Saja & Shawarma
Not just a shawarma standout, this newcomer to the best Main Street of Eastern Mediterranean eateries in the U.S. also sports beatific broasted chicken and savory crepes overstuffed with juicy meats. It’s the Triple Crown winner for cookery you’d otherwise need a passport and plane flights to experience.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Lita
Glorious modern interpretations of Iberian classics come to tables in a setting chic, welcoming and spirited, and staffed by a team that’s truly all-hands on all-decks. There’s a glow about the entire place, as well, on the faces of Team Lita and on plates that hit their marks.
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.
Chutzpah Kitchen
In the distinctive downtown district that is the Village sits this Middle Eastern mecca that’s emblematic of the neighborhood’s singular charms. It’s owned and operated by Sagi Ohayon, a chef who is something of a Pied Piper for dishes that have been around a mighty long spell. But he never lets them feel old and always makes certain they get respect and TLC.
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.