Charred Beans with Lemon Yogurt
Enter a border-free zone and make supper out of an in-season vegetable by taking what’s on hand, zapping it with spices you favor and bringing it all together on one plate.
Lokotas Argentine Empanadas
Hearty empanadas from a mother-daughter team have a home in a brick-and-mortar takeout locale in Southern Ocean County. You won’t need to ask “Where’s the beef?” – or the chicken, vegetables or sweet stuff – inside these homey, hand-held pockets. Their fat bellies betray all.
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.
Nature’s Plate Vegan Café
A plant-based eatery in the Bayshore provides a global outlook to the dishes on its menu and keeps regulars who gather in the cozy comforts of its storefront dining space on point with a mutual mission.
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.
Paratha Project
The namesake flatbread may star at a princely showcase of India’s vegetarian street foods. But there’s more on a wide-ranging menu that struts its stuff in trendy style. Come for a timely education.
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.
Los Bandoleros Tacos
Beefed-up Mexican staples benefit from the slow-cooked techniques of classic barbecue and a chef’s imagination to create a roster of winsome dishes. What’s fast-casual elsewhere is inherently deliberate and unhurried here. And all the better – much better – for the pace of cooking and eating.