Restaurants with a lunch buffet or special lunch menu that reduces the cost.
La Taqueria (located on a decidedly suburban site in Lawrence) is better than most Mexican/Guatemalan joints in the area, slightly more expensive than similar places in Trenton (but still a bargain), and much more nicely appointed. If you find yourself in Lawrence looking for a quick, inexpensive bite, it’s a good place to stop.
One of the few restaurants in this area that takes the trouble to spice each dish individually. Offers a range of Indian cuisine hard to find elsewhere. Strongly recommended.
Fat Jacks delivers excellent BBQ, particularly if you like it charred, as we do. The food uses premium ingredients and is cooked to order, so call ahead.
Surprisingly ambitious food in Ewing, delivered at a fair price. Great desserts. Bargain for lunch. Reservations recommended
Right around the corner from the ballpark: great pizza by the slice or by the pie. Superb Latin fusion cooking. A great place for a quick meal before a Thunder game.
Cafe Un, Deux, Trois is one of our “go to” places in New York City for a meal before a Broadway show. Cargot — an updated, Princeton-take on a similar dining concept — may assume a similar role for when we take in a show at McCarter (which is literally across the street). Cargot opened … Continue reading French-ish
Ever heard of an Arepa? Or a Cachapa? Neither had I. But Trenton’s only Venezuelan restaurant serves up these national specialties, along with a superb Latino-fusion menu.
One of our favorite Indian restaurants shut its doors a couple of months ago. But fear not, it’s reappeared at 5 Points. Is it still as good? The original chef has returned to his paying job, but his cousin cooks most of the same menu adequately (if not quite as expertly). Still one of the better Indian restaurants in Mercer County, and quite reasonably priced.
El Negro de Oro (“Black Gold”) is the only Trenton restaurant we know that specializes in Ecuadorian cuisine, including such traditional dishes as: Hornado (roast pork) — at El Negro it’s served with hominy corn, Maiz Tostado (toasted corn nuts), potato cake, and salad (see header image). Seco de Chiuo — a rich, slow-braised goat … Continue reading Ecuadorian Dream
Paradise specializes in Hyderbadi cuisine, though the menu encompasses dishes from across the sub-continent including Mughlai and southern specialties. All meat served is Halal. If you’re in the right mood, it’s biryanis are subtle and expertly prepared.
Non Solo describes itself as serving “southern italian cuisine”: the menu provides most of the red-sauce “Italian” classics boomers will remember from their childhood: plus about a dozen veal or chicken dishes ranging from the omnipresent Francese to more exotic preparations like Saltimbocca or Romano. There’s also a fair selection of sea food, salads, and a nice selection of specials (15 on the day we visited).
Jim Hamilton, a Broadway set designer turned restaurateur, started Hamilton’s Grill (“HG”) more than 25 years ago. As you’d expect from a set designer, place and settings are impeccable. The restaurant is tucked away on a quiet alley. HG’s menu has been farm to table long before that term entered popular consciousness. The menu changes seasonally, and there are always a few specials. The food is simple, but exceptionally high quality and perfectly presented, featuring grilled seafood and meats. Unusually for a restaurant of this quality, it’s BYOB.
(Covid Update Dec 2021 – in business) In the 1980’s, sculptor J. Seward Johnson created a plan for a contemporary sculpture museum in Hamilton, NJ. He purchased the land that had housed the NJ State Fairgrounds, and by the 1990’s “The Grounds for Sculpture” was a thriving public indoor/outdoor art museum. In 2000, Johnson opened … Continue reading Artful Dining
(Covid Update Dec 2021 – in business) Saluté is a pleasant, relatively small (60 seat) Italian restaurant in a nondescript strip mall in Morrisville. The aesthetic and menu are very much like a Chambersburg eatery from the 60s, though newly renovated. Faux stone panels and crystal light fixtures evoke a “rat pack” bachelor pad, as … Continue reading Ratpack Returns
It is good to have somewhere to take a date. You probably want something not too stuffy and formal, but not too relaxed either. The food should be very good, even a little fancy, yet offer a variety of options for any palate. And probably, since you are aiming to impress, you might consider some … Continue reading Date Night Delicacies
(Covid Update Dec 2021 – in business) Cafe Antonio is really two restaurants. Step left when you walk inside, and you’ll be taken to a charming (if a little chintzy) old-style red-sauce Italian restaurant with formal service. Step right, and you’ll enter a plain and unembellished pizza parlor, where you order at the counter. Depending … Continue reading A Restaurant Divided
Living in Trenton and there’s very few Greek restaurant around. Except Mikonos, which was recommended to me by a friend. I’ve now eaten most of the offerings on the menu, and while I have a few reservations, I’m happy to recommend it. It offers tasty, authentic cuisine Greek cooking that ranges from OK to sublime, depending on what you order.
It is hard to find a good source for Asian ingredients around the city of Trenton. For years, I’d been driving up to the Asian Food Market in Plainsboro, which is a traffic-filled ride along Route 1. It’s a market with an impressive selection, but poor service and a not-so-clean environment. So when I stumbled upon H Mart in Levittown, PA, I was delighted. It’s closer, cleaner, and features a surprisingly decent Korean food court style restaurant inside of it. A true find.
The greater Trenton restaurant scene has been enriched by Asian immigrants, and Shanghai Bun is a great example: its head chef, Chung Hwang, was born in Taiwan to a Shanghainese father and ran a restaurant with him outside of DC for 15 years before moving to this area. Significantly, walk into Shanghai Bun at any … Continue reading Squeeze Bun
For years, Princeton’s high-end restaurants were stuffy affairs with old-fashioned menus; they were hardly worth the trip and certainly not worth the price. That all changed with the opening of Agricola, Princeton’s venture into the farm-to-table movement. A partnership with Great Road Farm (a 112 acre farm in Skillman, NJ), Agricola offers an ever-changing, inventive gourmet menu using fresh, seasonal ingredients. With formal service in a relaxed atmosphere, this is the perfect place for a dinner before the theater in Princeton, or a nice date. Or, if you’d like something more casual, their bar area is a spectacular addition to the Princeton options.
If Roots has a guiding philosophy in their cuisine, it seems to be delicious, elegant, comfort. They serve food you want to eat, cooked to perfection and served exquisitely. Their ramen warms the soul, the vegetarian version served with a spectacularly poached egg, soft and pliable white with an oozing yolk, filling the bowl with tongue-coating richness. The dim sum and greens are astonishing little bowls of flavor and delight–with care and precision even in the plating of the smallest items. We’ve sampled many of the noodles (including the street noodles, the drunken noodle, and the pad thai) and they are superb. The sushi is served with perfectly seasoned rice and elegant care. The soups are rich and belly-warming, with waves of flavor that wash over your tongue. Even the house-made kimchi is astonishing. The only disappointments so far have been in the dim sum section of the menu–we loved the Shanghai buns, but the bean curd and vegetable dumplings were only middling, as were the soup dumplings (good, but we expect more layers in the flavor of a soup dumpling).
La Parrilla (grill, in Spanish), is one of the City’s newest Guatemalan restaurants, the city’s most vibrant (and increasingly most competitive) segment. Located in what used to be a tomato pie restaurant, La Parrilla emphasizes grilled meats and seafood.
The menu is a mix of old-line “red-sauce” Italian dishes, with a fair number of more ambitious items (and specials) mixed in. The quality is good. Prices are higher than the typical Trenton-area Italian eatery, though not exorbitant (e.g. $19 for chicken; $27 for a veal chop).
Most Indian restaurants have good food and indifferent decor. Few, today, are particularly expensive. But the Palace – despite being located in a strip mall off of Quakerbridge Rd – is absolutely gorgeous inside, reasonable for lunch, and a small fortune for dinner. Palace does a very nice buffet every afternoon. That’s probably the best way to get exposed to the restaurant and to decide if you’re ready to spring for the full dinner menu.
Sneak away to the Blooming Grove Inn, especially on a summer’s evening sitting on the terrace, and you can feel for a moment like you’ve borrowed your friend’s country house, and are enjoying a weekend away from it all. With new management and an upscale, farm to table concept, we’ve yet to try the new menu. Will let you know.
Hong Kong Restaurant, located where Hamilton and S. Clinton intersect is probably the best, true Chinese take-out in town. This is a family-run restaurant, with an extensive menu cooked in front of you while you wait.
Everyone has a yearning for simple, cheap Chinese food from time to time, and you don’t want to have to drive to get it. In a town where there are some truly dreadful take out Chinese joints….listing a few that are pretty good is a useful service. Kam Buffet is a post millenium buffet joint, with a large dining room and a huge array of steam tables. The food is good, and management takes better care to keep it fresh and turning over quickly than many establishments of this type.
From the outside, Szechuan House looks like a pretty standard suburban Chinese restauarant, and at first glance, so does the menu. All of the standard Americanized items can be found. But look a little closer, and you’ll see a number of items that you never see on a “standard ” menu. Some frankly, sound pretty disgusting…but my rule is that if you don’t find at least a half dozen things that sound disgusting on a Chinese menu, you’re going to the wrong restaurant. As it turns out, there’s plenty on the menu that’s both authentic and delicious.
