The Able Baker
Happy days are always here at Maplewood’s hometown bakeshop, a downtown Village storefront that is among the Garden State’s best for both sweets and savories. Its signature baked good? Impossible to pick just one since its specialties seem to be everything that comes out of its ovens.
Produce Junction, Part 1
Extend those invitations right now and have a party sometime on Labor Day Weekend. The season’s convergence of high summer and fall vegetables and fruits will lead the way to an easier-than-you-think menu of bright-flavor foods. Next Sunday, we’ll offer ideas of the last-minute variety.
Black Sheep Bar & Provisions: Fridays
It’s the most wonderful night of the week to many who frequent a place piloted by a chef with boundless creativity and a sense of pure fun too often missing in serious-food restaurants. Come to experience imagination gone edible and leave better educated. And smiling.
Honeycakes
Baker Susan Carter takes her cues from European pastry traditions and turns out cakes, cookies and inspired treats that reference her mother’s Hungarian homeland. Pierogies will lead the way to even more savory fare, all of it a celebration of cultures where home-cookery is revered.
Different Strokes
This fortnight’s round of favorite eats is highlighted by less-common takes on the familiar, bringing delights either demure or double-barreled.
Ten Ways to Love Eggplant
Whether you’re an eggplant lover or you need the trappings of a parm to make it palatable, know that our Garden State is No, 1 in the nation for eggplant production and we at TPW want you to make the most of its time at NJ’s farmers’ markets and on local farmstands. That’s why we’re offering these non-parm how-tos.
Hen Vietnamese Kitchen & Bar
Miscues by both front-of-house and kitchen crews hinder what’s being served at a splashy, swanky restaurant and prevent diners from understanding key components of a cuisine that’s inherently vibrant and vivacious.
Rice Bowl, at El Pueblo Taqueria
Let a chef with know-how and an artillery of fine ingredients compose for you an edible mosaic in the Mexican manner that leaves the versions churned out at fast-casual chains in the dust. It’s all done the right way at a locals’ favorite in North Cape May.
Tomato Butter
A summer staple to use now or freeze to warm winter later comes with a story that tips a hat to a couple of very grande dames.
Moksha Eats
The staples of India are on the menu of this fine-tuned storefront, but it’s the comprehensive listing of Nepalese fare that you must not ignore. Indeed, if you zero in on these flavors that are more subtle, with spices less prominent and dishes extra-carefully rendered, you’ll hit Himalayan heights.
Boat to Table: Collared
What arguably is the best part of a fish often is left on the cutting room floor, depriving pro cooks, home cooks and diners the chance to experience its sheer succulence and rich flavors. The remedy can come through a very direct way of getting local fishes to local people.
Up with Down-to-Earth
To be loved, a food doesn’t have to be earth-shattering or served in posh surroundings or sport pricey, luxe ingredients. It can be as down-to-earth as vegetables, fruit, bread, fish and beans can be and still rise to the top of our charts.