Chef Train
AJ Capella, Summit House
Unabashedly in love with the Garden State’s abundant and diverse ingredients, the newest inductee into TPW’s chef-picks-chef society of top toques isn’t shy about speaking out on behalf of New Jersey’s glorious foods.
Fortnightly 5
Familiar Yet Uncommon: 11-27-23
Unexpected but hardly alien, the favorites of the two weeks just past offer connections beyond the customary.
Sunday Kitchen
Beans + Quinoa = Beanoa
Pronounced bean-whaa, but no matter how you mangle it, this powerhouse partnership is prime nutritional fuel. That you can deck the combo with a world of custom accents is even more reason to add it to your repertoire
Thoughtful Thanksgiving
It’s the eve of the nation’s annual eating holiday, when roasting and recipes and running out of room in the kitchen are on the minds of many. For at least a few minutes, however, let gratitude for a bigger picture take hold.
Past Perfected
Retro goes Grade A in Coots Kitchen, the bakeshop of Kathryn Logie where everything from Good Humor treats to Pop Tarts gets a modern-ingredient makeover.
Sunday Kitchen
Vegetable Pot Pie
It’s fit for a Thanksgiving potluck, adaptable to a variety of vegetables, right as a main course for guests who prefer plant-based foods and also suitable as a side for meat-eaters. It’s a heavenly savory pie.
People
To Spice, with Love
Intimidated by the Indian blends essential to the magically seasoned dishes you covet? Be cowed no more, armed with both bottlings and a companion cookery book by Barkha Cardoz.
Food Find
Smoked Salmon Chowder
South Jersey Smoke House gives Garden Staters a chowder of our own with a new and singular stewy soup. (Or is it a soupy stew?)
Fortnightly 5
Touching All Bases: 11-13-23
A sandwich, sweet potatoes, sashimi, a curry and a new rice for a risotto take the lead in another U.N. of eats from the two weeks just past.
Sunday Kitchen
To Spice, with Love (Part Two)
All-pro masalas and a novella-like cookery book are all you need to bring the magic of Barkha Cardoz’s flavors to your home kitchen.
Life on the Farm
Sumac, a Singular Source
When much else is turning brown in mid-fall, count on this crimson berry to blaze a trail to possibilities in the kitchen. LOTF columnist Kate Munning reports from field and brew pot on its vinegary, tart and citrusy soul.
Rices of Our Own
Blue Moon Acres in Pennington is where rices are being grown, though not in the ways they are elsewhere. The result? Distinctive and most distinguished grains, with flavors all their own.
Jessie’s of Linwood
Dogs, kids, strollers, iPhones, planners are all welcome companions, accessories and essentials at a bona-fide hub in the historic district of a small city in Atlantic County.
Sunday Kitchen
Brussels Parm
An easy-all-around supper gets an update that turns it into a suitable and more universally likable side dish for the Big Bird on the horizon.
Chef Train
Tom Valenti, Jockey Hollow Bar + Kitchen
Long a resident of Sussex County but more recently head of the kitchen at this mecca in Morristown, the newest inductee into TPW's chef-picks-chef society of top toques made humble foods haute and, in turn, influenced new generations of both chefs and diners.
Fortnightly 5
Flavor Range: 10-30-23
The favorites of this go-round take on every taste bud and treat each to quite the workout.
Sunday Kitchen
Jimmy Nardello Peppers
What do you do if you’re lucky enough to score a bunch of these Italian heirlooms late in the season? Very, very little. At first. Then, let your imagination play on.
Jersey Ag at a Juncture
Only seven people in the Garden State’s history have served as Secretary of Agriculture. With the process for picking a new ag leader under way, it’s imperative the eighth overseer of our foodstreams be equipped and committed to addressing in innovative and fully supportive ways the needs of our farmers, food systems and culinary heritage.
At Long Last, Unity
A diverse group of stakeholders in the issue of liquor license ownership in New Jersey gathered this week and united on a plan to address the subject that has long been fraught with discord. A prominent licensee called the summit “historic,” noting that “this has never happened before.”
Cranberry Contest
Native to our Pinelands and popping up in markets right now throughout the Garden State, the ruby berry that is equal parts nutritional and flavor powerhouse may be fundamental to our holiday-season tables, but could and should be a year-round staple. Herewith, YOUR chance to prove its singular mettle.
Sunday Kitchen
Kimchi as Plus-One
A jar of kimchi in your fridge can be your BFF when you’re looking for a one-two punch to get dinner done in a jiff.
Peaches and Dreams
A heaping helping of heritage went into a just-released brandy that showcases a fruit from a centuries-old farm and the craft of a determined distiller. It’s just the start of what Melick’s Town Farm and 3 BR Distillery can do together.
Day Eight: Get Your Culinary Kicks on Route 46
It’s three for the end of the road, which comes in western Warren County: Hot Dog Johnny’s, founded 1944 in White Township; Log Cabin Inn, opened in 1938 in Knowlton Township; and Marshall’s Farm Market, born in 1920, also in Knowlton. One’s a nationally recognized roadside stand, lionized and loved for its hot dogs; another is a destination for bikers and folks looking for a rural respite with honest eats and drinks; and the third is a 103-year-old country food market run by descendants of George Amer Marshall, who opened its doors as the great urban migration was starting in America.
Fortnightly 5
Striking Gold: 10-16-23
Color is the commonality in our rundown of foods that capture the heart. Pretty, they are, but these dishes are about much more than greets the eye.
Sunday Kitchen
Getting Better with Butternut
The sergeant major of the winter squash brigade gets a little help from some friends in a warm salad fit for the season – and the holidays to come. Kiera Mitru guides from market to making the most of a stalwart.
Day Seven: Get Your Culinary Kicks on Route 46
Hackettstown without James on Main, elite chef Bill Van Pelt’s love song to the ingredients of the Garden State’s plush Northwest, seems a distant memory. Did it ever not anchor the downtown that Route 46 runs through, its actual Main Street? Seems unfathomable, though true, as the intimate storefront with its energetic, yet elegant plates was born only in 2016.
Day Six: Get Your Culinary Kicks on Route 46
The new jewel in the growing Dhaba empire is the recently opened Social Hub by Dhaba in Parsippany, where upscale Indian fare sparkles in a restaurant/bar/lounge setting. In Ledgewood, Cliff’s Homemade Ice Cream has been in the hot-flavor scoops business for almost 50 years, and it remains the coolest game in town.
Day Five: Get Your Culinary Kicks on Route 46
Family affairs happen in the food world. Not surprisingly so, since gathering ’round a dining table is inherent in family life everywhere. Small storefronts fueled by a love of cooking one’s birthright dishes don’t just charm, they educate in culture – as the members of the Baran family at Rosa-Ly Pierogi in Fairfield and the Andrade clan at Garibaldi Peru-Mex in Parsippany do so well. Chief Photographer Mike Peters' special pictorial report continues today.
Day Four: Get Your Culinary Kicks on Route 46
Hand-pulled noodles draw constant crowds to Shan Shan Noodles in Parsippany, where a post-savories stop at Sweet Shansations, the related bakery in the same strip small, is de rigueur. And delightful.
Day Three: Get Your Culinary Kicks on Route 46
If the American flag had been designed in 21st-century New Jersey, instead of stars and stripes the symbols we salute may well have been burgers and pizza. We do honor those cherished eats daily, at Steve’s Burgers in Garfield and at Pizza Town in Elmwood Park.
Day Two: Get Your Culinary Kicks on Route 46
Start any day at Roast’d in Fort Lee. Head west several miles, till the planes in and out of Teeterboro are directly overhead, and touch-down for breakfast, lunch, dinner and those hours in-between at Runway Diner in South Hackensack.
Day One: Get Your Culinary Kicks on Route 46
A kaleidoscope of eats awaits along a formidable byway that’s unique in America and has much to say about the people who live and work in its midst.
It’s Rabbit, Not Bunny
An extraordinary dish showcases a meat that doesn’t so much have a bad rap as it does an ill-informed one. That’s why rabbit is condemned by those who align with animation over responsible stewardship when it should be revered for being lean, nutrient dense and needing only a small footprint to be happily raised.
Chef Train
Andrea Lekberg, The Artist Baker
The newest inductee into TPW’s chef-picks-chef club of top toques in the Garden State is multitalented in various art forms, an activist with commitment and passion for her community, and has a background as diverse as her culinary crafts. She’s the consummate Renaissance woman.
Sunday Kitchen
Pate, Toujours
When a top-flight livestock farm gives you chicken livers, make a pate for the ages. Like this one. You’ll never pass them by again.
Life on the Farm
Hydro-powered Beverages
Experimentation and collaboration are teaching LOTF columnist Lauren Vitagliano that it takes only a spray of intensified herb to up the flavor ante on a drink of choice – “mock” or not. Here’s to your health!
Home, Fertile Home
Homesteading places importance on the life arts, the land, the seasons and mindful stewardship. To an increasing number of practitioners, it also means educating community.
Fortnightly 5
Around the World, in Two Weeks: 09-25-23
No matter where you are in the Garden State, there's a veritable U.N. of exceptional foods. The fortnight just past proves that true.
Sunday Kitchen
Beans with Custard
Top of the new season to you! And, speaking of tops, how about a creamy-cheesy blanket for your pot o’ beans?
My Old Italian Home Restaurant
Be true to your own favorite when it comes to dining out in the genre of the red, white and green. It doesn’t have to be the “best.” It just has to be the one you love.
‘Blessed Little Fishes’
Tinned fishes are easy to take for granted. They’re also easy to take advantage of when dinner-in-a-minute is the order of the day.
Sunday Kitchen
Apples Another Way
It’s prime time for a favorite fruit – and high time to take a road perhaps less traveled in its use.
Food Find
Paratha, Cooked to Order
At the Holland Delta Mart, sitting astride its companion gas pumps in the far west of Hunterdon County, South Asian flatbreads are flipped off a hot griddle into the custody of fortunate passers-by. As well as those who know enough to make a special trip.
Growing and Gardening
Brittney Portes is digging in to a career in farming at an angle all her own. Paramus-raised and now heading up a community garden at Montclair State University, she aims to share passion and knowledge with those looking to grow with her.
Fortnightly 5
Only a Trio: 09-11-23
It’s not been the best of eating times, these last 14 days. Bad luck? Tired kitchens? End-of-summer slump? Hard to say. But nothing will be elevated as a “favorite” unless it truly is. So for this stretch, we’re talking about a Top 3.
Sunday Kitchen
Everyday Figs
Don’t turn down an offer of this seasonal fruit, but do expand the scope of how you can make best use of them.
Life on the Farm
Beauty of the Bounty
High-summer’s crops are in their glory right now, as TPW’s backyard farmer Alessia Eramo finds herself in constant harvest mode. Catch tips for making the most of what once was a lawn, as well as a recipe straight from Italy, in her latest dispatch.
Catch to Kitchen
Amanda Axelsson and Brady Lybarger champion the scallop, that free-living species in the bivalve family capable of swimming like an Olympian and realizing the fantasies of seafood-centric chefs from Japan and China to the Iberian Peninsula to the Jersey Shore.
Food Find
This Soup is ON!
The new winner and the uncontested champ in a category we care supremely about is … the Garden State Tomato Soup.
Sunday Kitchen
New Noodles
Sitting in an unmarked baggie at the checkout counter of a local Asian market were bunched-up noodles, not a shred of commentary, description or clue to their provenance to be found. Irresistible, wouldn’t you say?