Lola’s Café
Next-door neighbor and offspring of White Horse Wines & Spirits, this city-style, swanky day café is the answer to wide-ranging needs for smart, contemporary eats. It’s the dream of a couple who know how to do it mindfully and right.
Mostly Meaty
Beef, pork, a mix, even a hot dog: Dominating this round’s favorite foods are meats, in all their hearty, sauced, spiced and marinated glories.
Lose the Labor
Time’s always precious, but never more so than on holidays – especially one seen as the unofficial curtain call to summer. That’s why we’ve got extra-quick eats on today’s docket.
Fredy Umanzor, Chef Fredy’s Table
The newest inductee to TPW’s chef-picks-chef society of top toques has spent 40 years in Morris County pro kitchens. Today, as chef-mentor and devoted community member, he’s the proud co-owner of his own restaurant in the competitive county seat.
Peru Chikann
Helmed by a cookbook in human form, a classic Peruvian restaurant makes the case for diving into the cuisines of this South American country with the idea of expanding your own home menus.
Hot Off the Farm: Chilies
Tyler Olsson takes the chilies he grows on a small farm and makes a little bit of magic in eminently simple-to-use form.
Viecco Sabores Quilleros
Street eats from the Caribbean coast of Colombia are a joyful play of ingredients at a modest storefront that might seem unable to contain such heaping platters. Don’t worry; just dive in.
Watermelon Pals
A little accenting magic can turn a wedge of rosy melon into a treat of a different stripe.
Plain & Simpol
Home-style authentic Filipino is the order of the day at a family-run storefront where the blackboard menu is a primer and the open kitchen might as well be a classroom.
Taka Taka Street Greek
Zhuzhed-up Greek fare is the focus at a newcomer to City Center. It’s all casual, all the time, whether the call’s for dine-in or to-go back home or to the dorm. Bottom line: The eats are fresh-faced and swell.
Scrutiny of the Bounty
A good dozen eats made it to the shoe-in roster for this round of F5, the list of this-one’s-a-sure-bet for the top five. The hits in food just kept on coming. That means these winners are a level beyond extraordinary.
The Eggplant Bowl
Why not let this high-season vegetable be the star of an entrée bowl? Rice, beans, salad greens, grains of all sorts, pastas and noodles – if they can do it, so can a nightshade that comes in so many varieties.