Lizano Salsa
A condiment with a smoky-tangy soul that’s indispensable in Costa Rica proves its worth as a spirited accent to a wide range of foods common on tables in the Garden State.
Tomato Cobbler
Ease tomatoes into autumn with a twist on the sweetened fruit standard that’s flexible enough to accommodate a topper of ready-to-bake canned biscuits or your own scratch-made soft and flaky quick-breads. In the end, it might be the treatment given the fruit that matters most.
Minoru
Meiji Pattamasingcha’s new upper-floor Japanese restaurant thinks of itself as casual, yet acts out in ways utterly fascinating and cunningly sophisticated. Classics and innovative concepts share space on a menu that’s high-reaching and able to hit its marks, making this destination about ambitions attained.
Weirdough NJ Bagels
Tangy, chewy and born of sourdough, a home-baker’s distinctive breakfast rounds need no embellishments to let you start your day on a roll. In fact, on better than a roll.
Taking It for a Spin
The next time you might be tempted to take for granted a tomato, bagel, bowl of ramen or spaghetti, or big ol’ hunk of meat, think about this quintet of five new favorites and realize what a pro can do by re-thinking a process.
Produce Junction, Part 2
Happy Labor Day Weekend! If you took the party challenge and did a little prep this past week, making the most of the convergence of high summer and fall vegetables and fruits, you’re ready and set to go-ahead with a great spread of eats. If you’re winging it at the last minute, do so with what’s prime at this most bountiful time of year with easy small bites of the put-together variety.
Edible Getaways
Suddenly, it’s the weekend that marks the unofficial end of summer. But you’re not yet ready to sing the season’s swansong, nor are you ready to call a halt to that blissful on-vacation attitude – not with weeks of warm weather ahead. Good thinking! Keep the Garden State’s dazzlingly intriguing ethnic restaurants in your sights and take a hot-footed escape at mealtime that’ll serve as a passport to our home state’s top culinary adventures. We’ve compiled a list of circa 2025 Restaurant Revue columns to jump-start escapes in our own very wonderful midst.
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.