Despite the coronavirus pandemic, new restaurants continue to open in northern Jersey. We brought nine a week. There’s a dozen more here.
Of course, no one will offer food indoors, back, which the state government has banned, but they will all offer food outdoors. So put on your mask, apply sunscreen, don’t put on your sunglasses and enjoy new dishes.
Here’s a game of dominoes to eat. Cali Curcione and her fiancé, Oggi Echavarria, exchanged buildings with Let’s Meat Steakhouse for their new company. Let’s Meat moved into the couple’s old location in River Vale (the place to eat they had called Zozo’s). Cork and Crust, its new Italian restaurant with a Mediterranean twist, has moved to the old Let’s Meat location in Harrington Park.
This means that your 70-seat dining room, which you still can’t use, has a touch of steakhouse, adding chandeliers and dark wood. They installed tables that can accommodate 36 people.
The place to eat was intended to open in April, but due to the coronavirus, the opening was delayed until July 22.
“It’s a hectic time to open a restaurant,” Curcione admitted. “But we try to use time to our advantage. We took the time to prepare what we sought to offer and to make our identity known. Many others said Harrington Park needed a smart Italian restaurant.”
Echavarría, a self-taught chef who ran into a Hoboken pizzeria at 12, has two dishes on the menu that Curcione said she liked best: zanabella, a blackened bird sprinkled with parmesan cream sauce, and domani, bird with crab and asparagus dipped in a champagne cream sauce.
Why the name? Bark because they have a brick pizza oven that chars the dough well. What about Cork? Because there are bottle racks (thank you, Let’s Meat!) They rent monthly.
Please note that the place to eat is closed on Mondays and is open for lunch and dinner daily. Byob.
Go: LaRoche Avenue, Harrington Park; 201-367-1550 corkandcrustrestaurant.com.
Bob Hay, owner of Let’s Meat Steakhouse and resident of River Vale, admits that it is to open a place to eat in the middle of a pandemic, especially because, he says, “we spend so much time and effort making the place to eat beautiful.”
Steak lovers will have to wait to enjoy the new renovated dining room once housed by the casual Italian restaurant Zozo’s and now sports chandeliers, a copper roof, forged wood panelling and a bar. “We are waiting to move the liquor license, ” said Hay. Having a very important bar for Let’s Meat (its old location in Harrington Park, now Cork Crust’s house, see above, had no bar).
For now, outdoor food can be eaten in a recent representation through a car park with a suspended tent with lighting fixtures and a pile of palm trees. Enjoy sushi in this tent prepared through Alpine Country Club’s former sushi chef, and the hearty dishes of new chef Flavia Amaral, who worked at Gurney’s in Montauk, New York, as well as Nick and Tony’s and Alain Ducasse’s Ardor, whether in Manhattan.
On the menu: raw bar dishes with octopus carpaccio; Rockefeller Oyster; a grass-fed bird cooked under a brick and a dry-aged Pat La Frieda steak, adding a 40-ounce Tomahawk for $149.
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“A fried cauliflower with honey and mustard sauce and dried Turkish apricots flies off the menu,” Hoy said. Another dish that attracted diners, he said, the halibut cooked on parchment paper with fennel.
Let’s Meat is closed on Sundays and Mondays. Open and evening.
Go: 625 River Vale Road, River Vale; 201-660-7960, letsmeatsteakhouse.com.
Chef Darryl Harmon, who has his own diversity of sexy knives designed through FA Porsche, recently opened an upscale and modern seafood eater, a “farm and table fishing” eater, serving seafood basically from New Jersey as well as Jersey. Products.
“Of course, we’re going to get Maine lobster and North Atlantic crab legs, because that’s where those delicious crustaceans come from, but we’re going to get as much as we can in New Jersey,” said Harmon of Gouldtown. in Cumberland County, the oldest black network in the country.
Its dishes have the merit of new local corn, old Jersey tomatoes, Cape May Stormy Bay oysters and local scallops. The main charm presented is the Bay Street Boil Bags with the addition of snow crab legs ($24). It also offers cornbread with jalapeño and cheddar cheese ($7), lobster rolls ($22) and snake River Farms hot dogs ($7).
In August, the place to eat will throw a hard-shelled crab night on Tuesdays, as well as “buck-a-shuck” Wednesdays. On National Oyster Day on August 5, the place to eat will offer oysters (limit of 12 consistent with the consistent son), whose product will get Black Lives Matter perks. As for drinks? Consider buying watermelon lemonade ($3).
Go: Bay St., Jersey City; 201-724-4059, shellntail.com.
Two young men who dropped out of school, Michael Ghinelli and Hadi Parhizkaran, wereted no time opening their Pizza Club at the moment, with a fitness crisis or no fitness crisis. Men under the age of 22 opened their first facility in Edgewater in February. So why not open one, this time in Garfield in July?
Its location at the moment is on the Hudson River and offers insights from New York City. And of course a lot of pizza.
Its bestsellers come with Grandma Sicilian Margherita with tomatoes and basil ($19.45) and vintage Margherita ($16.40).
Go: 17 Outwater Lane, Garfield; 973-253-1000, pizzaclubs.com.
You can’t be too rich or too thin. Or too many pizzas.
This is the third location of Pizza One.
Owner Dante Ismail opened his first place 15 years ago in Haskell, his time in Wayne, and now, in the midst of a pandemic, a post in Sparta. He attributes the good luck of his pizzerias to the fact that he uses only all-natural cheeses, vegetables and non-transgenic sauces and uses soy oil.
In addition to pizza, the menu includes a Calabrian panino with soppressata, grilled artichokes, arugula, provolone and balsamic vinegar ($7.55), bird vodka wrap ($7.55) and penne vodka ($12.49).
Go: 12 N. Village Blvd., Sparta; 973-862-4933, njpizzaone.com.
Six years ago, brothers Francesco and Mario Bosfa left their home in Naples and came here to the United States. Bronx citizens have landed in the Patrizia area of Old Tappan. When the place to eat closed, the Bosnian men will take control of the area and open their own place to eat on July 17 and serve Neapolitan dishes.
“It’s one of your dreams,” spokeswoman Susan Veltri said. “There is pizza, pasta, meat, fish, antipasti, panini and gelato. Yes, of course, you want gelato.”
Currently, the brothers will be offering 15 tables. They are also waiting to move the liquor license.
Bosfa, which serves lunch and dinner, is open from Tuesday to Sunday.
Go: 183 Old Tappan Road, Old Tappan; 201-649-8730, facebook.com/bosfaitalianrestaurant.
Todd Marvel, owner of Sprout in Maplewood, recently opened Hazel’s, a Southern place that provides this popular Southern concept of ‘meat 3’. Hazel’s is located in the same space. The Meat 3 concept, which is said to have been born in Nashville, gives a heavy, 3-sided Southern protein. Offers include fried poultry, a hot bird sandwich, a homemade meatloaf and (for non-meat) a cauliflower steak. Really hungry? Hazel’s Barn Box comes with 8 pieces of fried bird, a pint of mashed potatoes and 4 slices of homemade cornbread for $25.99 (you can share it with a circle of family or a friend or two).
Hazel’s is open Tuesday through Saturday.
Go: 181A Maplewood Ave., Maplewood; 973-761-1549, hazelscountrykitchen.com.
Natalie Lee closed her place to eat Plum on Park, 10, and replaced it with a Jewish shop. It’s been one of his dreams for years. Lee’s husband is Jewish and, she is of German descent, says much of Jewish cuisine was born in Eastern Europe. “I grew up with this food.”
Lee cuts the meat by hand, brines her breasts, makes her own pickles, cream cheese and even her own mustard. He’ll soon make his own bagels. “Almost everything is homemade,” Lee said. Including onion rolls, her mom’s recipe.
Lee says cold meats aren’t kosher: bacon in his thick pea soup and serves many BLT sandwiches. “Not all my Jewish friends are kosher,” he says. “It’s amazing how many BLT sandwiches I sell.”
For the drinks, of course, there’s Dr. Brown’s soft drinks.
Go: 14 Park St., Montclair; 973-744-7100, mikkiandals.com.
There’s a willow in the charming willow-blue-grey Willow-Whisk eating spot, a new place for breakfast and lunch in Wyckoff that opened on July 20. It is a willow created through nature, but through an artist, who has formed the trunk of wood and flowered silk.
The place to eat began through brothers AJ and Rich DiBendetto (owners of the informal sandwich and smoothie shop in Ramsey and Montclair) and their cousin Evan D’Auge. It is a casual gourmet place to eat, where the food is excellent and the atmosphere is relaxed. On the menu? Local organic coffee, freshly squeezed fruit juices, red frittata coulis, cacio and pepe jam and blistered shishito peppers. At the head of the kitchen is Brandon Csaki, a student at the Culinary Institute of America.
The dining room can accommodate up to 125 people more. A 30 by 40 foot tent can accommodate another 72 people outside, which, of course, is all this pandemic can have right now. The dining room is open from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. (This week opens at 8 a.m.)
Go: 319 Franklin Avenue, Wyckoff; 201-425-9931, willowandwhisk.com.
Ramsey Tap Room – Grill, Ramsey. Biggie’s gone. Ramsey Tap Room and Grill is in his charge. Lots of beer and basically American dishes. 1315 South Highway 17, Ramsey; 201-962-3650, ramseytaproom.com.
Lulu’s Lounge – Bistro, Edgewater. A Mediterranean eatover open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. 360 Old River Road, Edgewater; 201-347-3571, site.lulu-lounge-bistro.business.
Taqueria Los Gueros, Totowa. A mini chain of Mexican restaurants that serve the same dishes as always: tacos, burritos, quesadillas. 79 Union Boulevard, Totowa; 201-566-7001, taquerialosguerosnj.com.
Esther Davidowitz is the editor-in-chief of NorthJersey.com. To learn more about where to dine and drink, subscribe and sign up for our North Jersey Eats newsletter.
Email: [email protected] Twitter: @estherdavido