pin-dots, and arcs of sauce, spears of vegetable, frothy poofs of concentrated herb and ringlets of leafy things never do anything but enhance the main element. The “art” supports, and shows, Viana’s control over a plate.

I’ve watched Viana in his open kitchen at Heirloom Kitchen—which is a restaurant three nights a week and a classroom other evenings—break down a duck: butcher the duck, score its fat, prep it till it’s ready to be called upon for a precise 40-minute stove-top sear that will star in a seasonal preparation. In the space of a few weeks late last year, there were two of note: johnnycakes and oatmeal, persimmon and delicata squash and a rush of pomegranate on a regular-dinner night in early December at Heirloom, and one with herbed wheat berries and granola, parsnips and date puree, coffee and pecans, and the unmistakable umami of maitakes with a squirt of duck jus at the venerable James Beard House in New York, where Viana was invited to cook dinner days before Christmas.

Duck is Viana’s signature dish, and no matter the micro season, he works what’s fresh and what’s purposeful into his nightly program. Viana’s regulars might have duck every month at Heirloom, without duplication. 

They also might have pork belly with a bacon marmalade and loops of Vietnamese caramel, the richness of which is offset by thick-cut half-moons of celery and salty peanuts. They might have pork-smoked apple raviolo and come across on the plate a bacon-pine nut crumble there expressly to play off the pasta pockets with a slyly silky texture—as well as pivots of delicata squash and sweet potato and a splash of mustardy jus. 

Scallops in cold weather will be appropriately accompanied by dug-up vegetables such as fingerling potatoes and carrots, both of which are roasted and—with the scallops —given a choice of playmates: almond-mint pesto, chestnut puree, and lemon-brown butter emulsion. The accent editing is pitch-perfect. Likewise, halibut will see kohlrabi smoked and pureed, chanterelles gently warmed, an egg yolk scented with truffle and mustard seeds pickled to give them added depth and a defiant edginess that the mild, dense, meaty fish appreciates.

Viana rises to the challenge of sides: Cauliflower gets a sultry-snappy lift from pomegranate molasses and mint pesto; kale is laced with duck confit and topped with a fried egg; Brussels sprouts are plied with a gastrique that bristles with mustard and then all’s calmed by the inherent sweetness of butter infused with, of all things, parsnip. You have to think: Sides? These are sides? They could comfort and cosset and fill in a bowl by themselves, eaten on a couch. Yes, they could. But they appear on Viana’s Heirloom menu, to be passed family-style at the table or counter, depending on where you sit.

If you are at Heirloom Kitchen, which is owned by Neilly Robinson, you will be seated (depending on your choice and the availability) at the chef’s counter, facing the stoves at which Viana cooks. A row back, there is another counter, also with a “view,” but without the same opportunity to watch, and converse with, the chef. Then there are tables of the regular dining-out sort—two-tops and four-tops, and a larger one for parties of perhaps 10.

I’m not forgetting dessert, made by Sean Yan to suit the Viana style. Lemongrass mousse, for instance, is backed by gingerbread and plated with white chocolate that’s been roasted and mint that’s been pulverized to the texture of dust. There’s the suspicion of bourbon in the mix, and a whiff of Asian pear.

But don’t count on repeats of anything you read here right now. In the world of a singular voice such as David Viana, yesterday is history to learn from, today provides a chance for change, and tomorrow is the opportunity to play out a dream deemed a privilege to share.

New Jersey, after all, thrives on its one-of-a-kinds

Heirloom Kitchen

3853 Route 516, Old Bridge • Phone: (732) 727.9444

Major credit cards accepted. Open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for dinner and, generally, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings for cooking classes. Menus change weekly and special collaborative dinners are planned seasonally. Visit www.heirloomkitchen.com to view schedules for classes as well as current menus. Reservations are required, and tables book early. Heirloom is a BYOB, but offers a small selection of wines from Domenica Winery for purchase on site.

“DaPesca brings honor to New Jersey’s fishes and fishing industry and fills a void in fine dining…created by restaurateurs and chefs who have failed to place local fishes on a proper pedestal.”

By Andy Clurfeld

Set back from the main drag of Morristown is the old Vail Mansion, a formidable structure that could, and once did, house any number of governmental offices in this, the county seat of Morris. Instead, it is home to four distinctive eating-and drinking entities that have, under its reinvention as Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen, become the dining-out headquarters in north-of-the-Raritan New Jersey for the tuned-in, private jet, chef’s-on-a-night-off, wine geek and raw-bar-loving sets. Translation: It’s the high-style crowd’s home away from home.

Christopher Cannon, late of the New York City restaurant scene, where he won James Beard Awards for Marea and L’Impero, came to New Jersey by way of marriage. Becky, his wife, grew up in North Jersey and knew it was ready for a visionary. Chris Cannon is a visionary.

Photos by AJ Sankofa/Courtesy of dePesca

For a time, Cannon was a visionary without a place to practice his progressive restaurant ways. A bitter divorce from his New York restaurant partners left him without dining rooms and bars to pour the artisan, quirky, impossible-to-find wines he was known for—and without a constant stream of fans looking to partake in the latest “Cannonball” blind wine-tastings. So the Cannons and their kids moved to Becky’s home state, and Chris Cannon started looking around for the perfect place to create a public space. Hey, why not a circa-1917 mansion on South Street in Morristown? What might intimidate most only inspires an industry veteran who appears to live by the motto, “If something’s easy, how can it be fun?”

Three years ago, Jockey Hollow became The Oyster Bar, which rocks nearly nonstop with pristine raw fishes, charcuterie, and plates small and large; The Vail Bar, a speakeasy-style hideaway where the go-getters and the glamorous convene over cocktails and fine fare; the Rathskeller, the basement beer hall-private events space that used to serve as Morristown’s very own jail and now hauls ‘em in for live music and top-tier craft brews to wash down German grub; and, upstairs, a somehow-intimate 70-seat fine-dining space.

Photos by AJ Sankofa/Courtesy of dePesca

You can explore the bars at your leisure. Right now, we’re talking about that upstairs restaurant-within-a-restaurant that the father of reinvention himself reimagined this winter as DaPesca.

DaPesca brings honor to New Jersey’s fishes and fishing industry and fills a void in fine dining that, inexplicably, in our state bordered by 130 miles of ocean, not to mention rivers and bays and myriad and many lakes has been created by restaurateurs and chefs who have failed to place local fishes on a proper pedestal. Cannon was bothered by this. Having recently acquired a chef as formidable as the mansion turned- restaurant itself—Craig Polignano, ex-Ryland Inn, among other high-end restaurants—to take charge of all things food at Jockey Hollow, and having developed an association with Eric Morris, founder and owner of Local 130, the New Jersey seafood specialist, Cannon was ready to shame the gun-shy of the Garden State. DaPesca does just that.

Sourcing primarily from Local 130, as well as Forty North Oysters, the Barnegat Oyster Collective and Sona-Far Hills Seafood, DaPesca names on its ever-changing menus the boats and their captains who fish off our coastlines and make possible what Polignano and his kitchen crew create. 

Photos by AJ Sankofa/Courtesy of dePesca

If you eat at DaPesca regularly, captains such as Jim Lovgren and Eric Myklebust might become your guidestars for how to order.

There really is no better way.

For the Barnegat clams, sparked by a wispy ring of Calabrian chile, and the local oysters, with their slurpy salinity and ping of minerality, pave the way to a Spanish mackerel crudo set atop a tangle of cucumber strands spliced with puffed rice and scented with the penetrating power of yuzu. That intense citrus tames the mackerel, probably my favorite fish on the planet, and infuses the toasty puffed rice scattered about with unexpected freshness. The dish shows how inspiration can take hold. You’ll find the calamari á la plancha a revelation, especially if you’ve been eating the same-old, same-old renditions for a generation or so. Here, the local stuff isn’t fried and sent out to pasture with tomato sauce, but given an Asian twist with tamarind and noodles of papaya, Balinese peppers, and peanuts that act as so much more than a give-away garnish. I learned something new about calamari’s versatility in every bite. Our local tuna, too, took a spiritual trip to the Far East when Polignano chose to plate it in a pho-style broth scented with Thai basil and popping with crunchy sprouted mung beans. Polignano and Cannon readily admit pledging allegiance to the flag of Italy, culinary religion in New Jersey, after all. Which brings us to the pasta-risotto portion of the menu: Don’t pass by the “little hats” of pasta—cappellacci stuffed with nuggets of braised pork—that are set in a rich shellfish broth with little clams spurting big juices. Those curious counterpoints to the clam-pork duet? Beech mushrooms. They sop it all up. Meanwhile, the pinched logs of dostalini stuffed with the buttery-tangy Piedmontese cheese castelrosso take to a saucy combo of orange and puntarella, a hopped-up chicory, along with a side crumble of pistachios; and the risotto is positively daring, what with crab dancing with almost-sweet Meyer lemon and a verdant, rough chop of seaweed pesto working pine nuts not ground into the mix, but left whole and therefore more forceful. You know skate wing, right? Well, be prepared for something completely different here, as Polignano turns it on its ear. It’s twirled into something that looks like a mini muffin and partnered not just with the classic caper-butter duo, but with an Italianate twist of roasted cauliflower and grapes. This silky-textured, mild fish always tastes ever so slightly nutty to me. Well, darned if the chef doesn’t give his skate a flourish of hazelnuts at the finish. Bingo. Dayboat scallops are done simply and right here, with a slaw-like base of celery root and apple, cubes of potato and mysterious notes of black truffle that appear when least expected. The best lobster dish I’ve ever had in New Jersey is Polignano’s butter-poached lobster, which yins against the yang of translucent curls of fennel and threads of tarragon. But it’s the frothy bouillabaisse cream that did me in: How boffo is the rich-on-rich marriage of lobster and shellfish bubbles?

Photos by AJ Sankofa/Courtesy of dePesca

Not everything at DaPesca is divinity of the sea. I don’t get the need to wrap monkfish in prosciutto like the minions do, especially when sidemen include olives and sausage that only add to the oversalted taste of the dish. I also hope the squid ink gnocchi, with more squid on the plate, is nixed by now since it was mushy in texture and muddy of flavor. Desserts, too, need work: I’m not a fan of oversize anything, but the two cubes of lackluster carrot cake with a two-bite torpedo of mascarpone ice cream ain’t worth $4, let alone $14, and the trio of sorbets—blood orange, cranberry, and Meyer lemon—had awkward shards of ice within.

Next time, I’ll nab another round of the butter-poached lobster and see if I can get an extra bowl of that bouillabaisse froth. I’ll bring fish-shunners to sit at my table so I can order extras of the calamari and skate and mackerel and dive into their plates without competition. I’ve been looking for a big-ticket seafood joint like this for decades. DaPesca is where my odyssey ends.

NEW JERSEY’S BEST WINE LIST?

Chris Cannon may be over-the-moon about Jersey’s fishes, a fanatic about forging relationships with Garden State farmers and fascinated with the history of his newly adopted state, but there’s nothing more he loves than wine. Unless it’s the collection of eyeglass frames he’s amassed with a fervor that could be described as manic. But that’s a story for another issue of Edge. Cannon has the most idiosyncratically desirable wine list I know, a list that you’re given to scan on an iPad as you are seated, but really deserves a conducted class by itself on a day when Jockey Hollow is otherwise closed. Think a library-style, hushed opportunity to sit and read, and re-read a list that seems like it cannot be real. But it’s a list he’s been working on most of his adult life, establishing connections with importers, distributors, and winemakers, forging relationships with wine names major and utterly obscure. Frankly, Cannon’s tastes tilt to the obscure.

But his prices lean friendly. The centerpiece of his wine program is an evolving, always-changing list of “60 Under $60.” It’s a treasure trove of wines you never thought you’d be able to try, of grapes you’ve never heard of from winemaking regions that have no beaten paths, of styles that will teach you how to pair wine with food once and for all. Cannon and his floor crew love talking wine at the table with their guests, and they love sharing their latest finds. If you’re so inclined, give a call to arrange a “Cannonball” wine adventure, in which the wine maestro himself will pour—blind—wines largely from this “60 Under $60” list and guide you through the tasting. The Cannonball experience takes place on Fridays.

No matter where you dine at Jockey Hollow, you can take advantage of New Jersey’s best wine list.

DaPesca

At Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen • 110 South Street, Morristown • Phone: (973) 644.3180

Reservations accepted and recommended; major credit cards. Open for dinner Tuesday and Wednesday from 5 to 9 p.m., Thursday from 5 to 9:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday from5 to 10:30 p.m. A four-course tasting menu is $86, while a seasonal six-course tasting to be ordered by the entire table is $116. (With wine pairings, the six-course menu is $190.)

A la carte service is available at DaPesca except on Saturdays when only the tasting menus are served. For more information, visit www.jockeyhollowbarandkitchen.com.

In pursuit of the American Dream, immigrant cultures are reshaping New Jersey’s foodscape.

By Andy Clurfeld

From “America” by Simon & Garfunkel

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

They’ve all come to look for America

All come to look for America

All come to look for America

Drive the Turnpike in 2018, 50 years after “America” was released by the poet-rocker duo, and you’ll find today’s America at every exit. Its sister thoroughfare, the Garden State Parkway, offers the same people-scape at every exit ramp as well. Cross-hatch the ’Pike and the Parkway with major roadways such as Interstate 80, 195 and the Atlantic City Expressway, and you’ll find jump-off points that lead to people, places and things of incredibly diverse origins.

NetCost

Is New Jersey America’s most emblematic state? Could this Mid-Atlantic stalwart of the original Colonies, gateway to the Northeast, subject of Mason-Dixon Line debates and most teased member of the family of states united under a red, white and blue flag signifying liberty and justice for all be the poster child for America itself?

The argument could be made.

It would be won, slam-dunk, on the merits of our peerlessly diverse and delicious foodways. I’ve taken to saying, as I’ve worked the past year to form the Garden State Culinary Arts Foundation, that New Jersey—a peninsula of 8.9 million people bordered by two major rivers, a connective ocean and the unique and fertile Delaware Bay—is singularly positioned as the nation’s culinary leader.

Gourmanoff

For not only does it benefit from those waters, but from a wide-ranging geology that allows for the cultivation of many and myriad crops and provides lands for raising animals. Somehow, in a state that balances extreme densities of populations in its cities with expanses of space in its countrysides with veritable crops of varying housing types in its suburbs, we’ve also become one of the most diverse states in America. Our ethnic communities have taken root in cities, in rural areas, in the suburbs.

No matter the roadway, no matter the exit, you’ll find foods that define the now-wide-breadth of today’s cuisine in America.

It started in New Jersey with waves of immigrants from Italy, Ireland,

HMart

India, Germany, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Ellis Island—whose 27.5 acres were found by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1998 to be dominated by New Jersey —was the gateway for these folks, who settled in Garden State cities, farmed its lands north, central and south, and set up shops everywhere to make Old World staples and invent hybrid foods that used New World ingredients in recipes developed back home.

DMart

The next waves of immigrants, from Mexico, the Philippines, Poland, Korea, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Ecuador, Portugal and other parts of India, formed enclaves throughout the state and brought with them their culinary traditions that added to the increasingly rich foodscape.

Food Bazaar

Foreign-born populations in Hudson, Middlesex, Bergen, Union and Passaic counties began serving forth in restaurants and specialty markets foods you’d once needed a passport to experience. From Ducktown, an Italian enclave in Atlantic City, to the Koreatowns of Palisades Park and Fort Lee; from the Ironbound’s Portuguese community of Newark to Havana on the Hudson in West New York and Union City; from India Square in Jersey City and Little India in Edison/Iselin to the Little Istanbul, Little Lima, Little Bangladesh and the huge number of various Little Middle Easterns in Paterson, there’s a world of authentic cuisines in New Jersey.

Travel to the ‘burbs outside Atlantic City, and you’ll find expert Vietnamese food. There’s more in Cherry Hill and on the outskirts of Camden. Filipino fare is flush in Jersey City’s Little Manila and also in Bergenfield, Piscataway, Edison, Belleville, and Woodbridge. Scout Mexican in Long Branch, Freehold, New Brunswick, Trenton, Vineland, Bridgeton, Lakewood, and Red Bank. Don’t expect to visit South Paterson without spending a day devouring Turkish foods.

Mitsuwa

What’s more American than a bountiful table with an equally bountiful number of options? Our food choices in New Jersey, thanks to the various waters we have for fishing, the wide range of soils we have to cultivate and grow crops and raise animals for meat and dairy, and the globe-spanning backgrounds of our population who bring a world of edibles right to our doors, are second to none.

Second to none.

I see that as I shop in Mitsuwa, the Japanese uber-market in Edgewater with not only a peerless selection of fresh and prepared foods but also with a food court that puts to shame anything you’ve experienced in a major mall.

Chowpatty

I see, as well, that we indeed are second to none when I scour the shelves at NetCost, the Russian/Eastern European supermarket in Manalapan or its sister, Gourmanoff, in Paramus. There’s an increasing number of Hmarts in the Garden State, a testament, yes, to the Korean populations but also to the interest folks of all ethnicities have in Korean cuisine and ingredients. Food Bazaar (I like the one in West New York) is where you can find Latin-leaning ingredients, and Jersey City’s India Square is home to a host of markets, including D-Mart. I’m also a fan of Chowpatty’s small snacks-and-sweets shop in Iselin.

If you want to look for America today, start here at home, in New Jersey. Because we are both the original melting pot and the modern melting pot, convening in our compact state at the biggest table the world has ever known.

Bon appetit!

Editor’s Note: The 2018 Garden State Culinary Arts Awards took place in April. Among the winners were Razza Pizza Artigianale’s Dan Richer (Outstanding Chef), who was profiled in a past issue of EDGE, and Ariane Daguin (Culinary Legend) of D’Artagnan in Union.

“The hay-smoked duck that brings art to the science of the senses comes with a silky puree of eggplant and a dab of jammy fig.”

By Andy Clurfeld

OSTERIA RADICI

4 South Main Street, Allentown

Phone: (609) 223.2395 • www.osteriaradici.com

All major credit cards accepted. BYOB. Open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday. Two five-course tasting menus each at $84 per person; a la carte options offered. Reservations accepted.

The leg of duck looks lightly lacquered as if it might crack if I spear it with a fork and prompt a popping sound that would snap me to attention if I weren’t already sitting high on my seat. I’m on alert because the smoky aroma isn’t the beach bonfire kind I’m used to, but something of the field. Is burning waves of grain possible? I can’t wait any longer to figure it out; I dig in.

The duck, hay-smoked as it turns out, tastes like a cross between a confit from Southern France and a subtle version of a spit-roasted bird from China. It doesn’t have that totally melting mouth-feel of confit, nor is there a tinge of stickiness from something cloying. It’s pure duck, cunningly gamey, irresistibly tender and beguilingly layered, infused with the flavor of fire at all levels. It challenges every sense.

It’s the way Randy Forrester cooks, and the result is an intimate, highly personal, provocative cuisine that only can be found at Osteria Radici, the 24-seat restaurant he and his wife, Ally, own and run in one of New Jersey’s smallest burgs, Allentown. Mark it as the capital for instinctive, individualized cooking on your culinary map

all photos courtesy of Osteria Radici

Osteria Radici, ostensibly, is Italian. Regional Italian, to be sure, with menus that change constantly, are tweaked daily and always reflect what’s happening on the Garden State’s farms and in the waters off its shores. For Forrester, that’s not the only jump-off point when he works in the kitchen. The Forresters travel, they read, they forge relationships with food artisans. The chef has cooked in celebrated big-city restaurants alongside big-name personalities, but he’s his own man in this storefront, doing food his way. Forrester, and Radici, remind me of Marc Vetri when the James Beard Award winner was first cooking at Vetri in Philadelphia.

The hay-smoked duck that brings art to the science of the senses comes with a silky puree of eggplant and a dab of jammy fig, which take turns doing a two-step with the star of the show. Follow it with Chinese long lamb sausage and topped with nonna-style ricotta salata, and you’re rolling. Keep it going with malloreddus, a kind of ridged gnocchi Forrester makes from semolina, as in its native Sardinia, and tosses with pork cheeks, shreds of green cabbage and nuggets of mushroom. The dish is inexplicably, delightfully juicy; it practically washes itself down.

Forrester can do stately and elegant, too. Veal loin, thickly sliced, roasted till rosy and stacked on a potage of corn flecked with kernels, is given a couple scoops of aged gorgonzola, whose sharpness bites into tender, dense meat and tames the sweet corn. It’s a genius combination, these three elements I can’t remember ever eating together. By the time I’m onto the olive oil semifreddo with its plush peanut zabaglione and clever pretzel crumble, I also can’t remember feeling slighted that it took me till age 64 to have veal and corn and gorgonzola as an ensemble.

All that, the duck-and-eggplant, beans-and-lamb, pasta- and-pork, veal-and-corn, and semifreddo-zabaglione, is one of Randy Forrester’s new tasting menus; it’s the “Dalla Terre,” the meat menu. There’s also a “Dal Mare,” a seafood-focused menu. You need to do both.

While doubtlessly Forrester’s menus will have evolved, you may this fall be lucky enough to catch the chef taking liberties with New Jersey’s best-anywhere sea scallops by seducing the sultry-sweet hunks with something that resembles a relish— only his is made of the yellow squash variety called gold bar. There’s a tinge of heat from chilies and a swoon from just the right herb, opal basil.

Forrester’s octopus transcends the cephalopod’s continued trendiness. He chars it, then tosses it with red grapes, fried capers and fennel pollen to make a kind of stew that tastes at turns sprightly and fresh and cuddly and warming. That’s some feat.

I may be most charmed, though, by Forrester’s pastas. He tends to focus on just a few ingredients, and coaxes out of them a world of flavor. He winds white anchovies and peperonata through strands of spaghetti, then punctuates the dish with specks of parsley. Nothing is out of balance: There’s not a too-salty, too-sweet, tooanything note about the dish that’s a tribute to the red, white and green in every way. Speaking of speck, the spiced cure of this particular pork proves an intriguing accent to the rich flesh of cobia, which is served on a petite ragout of chicory and green onions. Seeping out from under this splendid dish is a broth worth bottling.

This fish menu is capped by a peach custard that’s as light and frothy as a soufflé and harbors hints of sweet vermouth; it’s finished with finely grated almond. Now that’s how you end a seafood dinner.

You can, if you wish, pick and choose from what’s listed on the two fixed-price menus and order a la carte; all perdish prices are printed on the menu. But don’t do that; at least not your first time at Osteria Radici. 

Randy Forrester has a masterful understanding of all things culinary and is that rare chef who can fuse science with art and make it all taste so, so good. His tasting menus are symphonic, and they flow perfectly. Eat, and learn. And remember you were there at the beginning of a career that will do Allentown, and New Jersey, very proud.

WHO ARE THESE TWO?

Is Randy Forrester the best chef you’ve not yet heard of? Well, if you’re tuned into the James Beard Awards circuit, you likely are aware that little Osteria Radici in Allentown was on the national list of nominees for Outstanding New Restaurant this past year. A 24-seat BYOB from a teeny town in New Jersey usually isn’t a contender for this award. But Osteria Radici, which opened in October 2017, only a few months before the Beard nominees were announced, already had attracted the attention of the culinary cognoscente – and chefs.

Randy and Ally, who grew up in Central Jersey, first met and became friends while students at the Peddie School in Hightstown. They went off to college (she, Wellesley; he, Boston) and, after reconnecting, began dreaming of creating their own restaurant. In the meantime, Randy amassed serious kitchen credentials, working with Scott Conant at L’Empero and Fabio Trabocchi at Fiamma, and, closer to home, The Ryland Inn and Harvest Moon Inn. They chose Allentown to both stay close to family in the Hopewell Valley and to farmers and artisans they’d grown to admire.

Today, Ally is a teacher by day, while Randy does it all from scratch at the restaurant. Both work the five evenings a week—Tuesday through Saturday—that Osteria Radici is open for dinner. They travel widely; last March, for example, during Ally’s school vacation, they went to Umbria with their daughter Giada, now 2. Giada, by the way, already speaks Italian—taught by her father, who speaks it (and cooks it) fluently.

“Sea scallops from Barnegat Bay showed the kitchen at its height…it was another plate that neglected neither style nor substance.”

By Andy Clurfeld

A TOUTE HEURE 

232 Centennial Avenue, Cranford 

Phone: (908) 276.6600

Reservations and major credit cards accepted. Lunch: Tuesday through Friday from noon to 2 p.m. Dinner: Tuesday through Thursday from 5 to 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday from 5 to 10 p.m. Sunday brunch is served the last Sunday of the month from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. There is a special “Second Saturday” dinner served from noon to 10 p.m. Prices: Bites and appetizers range from $3 for an oyster to $19. Entrees range from  $35 to $45. Mussels pots are $16 for a half pot and $30 for a full pot with frites. Desserts are $10. BYOB.

They had me at the duck rillettes.

First, that this oh-so-French specialty was on tap. Next, that they were textbook: Duck meat, slow-cooked in duck fat till silky-tender, then shredded, salted, potted and topped with more fat, is preserved and released from captivity when the flavor of the duck has been oomphed to the nth degree, then presented with proper toasts to diners who miss the dish’s native Dordogne like Harry Connick Jr. misses New Orleans.

OK, I think to myself; you can go home again, even if the home fires aren’t being lit by the same ol’ folks.

A Toute Heure in Cranford, one of my favorite restaurants in all of the Garden State, may have a new chef and new owners, but the charms and sincerity of the plates coming out of its kitchen match that of founders Andrea and Jim Carbine, who sold the restaurant last spring.

Today’s proprietors, Nathally and Mario Florio, and their on-point chef Alexandre Gomes, also source locally and fanatically, but they bring a bit more of a cosmopolitan approach to the menu. Sure, there are the humble peasant-fare-gone-haute rillettes, but there’s also an asparagus duo that sings with a citified French accent:

Photos courtesy of A Toute Heure

Both white and green asparagus are employed, along with peppery greens, a coddled egg oozing golden yolk and dabs of bearnaise tickled with tarragon. Gomes then takes the pitch-perfect dish a step higher by sprinkling the pretty plate with bacon dust. Holy smoke! It’s a unifier.

Speaking of pretty plates, I hope the special salmon tartare makes regular appearances in A Toute Heure’s new lineup: The rosy-orange sushi-caliber fish, chopped and mounded amid peas and near-translucent slices of radish before being topped with microgreens, sits atop a thick wash of pea puree given a couple arcs of fruity olive oil for good measure. It was the dish that made it clear to me why the Florios hired Gomes as their chef. Finesse, top-notch technical skills and an acute awareness of how to bring nuance to a dish aren’t exactly qualities priced at a dime a dozen.

Those same skills are evident in the soft-shell crab, expertly seared so the shells are crisp-tender, while the meat remains sweet-juicy. It gets a lift from two plate partners that offer a counterpoint to the flavor and texture of the dish: an aioli that resonates with musky, gently bitter saffron to offset the sweetness of the crab, and shavings of cucumber that do the crunch-squirt do-si-do just like the shellfish.

The only dish we tried that fell short was the roasted chicken, billed to have been marinated in piri-piri. Piri-piri is a hyper-hot chile native to Africa that’s used in a Portuguese chicken dish that folks make pilgrimages to experience. It’s incendiary in that irresistible way, with waves of heat ebbing and flowing in the presence of, usually, garlic and vinegar or lemon. The chicken here, to be sure, was lovely, but the bird and the broccolini and the roasted potatoes sure would’ve been special with real-deal piri-piri heat.

Sea scallops from Barnegat Bay showed the kitchen at its height: Again, a textbook sear; again, perfect produce partners in baby carrots and discs of purple potatoes, as well as earthy shiitakes and delicate oyster mushrooms; again, a garnish that proves it’s more than a toss-off in fava leaves. It was another plate that neglected neither style nor substance.

But what about mussels? A Toute Heure, the original, was known for its mussels pots, an ever-changing, ever-evolving repertoire of them. We indulged with the new “beurre fondue” mussels pot, a rich concoction bolstered by butter (lots), cream (lots) and leeks. This version’s statement-making, breakout ingredient is the addition of potent, but not overwhelming, garlic confit. (Fortunately, the billed “truffle” had little impact.)

Salad for dessert? You bet. Grab it when it’s peach season and Gomes is grilling his peaches before tossing them with raspberries and blueberries, then topping them with the creamy Shy Brothers’ “cloumage” from coastal Massachusetts. A drizzle of honey, and you have just my kind of dessert. I have to admit, though, that I also was smitten with the ricotta cake, infused as it was with olive oil, plied with citrus and hazelnut, then plated with macerated cherries.

For a decade, Andrea and Jim Carbine served New Jersey in exemplary style, creating a restaurant in A Toute Heure that paved the farm-to-table way for small, personal, bistro-style restaurants determined to educate, enlighten and, ultimately, elevate our expectations of what could be done in a casual, comfortable setting. Like good parents, they gave all they could – and then they let the next generation do their own thing.

Their chosen successors, chef Gomes and the Florios, aren’t just worthy; they are world class. 

LET EVERYONE DRINK ROSÉ

Never have I met a restaurant menu that begs for a French rose more than A Toute Heure’s. It’s possible that the menu served forth by the new regime begs for such a rosé even more forcefully. So much of what we ate, and so much of what we passed up on this first round at the new ATH, seemed made for rosé.

So now a bit of torture: My dine team for this dinner drank the most special wine I’ve ever brought on an eating mission—the 2015 Chateau Simone Rosé. Don’t expect to find it at any old wine shop or liquor store. It’s imported by Neal Rosenthal (Mad Rose), and not exactly in big-box-store quantities. Chateau Simone is in the Palette appellation, which is a teensy speck of a wine district within the mere spot of a wine region known as Bandol, which is known as the premier place in all of Provence (and the Cotes de Provence appellation) for rosé.

Quite simply, it’s the bee’s knees of rosé, many, many, many layered, nuanced, rich yet lyrical. It’s delicious, and its partnership with everything from the duck rillettes to the salmon tartare to the soft-shell crab to the asparagus—yes!—to the scallops and the mussels was exactly what the wine-food pairing thing is about.

New Jersey’s culinary stars are getting their long-deserved red carpet moment.

By Andy Clurfeld

Nick Pizzonia, New Jersey’s leading advocate for artisan organic and natural wines, is having a morning-after revelation following a dinner crafted by Chef David Viana at Heirloom Kitchen in Old Bridge. Pizzonia describes each course in detail. He talks about the technical precision of Viana’s cooking, the pinpoint harmony of his plate partnerships and the revelatory ways the chef plays accent off the main ingredient. He talks about Viana in comparison to other chefs working today in the Garden State, and comes to the conclusion that Viana is a singular talent. But, the wine authority notes, Viana is plying his profession in unprecedented company.

Photo courtesy of Common Lot

“New Jersey is having a moment,” says Pizzonia, founder of Court Wine Club. “We’re definitely having a moment.”

Yes, we are. In almost 30 years of writing restaurant reviews and covering all things culinary, I’ve never seen such a high level of talent spread so widely among the culinary professions in New Jersey. Chefs at fine-dining restaurants get much ink and buzz. Yet also winning raves and fans are the Garden State’s farmers and food artisans, its neighborhood ethnic eateries headquartered in enclaves that reflect New Jersey’s richly diverse population, and its brewers and vintners. 

Indeed, as the winners in the new Garden State Culinary Arts Awards show—from Common Lot in Millburn (Best New Restaurant), to The Bent Spoon in Princeton (Outstanding Food Artisan), to Melick’s Town Farm in Oldwick (Outstanding Farmer), to Flying Fish Brewing of Somerdale’s Gene Muller (Outstanding Beer Professional), to The Frog and the Peach in New Brunswick (Best Restaurant), and to Drew Araneo of Drew’s Bayshore Bistro in Keyport (Best Chef)—quality and star power are everywhere in New Jersey. 

The headline that stopped Edible America in its tracks came this past September, when The New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells awarded three stars to Chef Dan Richer’s Razza Pizza Artigianale in Jersey City. The cheeky headline read: “Is New York’s Best Pizza in New Jersey?” OK, we Joiseyans are used to this kind of stuff, this New Yawky taking ownership of New Jersey superiority whenever it suits. 

Wells answered that question with a “yes.” But he also said something more important, something we must credit Richer for doing, beyond crafting the best pizza, bread and butter, as well as brilliant, exquisite, peerless salads: “…Razza dresses its pies with local ingredients so distinctive that every time I’ve eaten there, I’ve learned something about New Jersey farms.”  

Bingo! Richer, going back to his days at Arturo’s in Maplewood, has been sourcing those “local ingredients” that are “so distinctive.” We’re familiar with our heirloom tomatoes, of course, but Richer brings to the forefront hazelnuts from good ol’ Rutgers U, mozzarella from buffalo in Sussex County, plus Jersey wheatberries essential to Razza’s pizza and pork from Jersey-raised pigs fundmental to Razza’s meatballs. As well as greens and lettuces, fruits and perhaps 30 seasons worth of vegetables. He gets what micro-seasons in the Garden State are all about.

So we have Richer and Viana and vivid voices such as Ehren Ryan, chef-owner of Common Lot—whose Bag of Egg and Crisps dish I challenge our new fans at The Times to refrain from headlining,  “Is New York’s Best Nibble Found Due West of the Hudson?” You don’t scan a menu at Common Lot without a brown paper bag of coddled, seasoned-egg-coated homemade potato chips in your hand, fortifying you for the task of editing down Ryan’s engagingly idiosyncratic menu to a manageable dinner.

Take evidence from an early fall dinner-for-two: Scallops, sliced and torched for a mere blink come fanned over the juice of a roasted chicken, then topped with nibs of preserved lemon and near-translucent shreds of pickled fennel. The interplay of sweet and sour, faint anise and bold earth comes close to being the complete aesthetic experience. As does rare beef tossed as lettuces might be with kohlrabi and apple, mint and Thai basil, then given a Peter Pan-style dusting of fried kombu and togarashi just for kicks. Literally.

Ember-roasted cabbage? Who would think that this, as an entree, could make my heart race? With a pesto-like backdrop of pulverized wild nettles, mushrooms both nubby-meaty and skinny-slithery, plus a salad of teeny flowers and herbs as texturally compelling as a John Robshaw textile, my crush is understandable. You might fall for the elegant, compressed Berkshire suckling pig—as intense a dish as I’ve seen Ryan plate, what with farro, pickled tomatoes and leeks keeping pace with the pig and a paisley-shaped dollop of beer-infused mustard doing its best to counter the richness. Wimps might try to unite around something seafood at Common Lot, such as a pan-roasted tilefish given a stew-like side of baby artichokes and grilled corn then topped with sorrel and muksy dashi fortified with corn husk.

This is New Jersey now. From Latour at Crystal Springs Resorts in Sussex County, whose culinary pilot is the exemplary chef and mentor Anthony Bucco, to Red Store in Cape May Point, the domain of its fearless and focused chef-owner Lucas Manteca, the Garden State’s map is pocked with pins earmarking destination dining. There are must-stops in New Brunswick for Bruce Lefebvre’s globe-spanning fare that won The Frog and The Peach the GSCAA’s Best Restaurant nod and in Keyport for Best Chef Araneo’s Southern-accented, soul-satifying dishes at Drew’s Bayshore Bistro. But then why not detour mere miles to Tinton Falls to score sweets made by the GSCAA’s Outstanding Pastry Chef Debbie Mumford at Mumford’s Culinary Center, taking in while you’re there the savory eats made by her husband, the legendary farmer-chef Chris Mumford?

While Chris Mumford was farming every inch of land in and around his late 1980s-to-late-1990s namesake restaurant in Long Branch, the Melicks of Oldwick in Hunterdon’s still-bucolic Tewksbury Township were not resting on the laurels of their 70 million years of tending orchards and fields in New Jersey. Well, maybe not 70 million, but you get the idea. George Melick, now 81 and pretending to be retired, saw his children, Peter, John and Rebecca win the GSCAA for Outstanding Farmer this year. The First Family of Farming in the Garden State is known for an ever-growing list of products: the state’s best apples and peaches, vegetables integral to the menus of chefs at top restaurants, sweet cider and, the newest offering, hard cider. You don’t know thirst-quenching till you taste Melick’s Ginger Hard Cider.

Speaking of thirst-quenching: The neck-and-neck award in the GSCAAs could have gone to the three finalists in the Outstanding Beer Professional category. Gene Muller, of Flying Fish, nabbed it, but his worthy adversaries at Carton Brewing in Atlantic Highlands and Kane Brewing in Ocean Township are to micro-brewing today what Bud and Ballantine were to macro-brewing back when. As a friend was telling me about his addiction to matching Jersey brews to Jersey cheeses, I immediately mind-flew to a pair of Garden State cheesemakers whose cheeses will be at my own last supper: Eran Wajswol, of Valley Shepherd in Long Valley, and Jonathan and Nina White, of Bobolink Dairy & Bakehouse in Holland Township. Some great names, huh?

Truth is, my favorite way to play the name game in New Jersey’s culinary star galaxy is to list my favorite ethnic eateries. I love to say “Cucharamama,” the name of James Beard Award-winning Chef Maricel Presilla’s fine-dining restaurant in Hoboken, but I love to eat her South American food even more. Don Julio, the Chifa restaurant (Chinese, Peruvian-style) in Elizabeth, is on my lips every time I’m hungry and craving wonton soup and fried rice that’s a thousand steps up from strip-mall Chinese take-out.

Maricel Presilla by Joseph Corrado

The thing I may love most about eating in NJ is finding ethnic fare in seemingly unexpected places: Who, outside of Jersey, would think Atlantic County is a hotbed for Vietnamese?  Lucky us, living here and knowing better. Count me as one of the many No. 1 fans of Tieu Mien Tay in Pleasantville. Korean? I happily pound the streets of Palisades Park and Fort Lee way up north for the beguiling dishes of Korea, but right at this moment, I’m soft on Soft Tofu in Fort Lee. Middle Eastern is suddenly all the rage, thanks to MishMish in Montclair, while Eastern Mediterranean just might be the coming rage now that newcomer Reyla has taken hold in Asbury Park.

NEW & NOTEWORTHY

Photo courtesy of 100 Steps

So why do I have such high hopes for New Jersey’s culinary future? Because 2017 is yielding an excellent crop of newcomers to the scene.

I mentioned Reyla, a sister restaurant to one of 2016’s top new restaurants, Barrio Costero. The Asbury Park siblings are now two of the hottest draws in the beach city, Barrio for modern Mexican and Reyla for both classic and creative updates on Eastern Mediterranean. There’s also Cargot, a classy French brasserie that’s new in Princeton; Gayeon, a modern Korean in Fort Lee; Hearthside, a wood-fired mecca in Collingswood; and Juniper Hill, a ramped-up roadhouse in Clinton Township where fine-tuned seasonal small plates rule.

The reincarnations of Cranford’s own A Toute Heure and 100 Steps, sold by Andrea and Jim Carbine into hands as capable and nurturing, are showing that second turns can be first rate, with Alexandre Gomes doing high-style fare that’s both exquisite and accessible at ATH and Joe Beninato offering unexpected takes and ingredients on plates that make OHS more than a supper club.

Authentic. Exotic. Spectacular. So what are you waiting for?

By Andy Clurfeld

Summer travel season is upon us. Time to dust off the passport and plot excursions to ports exotic and intriguing. Or stay home and travel light—very light. And very near. Once upon a time, adventurous diners in New Jersey had to travel thousands of miles to experience the cuisines of foreign places. Not true today.  

In fact, Maplewood resident Anthony Ewing is tracking and mapping the Garden State’s myriad and many ethnic cuisines on his in 2010, it’s a veritable United Nations of dining destinations that includes some 1,200 Jersey restaurants serving 60 different cuisines. “From Afghan to Vietnamese,” Ewing says.   

The New Jersey native, who started mapping his top food finds after moving back home from Brooklyn, got us to thinking about all the terrific eateries practically in our backyard. Sure, we love our sushi nights, and the “local” that serves a beloved Italian dish is never out of our hearts. But on this trip around our neck of the woods, we wanted to explore foods a little less familiar. So we’ll hold the best-sushi-rolls and Nonna-approved red-sauce roundups for other issues of EDGE. 

Herewith, an eating tour that includes Chinese-inspired Peruvian, Ethiopian, Jamaican, Middle Eastern, Southern Indian and Russian cuisines.

Photo courtesy of Rupamdas75

Chowpatty

1349 Oak Tree Road • Iselin

732-283-9020

www.chowpattyfoods.com

Let’s cut to the postscript: So enamored of the dahi batata poori at Chowpatty were we that, seconds after we finished dining, Atsuko Sasaki and I rushed next door to Chowpatty’s market to buy the ingredients to make them at home. The little dish that captivated was a small, delicate puff made from chickpea and rice flours that’s sliced at the top so it could be stuffed with potato, a cilantro-green chili kind of pesto, a tart-faintly sweet reddish-brown sauce, and a slap of super-creamy yogurt. We downed those babies in no time

Now, my pal Atsuko is a certified chef in Japan and mightily skilled in the kitchen, so she replicated the dhai bataka poori at home first time out. I, of course, forgot the yogurt, but still managed to enjoy eight puffs before I even sat down to dinner.

This is what dinner at Chowpatty can do for you: educate and stimulate. 

After being enchanted by the dhosas, Atsuko found a friend who offered to teach her how to make the crispy rice flour crepes that are super-sized and can be filled with all manner of things: spices, cheeses, onions, vegetables. We nab the cheese-masala dhosa that puts two spice mixtures into play to great effect. A chile-potent red does a do-si-do with a cilantro-coconut green as they take aim at the sultry cheese melting into the crunchy crepe.

The sturdier uttapam, also made with rice flour, is served here much like a pizza. Ours is topped with a variety of vegetables and we can’t help but slice it like a tomato pie. We’re loving it alongside the tuver ringan, a mash of eggplant and peas that comforts and warms.

You must try a Thali platter at Chowpatty: Served on a round platter compartmentalized into little dishes of vegetables, rice, dal, pickled vegetables, yogurt-based sauces and legumes, it’s a feast meant to be eaten with tiny pappadum and charred bread made with millet flour. Don’t be shy with the sauces, including chili pastes hot and moderate, ghee and raita.

Dessert? Go for the pineapple-orange ice cream or the very dense, very rich, extraordinarily delicious mango kulfi, crowned by pulverized pistachios. We’ll end with another postscript: That’s sold in the next-door market, too. 

Nargiz Deli & Cafe

1651 Springfield Ave. • Maplewood

973-761-0123

Facebook: NargizDeliCafe

You can get gyros and paninis and pita sandwiches crammed with feta-cukes-tomato and your craving of the moment (lamb, chicken, hummus) at Nargiz, a specialty market with a bent towards things Russian and Eastern Mediterranean. But why get what practically is ordinary in NJ when you can get a piroshkie?

This, to me, is a no-brainer. This Russian marvel is an uber version of a pirogi  crossed with a buttery, flaky almost brioche-style roll stuffed with something wonderful. Honestly,  you don’t even need sour cream. That’s how good these piroshkies are.

Photo courtesy of Nargiz Deli & Cafe

Do like we did and get an assortment. Lamb? Yup. Potato? Natch. Cheese? Of course. As I eat them, I can’t help but feel this is a kind of melting-pot food that so many people from so many cultures would relate to easily. On top of the pirogi-brioche appeal, it’s got a Korean pork bun sensibility and a hometown hoagie attitude.

Lamb meatballs are killer tasty at Nargiz. Find them in the display cases and tell the friendly folks behind the counter that you’d like them warmed so you can eat a bowl of them at one of the cafe tables. While you’re at it, score the earthy, forcefully smoky eggplant casserole and a scoop of the Georgian bean salad, flush with cilantro, chopped onions and nuts. 

Don’t leave without shopping around. I found a pretty jar of pomegranate molasses that will make my next muhammara (red pepper-walnut-pomegranate) spread very likely the best ever. No offense to mail-order businesses, but you never know what you might bump into when combing the shelves of a place like Nargiz. 

I am going to figure out what I’m going to do with the cured sardines I snatched from the refrigerated case. Tonight might be the night I warm some olive with lots of lemon juice and flat-leaf parsley and toss those little fishes with strands of spaghetti and that sauce. Might be? Definitely will be.

Lalibela

261 Irvington Ave. • South Orange

973-327-4840

Facebook: Lalibela Ethiopian

Kategna is injera bread plied with butter and spiked with hot chili spices. It isn’t shy and it isn’t like anything you’ve ever tasted, unless you’ve been intimate with the addictively sour, spongey bread of Ethiopia. Made from teff flour, injera is the vehicle for eating in Ethiopia, used instead of forks and spoons and knives. Its uniquely pourous texture makes it one sublime scooper, and it’s the principal reason you should check out Lalibela, a small, humbly decorated storefront with a devout clientele.

So back to the kategna: Here at Lalibela, the chile-flecked injera is rolled and sliced something like a wrap sandwich – only there’s no filling. The flavor and the texture of the injera itself are what give it charisma.

It’s almost as though there’s an effervescence to injera. It’s rather magical.

Photo courtesy of Lukasz Nowak

Anyway, here’s what happens when you order a pair of entrees at Lalibela and pretty much any Ethiopian restaurant: Both entrees, as well as a pair of sides of your own choosing, come spooned atop a huge, flat pancake of injera. You also get a basket of jelly-roll style injera. Take your pick and start scooping.

The lamb stew, with lots of garlic and onions and a pronounced pop of tomato and pepper, is a stunner, with layers of flavor that serve as foils for the sour bread. A stew of beef is less interesting, mostly because the spicing is less complex, but little dumplings made from chickpea flour and and long-cooked in a berbere-spice mix with onions holds its own with the crisp, thin pancake. 

Collards are a must, for they serve as a bridge between the meats and the legumes. Lentils, for instance, are on fire in a way that rivets; when you alternate between the collards and the fiesty beans, there’s a yin-yang that comes into play.

The service at Lalibela varies: You might get a helpful soul or one less interested in your culinary education. Odds are, no matter, you will at very least bump into new flavors that make for a new favorite dish.

MishMish

215 Glen Ridge Ave. • Montclair

973-337-5648

www.mishmishcafe.com

MishMish is a hit and hip restaurant in the downtown district, a short stride from Anthropologie and an even quicker journey to the mind-set of Yotam Ottolenghi and his era-defining “Plenty” and “Jerusalem” cookbooks. You want a little Yotam without the kitchen work? Come to MishMish and be transported to the heart of the Middle East.

A local who is conversant in MishMish-ese tells me the hummus is a marvel, but you can skip it in the dip round since it’s easily obtained in hummus bowl form. This is excellent advice, especially since the smoked eggplant spread here is one to order by the gallon. Maybe by the cauldron, since it’s extra-deeply smoky, comes with a flourish of mild, crumbled cheese, and is the perfect partner for the singularly sensational pita. 

Let’s take a moment to talk about this pita. Forget what you buy in the supermarket. This is pita from Planet MishMish, a thicker incarnation that mines the depth of flour like, say, a Dan Richer at Razza (in Jersey City) does for his bread and pizza.

Fried cauliflower is worth the splurge on oil intake, cause it’s so good, so comforting, that it doesn’t even need the yogurt-based dip served on the side. I flat-out adored the shishito peppers char-grilled whole and served naked save for a wedge of lemon. Eat ’em by the bushel.

If you are a card-carrying member of the Ottolenghi flock, you know from shakshuka. (If not, it’s eggs poached in tomatoes, onions, chilies and spices, often served with cheese on top and bread.) You’ve eaten shakshuka for breakfast, for lunch and for dinner. It’s the absolute-right-at-any-time dish. How did we live without shakshuka?Anyway, MishMish does it with mushrooms and harissa, with lamb meatballs and with lamb sausage. Each has a following. I can vouch for the lamb meatballs. I could write a whole story just about the lamb meatballs, but I don’t have time or space. 

Photo courtesy of Pimento Grill

Mostly because I want to get to the hummus bowl with ground brisket ragu. Are you in heaven yet? No kidding: The folks here grind up brisket and add it to a slushy of tomatoes and warming spices. Think cinnamon most prominently and you’ve nailed it. If you eat this dish and don’t immediately plan a dinner party, do not consider yourself on the food-centric spectrum. Depending on your mood, you might favor the grilled chicken shawarma hummus bowl, a beauty thanks to the roasted tomatoes and drop-dead sensuous caramelized onions.

Think about it. Is there a reason not to eat the MishMish way every day?

Pimento Grill

1908 Springfield Ave. • Maplewood

973-846-4555

www.pimentogrill.biz

Pauline Barnes, owner/chef at this sweet storefront, wants you to know that once you enter her domain, you are under her care. And guidance. She’ll help you plan your dinner, your party, your life. She’ll tell you why you need Pimento’s jerk chicken, why you must experience her oxtails, why you need the coconut “run-down” red snapper. 

We are happy in her presence and soothed by her comforting Jamaican fare. No, it’s not high-on-the-Scoville scale stuff, but it’s lazy-day swell when island attitudes beckon and you want to turn yourself over to dishes that take you away. Like a Calgon bath used to do.

Talk about those oxtails. They are simmered in gravy, along with big, broad butter beans and a host of island herbs and gentle spices. Similarly attuned to the milder side of eating life are the brown stew vegetables, which incorporate soya chunks to maximum advantage. This is the dish that will cure you of your misconception that everything island is going to set off a 12-alarm fire in your mouth.

We took on the curried goat with relish, gnawing on the hunks of lamb-like meat. Ditto for the jerk chicken, which is among the mildest I’ve ever tried and totally right for beginners. We snacked on the fried sweet plantains throughout dinner, because, frankly, they put you in a “nothin’-can-be-finer” mood.

I think the under-the-radar fishes just might be the best tickets on Pimento’s menu. Pauline’s touted run-down snapper is a winner, simmered as it is in a coconut sauce and served head-on, bones-in, yet easily filleted at table. It was the sauce, creamy, yet light, and flecked with greens, black beans and onions, that made the dish divine. The escoveitch whiting, even though fried, offered a nice ping of vinegar.

Hello, island time. We need you.

Don Julio

50 Marshall St. • Elizabeth

908-820-9494

www.donjuliorestaurantnj.com

Chinese immigrants to Peru in the mid- to late-19th century brought with them culinary concepts and traditions they fused with ingredients and new sensibilities they discovered in their new home in South America. The result is a cuisine known as “Chifa,” and nowhere in New Jersey is it found with more authenticity and sheer deliciousness than Don Julio.

Located near the waterfront here, Don Julio is a destination. It can be crazy-packed on weekends; fair warning. Folks come for both the Chifa and also traditional Peruvian fare. The menu, almost telephone-book long, is worth coming early to read so you can study and plot.

Photo courtesy of Luis Delboy-Don Lucho

Here’s what I think you should do: Assemble a large party and go all-out. Do Chifa as your primary, but don’t miss the best of Peru here. First, have the ceviche, for it’s an expertly crafted Peruvian model, flush with shrimp, topped with hunks of sweet potato and plain potato, a chunk of big-kerneled Peruvian corn, crunchy beans and a ton of onion rings. Bet you will eat the whole thing.

Then go for the wonton soup. Frankly, strip mall American Chinese joints water down, and dumb down, wonton soup. See what it can be by sipping the mutlilayered broth holding delicate-skin wontons, thick slices of juicy roast pork, thick shreds of cabbage and slices of white-meat chicken. And, ah! The noodles, the noodles!

Fried rice is nirvana. It is light, bright and mostly about the exquisitely cooked rice. It’s neither salty nor dry. It is punctuated by nibs of pork, peas, egg and sprouts, and it possesses a seminal freshness. 

Our server smartly directed us to the sirloin steak over “green noodles.” How simple, yet how beautiful. The “green noodles” are made so by tossing hearty spaghetti-like strands with a verdant sauce that looks and tastes like pesto made with cilantro. Which it is. But, again, there is a lightness and a brightness that speaks to a deft hand in the kitchen.

We cannot resist another recommended dish, the sweet-sour fried fish, which is neither sweet nor sour, but fascinating in its purity of taste. Plied with cabbages and surrounded by a brothy brown sauce, it looks like a bowl of confusion, yet yields clear, clean tastes. It says a lot about Don Julio. Which can teach you a whole lot about “from-away” flavors right in your own backyard.  

ETHNIC NEW JERSEY

Anthony Ewing, founder, publisher, editor, writer of the peerless EthnicNJ.com Web site, has a handful of favorite ethnic restaurants in the EDGE sphere. Here are five, in no particular order, that are worth your while to check out.

The Banderas • Summit • Costa Rican

Enter to a full wall mural of a Costa Rican volcano. Find inside a traditional menu of rice dishes, including chicken and rice and shrimp and rice. “Costa Rica is all about simple, straightforward food,” Ewing says. “Not too spicy.” 

Seoulite • Berkeley Heights • Korean

An early example of authentic Korean is this regional favorite that settled into a mainstream town years ago. “There aren’t barbecue tables,” Ewing says. There are, however, beautiful “soft tofu stews and bibambap made in the kitchen and rice cakes in red pepper broth.” Ewing notes there will be another branch of Seoulite opening soon in Somerville.

Thai House Rock • Colonia • Thai

Well, Thai with a hefty “side of rock-’n’-roll,” Ewing says. Think vinyl records on the walls. “It’s a hole-in-the-wall,” he adds, but the food is sincere. 

Arepas Pues • Elizabeth • Colombian

“Authentic, Colombian-style arepas are served here,” Ewing says, which are different than those from other parts of South America.

Binh Duong II • Hillside • Vietnamese

It’s the younger sibling to the original, in Bloomfield, and Ewing pegs this one as serving better food. In fact: “Some of New Jersey’s best Vietnamese food.”

Editor’s Note: Andy Clurfeld recently presided over the 1st Annual Garden State Culinary Arts Awards. New Jersey’s most influential restaurants and chefs vied for top honors in 13 different categories in front of a standing-room-only crowd of foodies, friends and family. Several nominees have appeared in the pages of EDGE, including Cucharamama, A Toute Heure, Common Lot and The Frog and The Peach. You can check out these stories and others by clicking on the FOOD button at edgemagonline.com.

The future of eating well is right under our feet. 

By Yolanda Navarra 

Everyone used to say my grandmother should have opened a restaurant.

Instead, she married a man with an eight-acre apple orchard and evergreen farm in Holmdel, where he also grew organic vegetables, fruits and flowers. The farm was a magical place and their marriage—farmer and chef—made their house a farm-to-table paradise for me. Whenever she called, I’d squint my little eyes and hold my breath, hoping, for a dinner invitation, which was usually a creative feast of whatever she’d collected from the farm that morning. The first time I ever tasted a Jerusalem artichoke, I was an 11-year-old who couldn’t get enough of unusual flavors. I lived for them. I’ve never forgotten the smell of spices in the kitchen or picking apples from trees, and looking out at the land wondering what might be ready to harvest. All these years later, the flavor of that first Jerusalem artichoke is still on the tip of my tongue.

A New Jersey upbringing doesn’t make me a foodie any more than being hungry for just-picked produce makes me a farmer. Yet with the thousands of farms—and farmers markets and farm-to-table restaurants—dotting the Garden State, I am hardly alone in my obsession for eating local.

Courtesy of Rachel Weston

The state’s official website celebrates the fact that New Jersey continues to live up to its nickname. Our farmers are producing quality crops. While food and agriculture is our third largest industry, New Jersey ranks highest in the production of cranberries, spinach, bell peppers, blueberries and peaches. We also raise famously delicious Jersey tomatoes, corn, apples, strawberries, potatoes, hay, soybeans and nursery stock. Jersey Fresh, a 33-year-old program sponsored by the New Jersey Department of Agriculture to educate consumers about the state’s crops, reports that our farmers grow more than 100 varieties of produce and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of specialty crops. As of 2015, we have 9,100 farms spread out over 715,000 acres of land that generated $1.02 billion in sales the previous year

Rachel J. Weston, chef and author of New Jersey Fresh: Four Seasons from Farm to Table, (the subject of a 2015 EDGE story), says, “If you haven’t eaten corn harvested that same morning, strawberries still warm from the sun or tomatoes just brought in from the field; you haven’t experienced the bounty of the Garden State…[and] when farmers and chefs collaborate together on showcasing Jersey Fresh products in a meal the results are memorable.”

Weston recommends preserving summer and fall produce for winter by making jars of jams, pickles, chutneys, salsas and tomatoes that will be ready to go even if the ground is frozen. In fact, her freezer is stocked with local berries, peaches, pesto and eggplant. Winter finds her cooking with storage crops, including potatoes, carrots and winter squash. She also can’t resist shopping at farmers markets for various mushroom varieties, which are grown in climate-controlled greenhouses

“I supplement a bit from the grocery store,” she concedes, “but with some planning and creativity, it is possible to eat well year-round.”

But it’s not only about the food; Weston also enjoys the personal connection. “Shopping directly from farmers and through a season-long C.S.A. (Community Supported Agriculture, aka “farm share”) program or a visit to a roadside stand provides the opportunity to meet the people who grow our food, learn how it is grown and the opportunity to have fresher, more flavorful options, while supporting our local economy.

FARM TO MARKET

There’s an inherent magic and entertainment value to shopping at a farmers market that the average grocery store can’t offer—coupled with the freshness and immediacy of the food and where it was born. Farmers markets typically offer more than just produce. Eggs, cheese, meats, breads, grain, mushrooms, wine, honey and more are all part of New Jersey’s agricultural output

“I’m a big believer in you get what you pay for…and when you shop at a farmers market, you get the relationship built into that price,” says Chris Cirkus, who manages the West Windsor Community Farmers Market, and also works part-time at the New Jersey Department of Agriculture as the Farm-to-School Assistant Coordinator. Unlike a chain grocer, she adds, farmers market products are competitively priced: “Folks are very mindful of what they can spend on groceries, so we really focus the market on those offerings.” Cirkus also volunteers at Greenwood Ave. Farmers’ Market in Trenton—which was created for food access and health services and is run by the Trenton YMCA—and consults for the 31 & Main Farmers Market at Campus Town, in front of The College of New Jersey

Photo by Chris Cirkus

New Jersey is home to more than 150 farmers markets. Each market is a separate entity; therefore no two are created equal. They can vary in their number of vendors and have their own rules. For instance, some may prohibit anyone other than farmers themselves from vending; in other words, no distributors are allowed. Others prohibit the sale of non-food items. It all depends on the shared vision of the organizers, who can be anyone from community members to townships to businesses.

The West Windsor market, a non-profit organization, began in 2004 and is run by community members. In spite of the township’s support, they operate independently. The market currently features around a dozen vendors, including bakers who use local flours and fruit; a pasta maker who uses local grain and vegetables; ketchup and sauces made with New Jersey tomatoes; jams sourced from local fruit; pickles, and pickled vegetables made with New Jersey vegetables. Two food trucks offer breakfast and lunch using local meat, eggs, and vegetables

The great equalizer is the good intention. Ideally, each market exists to support the community that hosts it. The markets that fail often lack either support, passion, or both. Not every town should have a farmers market, Cirkus says. It depends upon, among other things, what farm stands are nearby.

“Farmers markets don’t typically allow distributors; that’s the point,” she says. “It’s about creating community, engaging with the folks who grow, raise and produce the food.

“It all comes back to the farmers for us, and how we can ultimately highlight them across the entire marketplace. There are statistics about shopping locally and the percentage of a dollar that stays in the local economy when supporting small farms and business. I think it is something like two-thirds of each dollar. If that’s not enough of an incentive to shop at your local farmers market, perhaps the relationship with the farmer or vendor who grew, raised or produced that food is.”

FARM TO TABLE

Can you imagine a world where diners cared about the origin of their food? I can, and I love what that looks like. Farm-to-table establishments would be commonplace and restaurateurs would embody the farm-to-table lifestyle. Farm-to-table would no longer be a movement. It would be a fact of life. 

Courtesy of Beach Plum Farm

Courtesy of Beach Plum Farm

Jim Nawn, owner of the Fenwick Hospitality Group, which produces The Dinky Bar & Kitchen, Main Street Catering & Events, Cargot Brasserie (opening this spring) and Agricola Eatery (agricola is the Latin word for “farmer”), developed 112 acres of farmland in Skillman known as Great Road Farm to supply seasonal, sustainable, antibiotic-free ingredients—including more than 120 vegetable varieties. They have been certified organic for the past two years. “I believe our number-one goal is great-tasting food,” says Nawn, who formerly owned and operated 37 Panera Bread franchises in North Jersey. “I also believe that local and organic produce leads to optimal taste, when we can grow in our limited growing season and in balance with costs .” 

Photo by Fenwick HG

A similar blueprint for success can be found in Cape May, where Curtis Bashaw (above) is co-managing partner of the Cape Resorts Group, which relies on Beach Plum Farm to supply food for the group’s establishments: The Ebbitt Room, Blue Pig Tavern, Rusty Nail, Boiler Room, Exit Zero Cookhouse and Louisa’s Café, all of which are within two miles of the farm. “We bought this farm with the vision of growing food for our restaurants in Cape May,” Bashaw says. “People love to get in touch with where their food comes from and with the natural setting here, just a mile from the Atlantic Ocean.”

The eight-year-old, 62-acre farm supplies most of the produce for all the restaurants, including more than 100 fruit and vegetable varieties, herbs and flowers. Beach Plum Farm even has a kitchen that serves salads, sandwiches and fresh juices. In this case, fresh is synonymous with extraordinary flavor, says Bashaw. “You cut the asparagus at 6:00 in the morning and you are eating it in a salad in the Blue Pig Tavern by lunchtime. That’s pretty fresh. The flavors just pop in a way most people aren’t accustomed to.”

Chef David C. Felton of Ninety Acres relishes what was once his young chef’s dream of having a farm so near to the table, which has become part of his daily mission. Ninety Acres is yet another farm-to-table gem, located in Peapack-Gladstone. Set on sprawling Natirar, the 90-acre portion of a larger property that once belonged to King Hassan II of Morocco, it now has a farm that feeds the restaurant. About 250 chickens supply fresh eggs. Berkshire/Duroc pigs lend to the farm’s sustainability by gobbling up the pre-plate cooking scraps from the restaurant, while sheep graze their way through the cover crops. For composting, the litter from the sheep and pigs are consumed for vital nitrogen, as well as food scraps and non-toxic wood chips and leaves from a nearby county park.

Felton can imagine a more food-conscious existence, too: “I think we’d revert back to a simpler time, when food was more precious and neighbors were more civilized. People used to grow their own food, or knew the people that grew it for them. There was a shared concern for quality ingredients that could feed not just a family, but a community. If everyone cared about their food’s origin, I think personal connections would be strengthened. There would be more communal dining with real conversation, rather than chatter with emoticons.”

Eric LeVine (above right) is among the growing number of New Jersey chefs who rely on local growers for the bulk of their ingredients—which in turn influences their menu offerings. LeVine, chef and partner at Morris Tap and Grill in Morristown and Paragon Tap and Table in Clark, says he is inspired by nature. “Our menu rotates seasonally,” he explains, “so we focus on spring/summer and fall/winter. We change things depending upon what the farmers have to offer and take advantage of what’s available. For example, when corn is at its peak, we’ll grab a couple of  bushels and use them in a dish like corn salad or corn risotto.”

Courtesy of Morris Tap and Grill

The winner of Food Network’s Chopped in 2011, LeVine has partnered with Happy Harvest Hydro Farms in Denville for his supply of greens. Its method of hydroponic farming is a soil-free, insect-free and completely non-toxic approach to growing. He buys other produce from the century-old Donaldson Farms in Hackettstown. What’s most important is getting the right products without going too far afield, LeVine points out: “We source local poultry from a hormone- and cage-free farm in Pennsylvania. All of our fish and meats are from sustainable farms.”

Driven by what he calls an “insane passion,” LeVine has worked in the food industry for the past 37 years. At times, he’s experienced the challenges of scoring enough of the consistently high-quality food he needs to run his businesses. “It’s tough at times because all you want to do is help farmers with their products, but it’s a balancing act.”

Consider the fact that a patron may ask for a slice of tomato on his burger in the off-season. LeVine says, “If the American palate didn’t always demand it, I’d never offer tomatoes this time of year!”

www.istockphoto.com

Upper Case Editorial

WHAT’S IN A (NICK)NAME?

The nickname on your license plate dates back to a speech delivered at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Abraham Browning (below) of Camden described New Jersey  as a “Garden State”—an immense barrel filled with good things to eat and open at both ends. Benjamin Franklin made a similar observation decades earlier. 

Courtesy of Rachel Weston

JERSEY TOMATOES

New Jersey farmers have been growing tomatoes since the 1920s. Now, there are hundreds of varieties. But the quintessential Jersey tomato, the Rutgers 250 (named for Rutgers University’s 250th anniversary), is considered delicious enough to bite into like a piece of fruit so the sweet juice drips down your chin. Rutgers tomatoes, among the most popular Jersey varieties, were once commercially grown specifically for canning—think Campbell’s Soup in Camden. The seeds can still be purchased for growing in your own garden.

Editor’s Note: Eric LeVine demonstrates his commitment to sustainability, his community and his customers through education. Look for classes this spring and summer on farm-to-mouth cooking on his website, www.chefericlevine.com.

“There’s a new chef in town…Christopher Albrecht, a protégé of Tom Colicchio…and his is the ultimate farm-to-table future.”

By Andy Clurfeld

THE RYLAND INN

115 Old Highway 28, Whitehouse Station

Phone: (908) 534.4011

Reservations recommended. Major credit cards accepted. Open from 5 to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 5 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for Sunday brunch and from 4 to 8 p.m. for Sunday dinner. Prices: Snacks and cheese: $6 to $21. Appetizers: $13 to $22. Entrees: $22 to $54. Side dishes: $9. Desserts: $12. Five-course tasting menu: $75; $120 with wine pairings; five-course vegetarian tasting menu: $65; $110 with wine pairings.

The Ryland Inn is a grand old gal. She sits on a sidecar to Route 28 in Whitehouse Station, set back from the bustle of the highway and possessing an elegance that only the most effective facelifts can provide. Oh, she’s had work done, of that you are sure. Yet if you remember her from the old days—say, back in the 1970’s—when pioneers to this once-agrarian part of Hunterdon County used to congregate at the bar, you’ll feel at once at home with your memories and in awe of the rejuvenating renovations. 

Ryland had a rebirth in the 1990’s courtesy of Craig Shelton, a chef who brought it four-star fame and, eventually, a James Beard Award. The kitchen has been manned by a Who’s Who of Garden State chefs (James Laird and Anthony Bucco, to name a couple) and visited by luminaries of all stripes: Ronald Reagan dined there, as did the food cognoscenti from Gourmet, who put Shelton on the cover of the magazine in October 1997.

Photography courtesy of The Ryland Inn

Flash forward to now: There’s a new chef in town, and his is the ultimate farm-to-table future. Christopher Albrecht, a protégé of Jersey son and “Top Chef” star Tom Colicchio, is the definition of the chef-of-today. Albrecht talks soil before he talks anything else in the culinary processes. “The most flavorful bounty any garden or farm produces is not an accident,” the chef says in literature presented with the check to every table at Ryland. “It’s a direct reflection of the condition of the soil.”

Ryland has its own farm and Albrecht, best known from his years at Eno Terra in Kingston, also plucks primo ingredients from more than 20 regional farms, food purveyors and producers to make up his evolving tasting menus, a la carte bill of fare and nightly specials. 

Albrecht merges ingredients of the micro-seasonal moment with simplicity of presentation, function driving flourish—such as the pop of crunch the deep-rose pomegranate seeds give the pitch-perfect thin slices of opa supported by tiny leaves of cilantro and celery, sour-slightly sweet grapefruit in a “snack” of crudo. There is the best dish of the night, a cauliflower-and-mushroom cassoulet, which we begged a portion of from the vegetarian tasting menu. It’s not-pretty brown-and-beige, but it is pure soul food, with flageolets and black-eyed peas providing the base, fennel and leeks the counterpoints, and the starring vegetables the binding flavors.

The tortellini stuffed with a trio of pulled game meats—duck, rabbit and pheasant—suffers from tough, hard-in-parts pasta. However, the smoked game broth, streaked with shards of ricotta and shreds of Swiss chard, is so divine, I lift the bowl to my lips to drink down every ounce. But someone on the line didn’t watch the pot as the tortellini boiled!

A special of quail stuffed with raisin bread, olives and fennel was stunningly salty, both in its breast meat and the skin of the bird. The red corn grits that support the sweet Nantucket bay scallops taste, well, gritty, but when you connect the grits to the scallops with the grilled radicchio, a light bulb goes off. The bitterness of the radicchio, soothed by the red wine reduction and the richness of bone marrow, bridges shellfish and grain. It works. You eat, and you eat more.

Talk about bridges: Fat pappardelle, fortified by squid ink and midnight black, is given the all-luxe treatment with a Bolognese of venison, the warmth of chocolate and the infusing heat of Aleppo pepper. It’s another eat/eat more dish. I didn’t feel similarly about the braised and roasted beef duo, with torpedo-shape onions sitting atop the shredded meat and a thick oval of textbook medium-rare beef standing solo on the plate astride the potato-Swiss chard gratin. All good, fine enough, but the heartstrings felt no tug.

If we saw another charcuterie board pass by, we were going to pitch a fit. Instead, we interrupted the dinner’s flow by ordering one. There’s not just the de rigueur salumi on board, but a riveting chicken-liver mousse and a classic French rolled paté that defines melt-in-mouth sensibilities.

If you’ve never experienced viognier in its Condrieu incarnation with paté, do so here: Though Ryland’s wine list needs to pay better attention to Albrecht’s predilections for sauces, seasonings and spices, the 2011 Domaine Faury Condrieu is a bottle that can take you through the charcuteries and many, many dishes here. 

The kitchen needs to take another pass at its maple flan dessert. The flan, thick, pasty and not maple-y, tasted like canned pumpkin pie filling. Its accompanying citrus salad, spiked with Earl Grey, sported unripe segments of grapefruit, while the funnel cake (which looked, oddly, like a fried soft-shell crab) was heavy with batter and oily. And the oval scoop of whipped cream was overwhelmed by cinnamon. In another finale, the chocolate trio, the chocolate-caramel tart was afflicted with un-dissolved sugar and mighty grainy, a flaw neither the hot chocolate nor the icy semifreddo could mitigate.

So we have Ryland past, Ryland of a rebirth era and, now, Ryland looking ahead. With Albrecht, this nationally known landmark has the right stuff for a bright future.

It’s up to the folks who brought The Ryland Inn to its present, owners Jeanne and Frank Cretella, to let this chef hold sway.  

SUPPORT SYSTEM 

I wondered if Albrecht was getting the proper support in the kitchen with a couple of dishes (quail over-salted, tortellini undercooked). On the whole, the dishes are well-conceived. But, is there a notch that’s not yet been kicked up? I think so.

Ryland deserves, Albrecht deserves and diners deserve service that is head-and-shoulders above the crew on the floor of these stately dining rooms. The front-of-the-house staff needs a crash course in propriety and how to serve in a fine-dining setting. 

This isn’t about a miscue here and there, but across-the-board fundamentals. Information about specific ingredients in dishes is given incorrectly, knowledge about beverages (particularly wine) is lacking, and basic tableside etiquette ignored, with diners’ conversation routinely interrupted and the practice of being watchful from a discreet distance seemingly not taught.

“Roasted lamb belly was the first-round standout, a yin-yang of tenderness of texture  and strength of seasoning.”

By Andy Clurfeld

INC

302 George St., at the corner of New Street, New Brunswick

Phone: (732) 640.0553

Reservations and major credit cards accepted. Hours: Open Monday through Friday from 4 p.m. till 2 a.m. and Saturday from 5 p.m. till 2 a.m. Closed Sundays. 

Prices: Bites: $8.50 to $24.50. Vegetable-based starters: $8 to $13. Entrees: $17 to $26. Extras: $4 to $7, Burgers: $12 to $15. Desserts: $6 to $8.

Our server needs to be flagged down because I forgot to order the House Made Spicy Pickles INC has become justifiably famous for its bill of whiskey fare and cleverly monikered cocktails notwithstanding

How could I do this? I’d prioritized the items on the menu days ahead of time. The pickles were the first item I’d checked off on the list that needed to be winnowed down or risk overloading the kitchen (Server to Intake Chef: “Table 17 wants to run the table—er, menu.” Intake Chef: “Are you waiting on the Olympic Sumo Wrestling Team?”) or merely alarming the back-of-the-house crew. Who could not want these pickles, served in a crammed-full Ball-style jar with jalapeno, garlic, dill, a dash or five of Tabasco, and aromatic from 20 paces?

“Andy,” Erin says, two seconds after our amiable server departs tableside, ample order in hand. “You did not order the pickles.” The pickles were Erin’s only requirement for dinner on this belly-up-to-the-table night. Her tone was gently accusatory. My response was genuinely remorseful. Had I lost my mind in anticipation of the slow-roasted lamb belly? Was the idea of Bacon Bolognese with a poached egg enough to shut down my brain? Pickles normally are a priority in my life; Erin, at age 9, is an experienced and easygoing collaborator on my eating missions and asks for precious little in return for her always-excellent company.

Photography courtesy of INC

“Sir!” I say to our server the next time he passes by our table. “I forgot to order the pickles. Can we still get the pickles?” Erin’s eyes are hopeful

“Of course,” he says. “Just so you know, there are a lot of pickles in one order. You probably won’t be able to finish them.”

Erin and I smile. We know better.

INC, which doesn’t refer to anything incorporated, but stands for “Ingredients-N-Craft,” is properly subtitled American Bar and Kitchen. It’s a New Brunswick whiskey bar, with a deep selection of brown liquors, and a spirited craft cocktail list sporting drinks named to prompt smiles and even giggles. Lavender Holyfield? Laird’s Gin, St. Germaine, fresh lemon juice, and a simple syrup scented with blueberries and lavender. Fallen Angel stars Angel’s Envy and a supporting cast of cold-weather add-ins. You can get a Who Killed Roger Rabbit, with Bulleit Bourbon, carrot juice, ginger beer and a bolt of thyme-infused simple syrup, or down Brunch on the Lower East Side without missing a trend: house-made bacon-infused bourbon, Knob Creek Smoked Maple Bourbon, vermouth and orange bitters. Catch the scene? You are supposed to have fun here.

We did. How could we not, with a platter of Tennessee-style “prosciutto,” a thick-cut ham with layers of smoke and a mere suspicion of sweet sitting in front of us. The plate was perfectly partnered with mild whipped ricotta, a mound of olive tapenade, and a splay of old-fashioned health salad that shouted Jewish deli circa 1960. Speaking of crunch, the pickled daikon radish and cukes gave backbone to the Vietnamese-style steamed buns, filled with pork belly and given a wash of hoisin sauce. The much-anticipated roasted lamb belly was the first-round standout, a yin-yang of tenderness of texture and strength of seasoning. You’re given much to play with on this plate, including lemon-licked yogurt that gave Middle Eastern nuance to the lamb, mint, and cranberries that offered throwback accenting tastes, and shavings of zucchini that provided a kind of palate cleanse between the variously spiced bites. Good stuff.

Skip the eggplant “meatballs,” which have a glutinous mouth-feel that clashes with the ricotta, tomato sauce, and olives co-habiting the plate. Better in the vegetable-strong segment of starters: the kimchi fried rice, which has a roster of produce within that could nourish a family of six for a week, and Kung Pao cauliflower, which marries the current craze of cauliflower-cauliflower-everywhere (and every way) with the ubiquitous sweet-sour sauce found in zillions of strip-mall Chinese dishes. Only INC does it better: The sauce doesn’t even approach cloying; sour and a touch of tart makes it feisty, punching up the cruciferous vegetable.

By the time our entrees were arriving, INC had started to swing. There were couples at high-top tables, folks lounging around the regular dining tables and a lively bar scene. The space that once was home to Daryl, a wine bar that made a splash years back, sits astride the Heldrich Hotel in the heart of the downtown district. It was revamped and re-imagined by Mark Farro, who also owns Uproot in Warren, and his chef, Ryan Anderson, early in 2016. So far, in a competitive restaurant city, it’s holding its own.

It should, if the Bacon Bolognese continues on the menu. It’s a kind of make-it-yourself carbonara, with a perfectly poached egg sitting atop peppery cavatelli tossed with applewood smoked bacon, tomato, and mozzarella. Prick the egg, let it run into the rest, toss (and toss some more), and you have a pasta dish for the ages. We liked it far better than the bland shrimp and grits, which had little presence of either the billed smoked cheddar or the lemon-garlic butter. Roasted Scottish salmon is the better choice in seafood, with a hot-sour broth fueled by tamarind and a stir-fry of tannic spinach that provided a counterpoint to the rich fish. A nightly special of steak tips plied with lemongrass didn’t make the point of why the beef needed that particular accent; it’s a dish that needs work. But Texas barbecue-style brisket? Sure thing. Belly up to that plate, complete with a Thanksgiving-ready creamy green bean-corn casserole and a splay of long-simmered onions.

When you’re having fun, dessert’s a natural. What do you expect at a place designed around fun other than a sweet called “Milk ‘n’ Cookies”? It’s a layering of the stated elements, with cream and crunch and nibbles of chocolate. Everything nice. I kept at it, trading off bites with a whiskey’d chocolate fudge and a silky lemon custard with just the right pop of zesty citrus. Cheesecake, though nicely made, was the lackluster also-ran.

INC is where you go when the doldrums strike, and you want a little lift. It’s where you go when you’re with a crowd of friends who can’t agree on one type of cuisine and want congeniality, not conflict. It’s where you go when life’s presented you with a pickle of a problem, and you crave a jar of spicy spears to solve it.

WHISKEY. GO. GO.

INC has a multi-page whiskey menu that is presented at the start of a meal. The time it could take to digest this whiskey bill of fare might prevent you from actually dining, but it is a major attraction for whiskey lovers. Take the Manager’s Reserve List: There’s Corsets, Whips and Whiskey, Elijah Craig Barrel Proof, and Noah’s Mill. You also can do whiskey flights: Where There’s Smoke There’s Islay Scotch, Rye Not? and In ‘Bond’ We Trust. It’s all in good fun.

“The merry band of chefs are the equivalent of jazz musicians… constantly improvising, cooking with spontaneity, reacting to an ingredient in the moment.”

By Andy Clurfeld

It’s lunchtime on a  Tuesday, and Kyle Hopfensperger and Dan Pollard are talking dinner.

Specifically, what’s going to be on the menu for dinner at 2nd Jetty Seafood in Sea Bright, where fishes are the star, Kyle is the chef-owner and Dan is the forager of the finest specimens that come from our waters.

“We talk every day,” Kyle says.

“Sometimes four times a day,” Dan notes.

“If he’s closing at 5:00, I’ll call Dan at 4:50 to get in more for that night, if I think we need it,” adds Kyle.

“And if he doesn’t call then, I’ll call him,”  Dan says, as they both laugh.

Dan manages Lusty Lobster, a wholesale-retail seafood enterprise based in Highlands, right over the Highlands-Sea Bright Bridge from 2nd Jetty. He’s as critical to the operation of the restaurant—which sits across a narrow stretch of Ocean Avenue from the Atlantic Ocean and catty-corner from the entrance to Sandy Hook—as Kyle’s cohorts in his kitchen, chefs Daniel Ciambrone and Bruce Buzzelli.

On this day, Dan Pollard is prepped and ready: “On Tuesdays, I go through all my sheets—my fish sources, locals like Viking Village, Bivalve Packing, Barnegat Oyster Collective—and figure out what I need and what I can get for my store and my special people.”

His “special people” are his chefs. He gets in touch with some of the very best chefs in New Jersey, those in particular who specialize in seafood, and lets them know what’s coming out of the water that week. Kyle listens as Dan recites and jumps, immediately, on the kampachi.

“Kampachi! Yes!” he says, scoring the buttery, sushi- grade fish that’s a kind of extra-exquisite yellowtail.

“I can get you sushi fluke – that’s local, out of Viking Village,” Dan says. He gets another nod from the chef, who’s already talking about doing a raw-fishes special on one of the “surfboard” platters made from the wood of fallen trees especially for 2nd Jetty by Doug Rella, of Brick. After all, his personal fish forager has Bambalam oysters, among others, on the bill of available local fare.

“Dayboat mahi, really good tuna, domestic sword—” “Yup, yup, yup.”

“Black sea bass?”

“For sure! We like to do a whole roasted fish.” “East Coast halibut? Scallops?”

“Do it, do it; I’ll figure it out.”

Dan smiles. Once upon a time, much of Lusty Lobster’s wholesale business came from high-volume shore restaurants. “But the business has changed,” he says. “The new chefs, and their creativity, mean eating out is not about prime rib anymore. I’m not buying the frozen stuff; I’m buying all fresh.”

He’s selective, too, sourcing, for one example, tuna from “ten different sources so I get the best. I won’t buy garbage.”

They’re riffing now, fast and furious, as Kyle talks about making jalapeno jam and dragon sauce and Dan muses about uni and how the political unrest in Venezuela is affecting the supply of primo jumbo lump crab.

 Now it’s my turn to think about dinner. For in a couple of days, I will be popping into 2nd Jetty to see what this collaboration between chef and fish forager brings to the table…

We’ve ordered so many appetizers that we consider annexing another table on which to place them. That would be unfair to everyone else in the main dining room of 2nd Jetty Seafood, a space that’s equal parts retro, nautical and scrubbed-clean galley. Unfair, clearly, though it might reference the casual-cool attitude found at, say, a neighborhood joint on the outskirts of Belfast, Maine, which would well-serve the mission of the crew that makes 2nd Jetty the best seafood restaurant in New Jersey.

The kitchen has a plan to avoid space-encroachment: one of those custom-made surfboard platters. On it, we find a tower of tuna, fluke sashimi, a sweep of oysters, scallops topped with uni, a circle of salmon, and a tian of sliced avocado stuffed with pickled onion and radish. It’s gorgeous. It’s quickly decimated.

First, the Bambalam oysters, their slurpy salinity finishing cunningly with a flash of sweetness, come dotted with green roe and rosy-orange tobiko and turn an oyster-avoider at my table into an oyster-eater. Those Barnegat scallops may be rich and dense, yet they rival the uni for meltability. Credit a spare sprinkle of black lava salt, micro-chop of cucumber and a spray of lemon juice for reining in the richness. Fluke, so ethereal it looks shaved rather than sliced, is the sandwich meat between a rasher of cucumber matchsticks and a schmear of the jalapeno jam that had me curious. More of a chunky, mouth-warming preserve, it stunned me with its compatibility to the bristling fish. Maybe it was the base of frothy aioli, glowing with the color and flavor of turmeric and citrus, that brought it all balance. It contrasted quite nicely with the poke-esque cubes of tuna tossed in soy and yuzu and threaded with verdant green seaweed and a chop of fiery chilies. Speaking of seaweed, the chef team leaned slices of salmon that would make a sushi master proud against a haystack of lighter lime ‘weed, and finished the plate with cucumber in another form: a pert, tart-spiced relish. P.S.: The avocado package was a terrific palate cleanser.

Kyle Hopfensperger, Dan Ciambrone, Bruce Buzzelli and their chef-colleague Francisco Lopez have, by all accounts, fun blowing out the insides of raw coconut to make coconut shells for poke. I can’t spoil their fun by telling you the how-to story before they can. But the results are the kind I most appreciate: With bluefin tuna (on this night) cubes rolled in a sprightly ginger-citrus sauce and micro-cilantro leaves sprawled on top, the poke needs only the speckle of black sesame seeds to taste finished. You can, if you’d like, play around with the accompanying fried wontons and slivers of avocado, or go daring and dip the tuna into bubbles of sambal- laced dragon sauce, hot wasabi aioli or sweet-tart hoison.

Once you’re a regular at 2nd Jetty, you’ll do the fish tacos every other time you visit. Mahi-mahi? Sold… just like Kyle said to Dan Pollard. Juicy chunks of the meaty fish rest on shredded cabbage tossed with marinated tomatoes and cilantro, a twirl of pickled red onion on top. I try to roll this all up in the soft taco, but I’m not always successful in sopping up the juices from the lemon and lime the fish is seared with, nor the sunset- color aioli striping the ensemble. I’ll keep trying.

I do ask for a spoon to help me with the lobster sauce keeping company with the crab-stuffed salmon—crab, mind you, that’s been chunked up with cornichons, parsley, and dill in a mustard-mayo mix. I keep that spoon handy to scoop up the Caribbean rice, made with basmati and zapped with pico de gallo and shards of spinach. That’s doing right by a couple of seafood staples, ol’ salmon and crab. So is making a mini-mountain out of grilled bluefin as it buttresses a pineapple-seaweed salad. Dab the tuna in the avocado mousse, for good measure.

I may have fallen hardest for 2nd Jetty’s cooked version of the scallops, given their even, caramel-color sear and pitch-perfect plate partners of red quinoa and wild mushroom mix. And I did take advantage of a spot of jalapeno jam, which didn’t play favorites among its mates. Lots of love in that dish.

2nd Jetty typically has homey desserts—crumbles and cobblers, pies and puddings. Try the Key lime pie, silky and tart and maybe not Marie Jackson-at-Flaky-Tart sublime, but nothing ever will be that divine, or a cinnamon-scented bread pudding, which usually comes with berries.

Do know that nothing at 2nd Jetty is ever exactly the same twice. That’s because Kyle and his merry band of chefs not only cook seasonally, they are the equivalent of jazz musicians: constantly improvising, cooking with spontaneity, reacting to an ingredient in the moment.

No wonder their collaborator, Dan Pollard, works so hard to get them the best: Fishes, once out of water, need true friends at the end of the line. 

Need To Know

2nd Jetty Seafood isn’t your typical summer-at-the-shore spot. It’s just as popular with locals as it is with seasonal residents and daytrippers. It’s a BYOB. It also—and this is new-news,  as 2nd Jetty starts its third season— takes reservations for inside seating.

Manager Jack Murphy, who runs front-of-the-house operations, often books musicians who perform live outside in summertime. He also books the “kitchen table,”  which is a terrific place to have a small party. The “table” is—what else? I mean, these guys are all surfers!—an old surfboard set up in a small room that looks into the kitchen. You can watch the jazz-chefs perform as you dine.

The space, once upon a time, held a bar, and the back room of the lanky restaurant still sports a bar-counter. If you’d like to BYOB and pour yourself a glass back there, maybe grab an app or three, just tell the folks at check-in. Whether it’s during so-called slow times in November or March, or in peak-summer months when the world rolls off Sandy Hook into 2nd Jetty, the crew is friendly, welcoming and helpful.

2ND JETTY SEAFOOD

140 Ocean Avenue, Sea Bright

Phone: (732) 224.8700 • 2ndjetty.com 

Major credit cards and reservations accepted. For information about hours and menu prices (which reflect current market prices) please call, visit the website or email 2ndjettyseafood@gmail.com. The Lusty Lobster is located at 88 Bay Avenue, Highlands. 732-291-1548; www.bestlobster.com.

“Do you get the idea that Decker pushes at the edges of possibilities without going too far?”

By Andy Clurfeld

Rabbit, take two—I’m thinking to myself as I cop a fourth—then a fifth bite of the slow-braised meat, might taste even better than the first time I’d tried it a few weeks earlier—at the reinvented 100 Steps in Cranford. The dish takes in a lot of moisture during its daily slow-cook, and what I taste in every bite of that meat is a concentrated infusion of liquid, seasoning and the kickback of accents: currants, Castelvetrano olives and, in a tip of the hat to the classic French preparation of rabbit in mustard sauce, the playful tang of pickled yellow mustard seeds. I spear a triangle of polenta, crisped by a crusting of parmesan, into the rabbit’s broth and wonder how soon I can get back to 100 Steps to eat, and think more about this dish that I hope will be fending off the cold all season. 

It’s executive chef Kara Decker’s rabbit, a signature dish on her new menu at her old stomping grounds. And it’s proof positive that you can go home again.

Photos courtesy of 100 Steps Kitchen + Raw Bar

In a Reader’s Digest-style condensed recap, Chef Decker was the go-to gal in the kitchens of A Toute Heure and its spinoff sibling 100 Steps when both were owned and operated by Andrea and Jim Carbine. For years, Decker cooked her heart out at the block-apart restaurants—and won the hearts of locals and destination diners. Flash forward to the Carbines selling the two restaurants to separate owners, new chefs taking charge, and subsequent chef changes. 

Then, this past fall, Jack Tagmouti, the new owner of 100 Steps, connected with Decker and brought her back to the kitchen she’d shepherded in its infancy and early childhood. They kept the raw bar, a seminal component that spotlights in-season oysters, while Decker re-focused the menu to hone in on her gutsy, decidedly un-shy dishes that sift through the Mediterranean repertoire until hitting solid gold.

Photos courtesy of 100 Steps Kitchen + Raw Bar

Hence, the rabbit, which Decker labels “Spanish” and I would argue also manages to tap into essential flavors that cooks in Sicily and Provence might bring to the dish. She broadens her vision again in an appetizer that, elsewhere, has become clichéd, by frying pork belly and setting it atop a creamy parsnip puree surrounded by dots of pear puree and then drizzling the pork with a fish-sauce vinaigrette that gives it a briny, caramel-y boost. Hot red Fresno chilies and mint, a nifty two-step, finish this Euro-Asian number, which also came with a tangle of gently pickled onions, which I demolished before handing it off to my too-polite guests. 

Do you get the idea that Decker pushes at the edges of possibilities without going too far? Goes for forward flavors that don’t fight with each other for attention on her plates, but complement and flatter each other? Works, and works hard, at guiding her diners to new ways of looking at familiar foods? She does all of that in her rendition of grilled octopus: Smoky-to-the max with an emulsified pimenton vinaigrette, the soft-bodied cephalopod tangos with an escabeche of endive and black kalamata olive oil, adding smacks of acidity and salinity to each bite. What else is needed? Potatoes, of course, the traditional sideshow to octopus, and a component that, here, proves a perfect mate to that soulful Spanish paprika in the vinaigrette that is the foundation of this dish. 

Photos courtesy of 100 Steps Kitchen + Raw Bar

Impressive are Decker’s pastas, which don’t employ shapes you only find in Italy or sauces that seem borne in uncharted territory. There’s a tagliatelle Bolognese, chunky with multiple cuts of pork and beef, warmed by a subtle shake of nutmeg, and topped by both a scoop of house-made ricotta and a dusting of Parmigiano-Reggiano. There’s orecchiette that snuggles up to cubes of butternut squash and strips of Lacinato kale before being sucker-punched by Decker’s own heat-charged chorizo—a surprise that you have to assume would overpower the little ears, sweet-nutty squash, and sweet-delicate kale. Nope; crumbled, but left chunky enough to collaborate in a fine bite with the squash, and/or kale, and/or pasta, the chorizo revs up a plate that could be sleepy or (maybe) calm. I like excitement.

Photos courtesy of 100 Steps Kitchen + Raw Bar

That same pizzazz is brought to Kara’s Mussel Pot, the genre she made famous in our state at A Toute Heure and again at the original 100 Steps. She built late autumn’s pot around meaty mussels and knuckle-size nuggets of chorizo, then tamed the sausage’s heat a tad by lacing a garlic cream sauce with saffron, mild Dijon mustard and skinny slivers of caramelized shallots. You’ll be given a spoon and you should use it to scoop up chorizo and mussels and sauce all at once. If you remember the Parker House rolls that were all the rage at the old A Toute Heure and 100 Steps, they’re here; though the mussel pots are served with crostini, I see no reason not to use the rolls as sop-up agents to that crazy-delicious cream sauce. Baby food? Maybe. But I loved it. 

I’m batting clean-up here with Decker’s fish dishes, but they’re hardly also-rans. One night, there was a black bass special, the fillet keeping its skin on and super-crisped as a counterpoint to the buttery mashed potatoes and the sultry roasted tomato coulis underneath. Another night, there was skate wing, looking downright gorgeous splayed atop white beans—punctuated by nibs of carrots, onions, and herbs, and topped with a taut kind of pesto dominated by green olives. Those meaty olives brought structure to the silky fish/ultra-creamy bean combo, but what made the dish a standout was a generous crown of toasted bread crumbs. Let me swap out “crown” for “tiara.” That’s a better fit.

Photos courtesy of 100 Steps Kitchen + Raw Bar

Though the desserts at 100 Steps are well made, I was wishing for something citrusy or more fruit-focused in the lineup. That isn’t to say I didn’t cotton to the apple tartlet, with its admirably shortcrust, almond-infused cream filling and cleverly shaped cookie-like lid shielding the slices of apple, but this one’s about pastry, not fruit. A swell dome of chocolate sabayon fortified with chocolate dacquoise also benefits from that short dough base and gets a lift from a bright raspberry coulis. There was lots of oohing and ahhing at my table over the confection called The Colombian, a layering of chocolate mousse and dulce de leche interspersed with layers of chocolate dacquoise and encased in chocolate coating. I know… I’m a minority voter as a fruit-for-dessert lover. 

But I love Kara Decker’s cooking, and I love this new version of 100 Steps. I love the fact that this chef is unabashedly bold about flavor and constantly experiments, tweaking dishes from her past and trying out ingredients novel and even unexpected. I love the fact that, in defiance of custom, the reinvention of this restaurant doesn’t rely on pure nostalgia, but rather on fortifying its strengths and powering forward. 

100 STEPS KITCHEN + RAW BAR 

215 Centennial Avenue, Cranford Phone: (908) 276.0153 • 100stepsrawbar.com 

Major credit cards and reservations accepted. BYOB. Open for dinner and happy hour Wednesday through Sunday. Though 100 Steps does not have a liquor license, diners bring their own libations during happy hour, which starts at 4 p.m. and at which raw bar and menu items are served. Proprietor Jack Tagmouti and his team—including executive chef Kara Decker and manager/events director Rick Sue-Poi— produce private events at the restaurant, host collaborative dinners, and coordinate tastings that range from oysters to artisan foods and farm products.

Editor’s Note: With Chef Decker’s seasonally attuned menus, there are more wine-friendly dishes than ever on tap at 100 Steps. The next time you’re looking for an appropriate BYOB to try out your latest acquisitions, snag a reservation and load up your wine tote.

Singing the praises of America’s favorite sandwich.

By Caleb MacLean

The combination of inexpensive meat and cheese, topped with greens and oil and vinegar, wrapped in a long, crusty roll dates back to the 1800s in Italy, where it was a traditional sandwich. As Italian-Americans opened grocery stores and sandwich stands in northeastern cities in the early 1900s, their signature creation grew in popularity and complexity.

Who “invented” the hero? The city of Portland, Maine claims this honor, insisting that the very first one was served up by Giovanni Amato, who ran a restaurant that’s still in business more than a century later. The more likely story is that versions of this sandwich existed throughout New England in the early part of the 20th century. During World War I, a sandwich shop in Boston was selling hero sandwiches by the hundreds to sailors at a nearby naval installation. This is where the nickname “sub” supposedly originated.

United States Navy

But wait. Our very own city of Paterson says that’s wrong. No evidence of the actual term found its way into print until the 1920s, when a group of enterprising boys managed to raise the hull of a sunken submarine from the Passaic River and donated it to the Paterson Museum. After visiting the museum, Dominic Conti, who sold hero sandwiches from his grocery store on Mill Street, rechristened his lunchtime offering the submarine sandwich. New Jersey has another important connection to the sub: the first Blimpie store opened in Hoboken in the 1960s.

Upper Case Editorial

Still another origin story for the sub involves Benedetto Capaldo, a shop-keeper in New London, who sold tasty “grinders” to his Connecticut customers. When the nearby naval base began constructing submarines in the late-1930s, daily sandwich deliveries numbered in the hundreds. Naturally, they became known as submarine sandwiches, too.

Library of Congress

The term “grinder” has a dockyard history, as well. In New England, the Italian-American workers who sanded rusty hulls were called “grinders.” Their go-to sandwich took on the same name—although some claim that the sandwich got its nickname because of how difficult it was to chew through. Until recently, there actually was an acknowledged difference between subs and grinders: subs were always cold and grinders were usually hot. So back in the day, a meatball sub would have been a meatball grinder.

Photo by David Reber

Library of Congress

What bout the hoagie? Italian-American workers at Philadelphia’s Hog Island shipyard supposedly shortened “Hog Island” to “hoagie.” But Hog Island closed down long before the nickname came into common use, so the story everyone in Philly knows is just that: a story. A better explanation is that the name started in a sandwich joint run by Al de Palma, a former jazz musician. He opened a sub shop in the City of Brotherly Love during the Depression and called his extra-large sandwiches “hoggies” (big enough to feed a hog). He eventually opened several stores around the city and, thanks to that Philly accent, hoggie became hoagie.

Photo by Jeffrey W.

As for the name “hero,” it became popular in the New York/New Jersey area in the late 1930s. The theory that it is derived from the Greek gyro sandwich doesn’t quite work—gyros didn’t become popular in New York until the 1960s. In 1936, a food columnist for the New York Herald Tribune described an Italian sandwich so huge you had to be a “hero to eat it.” The paper had a circulation of 300,000 at the time, so thousands of readers began calling the sandwich by its new name. Cops, bank guards and armored car crews popularized the term by the end of the decade.

Did You Know?

During the many decades when the hero sandwich was a staple of the working man’s lunchbox, one of its key construction details was the placement of the cheese. The first and last layer was almost always made of cheese slices. They prevented oil, vinegar and other condiments from migrating into the bread.

Did You Know?

Other names for the iconic sandwich include torpedo, wedge, Dagwood, zep and bomber. In New Orleans the “poor boy” (pronounced po’boy) resembles the traditional sub, but was originally constructed to mimic the courses of a meal.

In the trenches with New Jersey’s heroic food producers.

By Andy Clurfeld

Morning has broken, and I’m rough-chopping Terhune’s Winesaps, an apple that’s a little more tart than sweet, and tossing the cubes into a small stovetop pot moistened by melted Valley Shepherd butter. I add a couple of cups of Morganics oats, a dash of cinnamon, and stir, coating the oats and apples with the spice and butter. A minute later, I add water to cover, pump up the heat till the liquid bubbles, then turn down the flame and cook my oatmeal, stirring now and again, for a handful of minutes until the oats and apples are soft. Should I add a splash of maple syrup from Sweet Sourland Farms? Honey? Why not a tad bit of both? I lower the heat under my pot of oatmeal to the barest of simmers and grab myself a bowl and a spoon.

The skies are cloudy and the air outside damp, but my morning is about to take a turn for pure bright: Morganics Family Farm oatmeal is the ideal breakfast, the jump-starter of any day at all, be it crammed and tense or lazy with time for dreaming. Scott and Alison Morgan’s farm in Hillsborough is where the couple oversee operations that result in the freshest possible grains—grains grown in sustainable, eco-responsible fashion. When you eat fresh, sun-dried grains, “your body will reap the benefits,” the Morgans say I agree. My breakfast of oatmeal made with Morganics oats, Valley Shepherd butter from the creamery in Long Valley, apples from Terhune Farms in Mercer County, honey from Top of the Mountain in Wantage, and maple syrup from Sweet Sourland in Hopewell, revs up my mind, body and heart. I am inspired, fueled and gratified to be eating an all-star New Jersey meal.

It’s what I most love to do. Once upon a not-so-long-time-ago, it was much harder to do. But today there are myriad and many farmers and food artisans who are the Garden State’s true unsung heroes, people who are plying the various soils and waters of a peninsula packed with some 8.9 million people and offering an array of foods that have not traveled thousands of miles over the course of weeks before transfer to supermarket shelves. These heroes increasingly farm and produce fresh foods year-round, employing new techniques and technologies to serve forth a bounty with an impeccable pedigree: New Jersey, the Garden State. Jersey-born, Jersey-bred, Jersey-proud.

River Bend Farm/Gladstone Valley Pasture Poultry • Far Hills

Dakota and Duke are loving life. They’re doing their job, these 4-year-old guardians of livestock bred in the Italian Alps and best known by their breed name, Maremma. Huge, hairy and armed with a ferocious bark, the dogs seem to be everywhere they need to be in order to protect Corné Vogelaar’s chickens from harm that may come by air or land. “Right now, they’re guarding the layers,” Corné says. “They guard against the aerial predators and they guard against the fox and the coyotes. It’s all instinct. They are not vicious; their weapon is their alertness and their bark.”

They work where the girls are, the egg-layers, the turkeys, the broilers—those Cornish crosses that are the pasture-raised chickens sold under the Gladstone Valley Pasture Poultry label. A sibling enterprise to River Bend Farm, headquartered in Far Hills, Gladstone Valley chickens are the American equivalent to the Bresse chicken in France, the anointed “queen of poultry, poultry of kings.”

“They’re out on grass and rotated on fresh grass daily,” Corné says, describing the efficiency of the “chicken tractor,” which pulls the chickens’ homey coop to new servings of the good stuff. Dakota and Duke appear to smile as Corné gives them each a good rubbing behind the ears. Then it’s Corné’s turn to smile. He’s been loving life at River Bend Farm since 1996, shortly after he graduated Rutgers with a degree in animal science. Born and raised in Holland, he came with his family to the United States in 1988. Farming was his goal. He spent his first 10 years at River Bend, then all-cattle and all-Angus, improving the species.

“I really love the genetics and the breeding of better cattle,” Corné notes. Slowly, he “started harvesting beef and marketing it. The meat business is now our main business, and we also supply breeding stock to other farmers.” In more recent years, he’s added Berkshire pigs (“the Angus of pork”) and a few Mangalistas as well to his stock. There’s lamb and there are the chickens and there are eggs.

Corné sells to an A-List of restaurants, including the Ryland Inn, Pluckemin Inn and the Harvest Group eateries. “We are fortunate to work with excellent chefs who know how to work nose-to-tail and use everything,” he says. But home cooks also are in the River Bend/Gladstone mix: Along with a self-service egg cart, Corné keeps an on-farm store open for retail sales of frozen beef, chicken, pork and lamb on Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings. He sells at the in-season Bedminster Farmers’ Market.

As manager of the privately owned farm, Corné tends to the needs of a sizable span of animals. But he doesn’t do it alone. There are a couple additional full-time employees; his two oldest sons also work on day-to-day operations. Corné and his wife, Dawn, have eight children, six boys and two girls ranging in age from a baby born this past January to a 21-year-old whose welding skills are useful on the farm. Corné invites me into one of the cattle pastures. “Come meet Clover,” he says. “She’s more of a pet.” He maneuvers the sweet bovine in my direction and nods when I pet her. I’m loving life, too.

Hillcrest Orchard & Dairy/ Jersey Girl Cheese • Branchville

Sal Pisani is scooping ricotta into baskets set atop trays, allowing the fresh, warm cheese to drain, and talking in Italian to Raffaelle “Ralph” Saporito, who is both balling up and braiding batches of mozzarella. Sal and Ralph talk cheese in Italian almost every day, a language that bridges the near-35-year difference in their ages. Ralph was born in Raritan; at age 3, his family returned to Naples, Italy. A revered cheesemaker in Italy, he returned to the United States to teach Sal the art and craft of making classic Italian cheeses. “I’m an apprentice,” says Sal, 27, “and Ralph is my teacher.”

Professor in a doctoral program is more like it. Sal Pisani grew up under the tutelage of his father Rocco, who was born and reared in Calabria, Italy, but moved to the U.S. at 21, settling in Morris County. There, on threeacres, the Pisani family created their own Little Italy. “My father brought with him the traditions he picked up from his mother,” Sal says. “Dad would make cheese, cure meats. Every September, we’d make tomato sauce. It was all about food, when I was growing up, homesteading, not selling what we made.” There was a vegetable garden, animals – “chickens, goats, a horse, sheep, a peacock and an alpaca, but never more than 15 animals”—and the constant rhythm of time at the table with family and friends.

Sal graduated Monmouth University in 2014 and returned home. Cheesemaking was his passion; it drew him in as a career when he learned of a buffalo farm in need of someone to make the herd’s milk into cheese. After that ended, Sal found a new home at Hillcrest, an apple orchard and dairy in Branchville, Sussex County, owned and operated by farmer Jimmy Cuneo. His prize Jersey cows, which yield creamy, high-fat, high-protein, high-quality milk ideal for making Sal’s favorite cheeses, were waiting for the right partner. “Dairyfarms are closing every day, it seems,” Sal says. To keep going, “Jimmy had decided to outfit and expand to accommodate cheesemaking and retail. We made the jump with him. Ralph decided to come and work with us. It was the best luck to find this opportunity.”

The best luck for consumers, too. Sal’s Jersey Girl cheese line currently includes fresh mozzarella, fresh ricotta, scamorza (a dry, aged mozzarella), primo sale (a fresh basket cheese), cacciocavalo (a sharp-tasting aged cheese) and burrata, and is sold at farmers’ markets in Sparta, Morristown and Holmdel, as well as Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the farm’s own store in Branchville.

Back in the cheesemaking room, Ralph Saporito finishes braiding mozzarella and his protege scoops a spoonful of the still-warm ricotta from a basket. Clouds to heaven—that’s what pops into my mind as I taste. Sal smiles. I sample the mozzarella, the scamorza, the cacciocavalo and know I have never, ever tasted better examples of these beloved cheeses. Italy is no longer an ocean away.

Rolling Hills Farm • Delaware Township

Opening bells at New Jersey’s farmers’ markets don’t always ring in the kind of bounty stalwart shoppers crave. May and June aren’t July, August and September, after all. Not so if you come upon the stalls of Rolling Hills Farm. Fresh from the farm in Delaware Township, Hunterdon County, May and June see bushels and baskets of cucumbers, beets, new potatoes, summer squash, snap peas, salad mixes, arugula, carrots, head lettuces, scallions, Swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower…okay, time to catch your breath. You might lose it again when you see, up close and in person, the heart-of-spring produce grown by Stephanie Spock and John Squicciarino on a scant 1½ acres.

“Thanks to reading the works of Eliot Coleman,” John says, referring to the New Jersey-born revolutionary farmer whose Four Season Farm on Cape Rosier, Maine, does exactly what its name promises, “we farm year-round [using] high tunnels that let us have produce in May.”

“Our customers go insane over our carrots—they’re the sweetest carrots!” adds Stephanie. They grow in theground, in high tunnels, or hoop houses—plastic-covered structures that allow a plant’s roots to take in the nutrients of good soil, all the while being protected from storms and other excesses of the elements. Not that the couple wish to defy seasonality.

“No tomatoes in May,” both say, as John adds: “We recognize the seasons.”

On land leased from members of the Hamill family, of Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrence Township, Stephanie and John grow produce following organic practices and sell at the summertime Asbury Fresh Market as well as at farmers’ markets in Wrightstown and Yardley, PA. Their attraction to farming began while they worked on Brick Farm Tavern’s Double Brook Farm in Hopewell, which has become something of a breeding ground for young farmers as well as chefs learning the lessons of the seasons.

“We were 26 when we started here, in 2014,” John says. “It was stressful in the beginning,” Stephanie adds.

But they were determined. In the depths of winter, Oliver Gubenko’s Harvest Drop, which delivers produce and products from area farms to restaurants and small retail outlets, brings Rolling Hills’ fresh greens for salads and more to chefs. “It’s more work for us, but it’s worth it,” says John. The couple’s year-round, smart-farming practices evens out the workload. Rather than getting burned out by summertime work weeks of 80 to 90 hours, they put in 20 to 25 hours a week in the typically fallow cold-weather months by growing those greens and gearing up for the earlier start that results in bumper crops in May. Summer, as a result, makes for more manageable 50-hour work weeks.

“We do things in winter to make for a bounty in May and June,” John says. Meanwhile, Stephanie is studying nutrition with the goal of having a practice that engages the farm. “It all ties in,” Stephanie says. “What we grow, how we eat, how we feel.”

Chickadee Creek Farm • Pennington

Jess Niederer is standing in a propagation greenhouse on Chickadee Creek Farm, her 25-acre year-round farm in Pennington. Jess looks up, smiles and says, “I got married here, right here, on the Winter Solstice, Dec. 21, 2018.” At 76 feet by 30 feet and cloaked in light, it’s not only a lovely place for a wedding but, in Jess’s words, “the proper size for the planned growth on our farm.”

Jess’s new husband is Kevin Riley, a nurse who works at a federal clinic in Trenton; Kevin’s new wife is a veritable rock star farmer, New Jersey’s answer to Eliot Coleman of Four Season Farm in Maine, and a presence at farmers’ markets both seasonal and year-round in towns all over the state: Princeton, Denville, WestWindsor, Morristown, Rutgers Garden, Hoboken, Summit, Metuchen. Full disclosure: I don’t know how to have dinner at home any more, be it a party or an any-old-night meal, without Chickadee Creek produce at hand. Wherever Jess Niederer sells, I’ll travel to buy. So I’m listening to Jess talk in a near-empty propagation greenhouse and longing to see where the harvested produce that I know is going to the next day’s market is kept. I’m going to buy some to photograph, up close and personal, for this story. And then eat.

Jess grew up in a farming family (fourth-generation, she is), went to Cornell, where she studied ecology and conservation biology, spent a couple of years working at nearby Honey Brook Farm, and is as conversant in the business of farming as she is about how to grow, harvest and market the 56 different crops she grows at Chickadee Creek.

To work it all by the numbers: The Niederer family farm is about 80 acres, 40 of which are tillable and 25 of which—Chickadee Creek—Jess leases from her father. She employs nine people full-time, year-round, and is “trying to get every single one of them up to the $15-an-hour benchmark” well before state requirements kick in. Now in her 10th year running Chickadee Creek, she is 35 years old, has approximately 500 members in her CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. When we walk into one of her high tunnels, where gorgeous arugula is grown in the ground all winter, she’s quick to note a $14,000 tractor can work the soil of this 196-foot-by-30-foot structure. The number most on Jess Niederer’s mind, however, is $1 million—that’s the amount Jess needs to buy her farmland from her father. “It would be about $4 million if it wasn’t in the state preserved farmland program,” she says. That would not come with a house—just the land that Jess works to feed the thousands of people in New Jersey who love eating Chickadee produce.

Jess’s business model is based on year-round production, which is good for customers and also good for her staff. If you stop growing, harvesting and selling in the cold months, Jess explains, you effectively lay off your staff. “You can’t keep good people that way,” Jess says. By doing regular net-profit analyses, she is able to determine what’s working (new crops, such as ginger and sweet corn), what needs to be “kicked off” (cauliflower just wasn’t selling), and what’s most profitable (salad greens, head lettuces, flowers, tomatoes, cut greens). She’s keen on farmers’ markets: “They’re time-intensive, but the dollar value is the best.” She doesn’t work with restaurants much. She’s devoted to her CSA members. She keeps the just-harvested produce in temperature-controlled containers until that produce is taken to market.

Ah-ha! On that day, I buy several head lettuces, creamy white Japanese turnips, carrots colored purple, yellow and orange. Two days later, I buy more Chickadee produce at the West Windsor Winter Market. Obsessed? Guilty as charged, and proud of it.

Mishti Chocolates

What happens when chocolate meets ginger? Or lavender? Or toffee? How about sea salt, pineapple, chile or orange? What if you learn that these chocolate partnerships, as well as the straight-up chocolates, are vegan, organic, non-GMO, soy-free and gluten-free? When the chocolates are by Mishti, it’s about “bringing a smile to every face, one chocolate at a time.” Which is the slogan chocolatier Arpita Kohli wrote when she first started making the coveted chocolates. Because what’s not in Arpita’s chocolates just might be what makes them irresistibly delicious.

The Scotch Plains resident started making chocolates professionally when she and husband Puneet Girdhar realized their then-baby daughter Mishti had a variety of allergies, including dairy. “We have a healthy household,” says Arpita, a skilled home cook who had been making chocolates since she was a child. “So I started making vegan chocolates.” And it worked. Little Mishti, now 4½, could enjoy chocolates like her mom and dad. Arpita, creative by nature with a career in textiles, kept experimenting and perfecting the chocolate line she named Mishti. She uses 100 percent chocolate; her milk chocolate is made with almond milk and her sourcing meticulous. Her elegant packaging reflects the fundamental simplicity of her recipes and products.

“I don’t want to take all the credit; both my grandmother and mother and all my aunts are excellent cooks. I grew up around great food and wonderful flavors,” Arpita says.

Life’s been busy for the chocolatier. She started the business in 2017 and, in April 2018, gave birth to a second daughter, Seher. “Puneet is my true partner,” she says, praising his support and help in marketing. Indeed, Puneet, Mishti and now Seher are popular regulars at many farmers’ markets, including those in West Windsor, Ramsey and Red Bank, and the chocolates are sold in specialty markets such as Basil Bandwagon in Flemington and Clinton and Dean’s in Basking Ridge and Chester.

For Your Little Black Book

Morganics Family Farm 

morganicsfamilyfarm.com

River Bend Farm

25 Branch Road, Far Hills • 908-234-1377 

RBFAngus.com • GladstoneValley.com

Hillcrest Farm/Jersey Girl Cheese

 2 Davis Road, Branchville • 973-703-5148 

HillcrestFarmNJ.com

Rolling Hills Farm

133 Seabrook Road, Delaware Twp. • 609-731-9175

 rollinghillsfarm.org

Chickadee Creek Farm

Titus Mill Road, Pennington

 chickadeecreekfarm.com

Mishti Chocolates 

206-569-5269 

mishti-chocolates.com

Andy Clurfeld

Back when we were brainstorming stories for this issue, the original idea seemed simple enough: Ask chefs, the editor said, how they deal with feeding their kids. You know—chefs

must have secrets, know how to make magic meals children won’t scorn or shuffle off to the dogs, be able to inspire their offspring to become even better professional chefs than their parents. Well. Hmm. “No,” a chef said to me.  “You’re not going to print this!” It would, he said, be a huge embarrassment as his kids were the worst of the pickiest eaters and there was nothing he could do, he believed, other than wait them out till they had kids of their own and finally could come together over the table.

Other chefs offered similar responses.  “My kids eat nuggets. Pizza—bad strip-mall pizza,” an industry veteran said. “One likes strawberries. Or liked strawberries. This season, she wouldn’t touch them. Pasta, sometimes. But they hate my food” (which otherwise is celebrated by the food cognoscente). There was a top-tier chef who confided that he basically cooks one food his children will eat: fried chicken. “That’s it,” he added. “You going to tell people this and put me out of business? My own kids won’t eat my food?” And there was a chef who said, “People beg me to cook for their weddings or birthdays. My own kid wants me to take him to Chuck E. Cheese on his birthday.”

Plan B. Which started out fabulously. I explained this issue’s Teachable Moment theme and asked a few culinary pros to tell me who taught, inspired and otherwise helped them chart their courses to a food career. After a few replies on the order of “Wow…great idea! I had great teachers at culinary school/a deity of a chef at my first stage/read a cookbook I loved,” enthusiasm waned, especially after I said I was going to reach out to the mentor-teachers to let them know how they inspired a career and ask for their comments.

OK. Got it.