New Jersey A Culinary Capital????

Mention to people you live in Jersey and they tend to regard you with a smirk. (we have HBO’s The Sopranos to thank for this) Mention the fact that Jersey (as we’re known ) has the best restaurants and the freshest ingredients like the Isle of Jersey in the Channel Islands and you’re met with a guffaw. Surprisingly enough the Garden State actually has good eateries. In fact we even have four star ones.

Take today for example. I went to one of the area’s most famous parks, The Cherry Blossom park in Newark . (yes that Newark where it’s not so bad) The area is famous for its’ scores of cherry blossoms that rival those down in Washington. Across the way from the park is a bi-level strip mall and in it a nondescript Italian restaurant, City Park. Thinking it was just another pizzeria, I walked in . Imagine my surprise when the menu was similar to the more famous New York restaurants. City park on the Bellville -Newark border not only serves up brick oven homemade pizza worthy of John’s in New York but also mushroom risotto, worthy of any celebrity chef eatery. This was an amazing meld of porcini mushrooms, garlic and arborio rice. City Park also has a seafood risotto as well as porcini ravioli. It was a brilliant find.
Not to be outdone but a few miles away Newark has the Maize restaurant in the Robert Treat Hotel in the city‘s financial section. This is one of Jersey’s four stars restaurants (albeit the Maize is part of a chain). It has a phenomenal array of all sorts of dishes from fusion to vegetarian. Union NJ .a few miles south of there , has one of the few three star restaurants in the state as does its’ neighbor Maplewood. Good food in quality restaurants abound here throughout the state, whether it‘s in a grand casino in Atlantic City or a small family restaurant in any of our historic counties.


The next time anyone visits Jersey, stop by our restaurants. We’re not all fast food and clichés. We actually have a bumper crop of excellent restaurants here in the Garden State.