Restaurant Rec needed for Hoboken-Jersey City

My wife and I will be in Hoboken on Saturday and wanted to have dinner there or Jersey City. I would like a byob, but not if the food is mediocre. Can someone recommend a decent restaurant? A Mediterranean one would be ideal, but as long as the food is decent we will go. If there is a restaurant that has a liquor license but has NYC quality food then that would trump the byob need.

Thanks in advance.

Alex, I don’t have much info on Hoboken restaurants. If you pick one, make sure they are open. Hoboken got hit really hard by Sandy. In Jersey City, Madame Claude…French bistro owned by a French couple. Very small place. Soul Flavors makes awesome fried chicken. Satis Bistro is very good but they recently got a license. Still doesn’t hurt to call and ask if you can byo for corkage especially if you are bringing something good. 30 Acres is fairly new place. Food is very good but have had service issues. Chef is from Cranford [cheers.gif] .

Thank you Paul. Good idea to call first. I thought J.City might be a better option, but we have an event earlier at the W. Hotel in Hoboken, which is up and running, so imagine others might be as well. Hmmm, fried chicken sounds good.

Anthony Davids in Hoboken is very good and is open from what I understand, and probably fits your bill for Mediteranean. Then there is La Isla, less atmosphere but great cuban/pan latin food, and Zafra Kitchen also a pan latin, but very good.



http://www.anthonydavids.com/dr/PDF/DR_dinner_menu.pdf

Paul got in ahead of me.

I’ll add that the new Grilled Chicken Wing appetizer at Soul Flavors is also really good and I like the Curried Crab Cake a lot more than Paul does (he’s a purist).

Thirty Acres probably has the best overall food. No wine glasses and no reservations for a party of <5 so try to go early for a Saturday night. I’m still sort of down on them after a horrendous service experience the one time I made a reservation ( the servers are great, it was the front of the house).

Last I asked Satis was charging $30 corkage but that was right after they got the license so they may have changed by now.

Marco & Pepe has very good food at dinner, a decent wine and beer list, and will sometimes allow corkage only if you call ahead and arrange it. Last time I called (about 4 years ago) it was a reasonable $15.

A dark horse which I only recently discovered is BYO is Pho Thanh Haoi Vietnamese Restaurant. No-frills atmosphere but excellent food. My favorites are the Pho and the Seafood with Crispy Noodles. But if you go on a Saturday night go early or be prepared to wait. It’s cheap and delicious so it’s packed.

Grand Sichuan is also BYO - not the best of the chain but the smoked tea duck and red corked pork with chestnuts are both good red wine matches.

It would be advisable to bring glasses to any of the Jersey City restaurants with the exception of Satis’s and maybe Marco & Pepe.

Also see:

Thank you Jay for your post. Good choices. I will share with my wife. I am leaning towards soul flavors. I haven’t had soul food in a long time and the menu looks really good. Now what to pair with fried chicken?

Thanks Kevin for your post. I appreciate it. I will keep Anthony David’s in mind for a future visit. The menu looks quite nice.

Is there any question? Champagne is IMO the ideal match :slight_smile:. But it’s not too spicy so it works with just about any wine. I’ve had it with Bordeaux, Burgundy, just about everything and it’s been fine.

Avoid the Oxtail and the Pork Ribs as they are too sweet for most wines (pork ribs work best with their lemonade). Also in the side dishes the bland macaroni and cheese and the overly sweet whipped sweet potatoes. I like the sauteed spinach and the ginger cole slaw, biscuits and cornbread are also decent. But the fried chicken is the star.

All the salads are really good, I’m addicted to the croutons in the Caeser salad.

We had a very nice dinner, albeit a bit rushed, but only because we decided to try and catch a movie. We had the crab cake, salmon cake, chili shrimp, ceasar salad and sides of the mash, spinach and roasted sweet potatoes. All good, with my favorites being the slaw on the crab cake, the hush puppies in the caesar saled - those are some decadent croutons and the chili shrimp was excellent too. Liked the unpretensious vibe and will have to go back and allow time for the fried chicken. I brought a Clerico Pajane Barolo 01 that was extremely tannic upon opening. we both had a smallish glass and the wine wasn’t showing much for the 1st hour. We asked for a plastic cup with lid - the ones you get a 16 oz fountain soda in, and I emptied that barolo into the fine plastic ware and we proceeded to sneak in through my wife’s pocket book into the movie - Lincoln - okay, not great, but that is another story… THe wine finally opened up and after 3 hours showed sweet tannins, still prominent, but there was fruit. This was on the masculine side of barolo. Still primary, and showing no secondary notes whatsoever. I brought this as I am considering buying a larger lot of this wine and was trying to consider its worth. Still not sure, as I prefer a more elegant wine, but this was no slouch whatsoever. Maybe just very young.

Thanks again for the rec… I will go back to Soul Flavors again.

Alex, if you want to do a wine dinner there I’m in as I’m sure Jay would be too. It’s been a while since we’ve done a dinner there.

I eat there fairly regularly but schedule allowing I’m always interested in wine dinners there. Also I’d like to throw them some more weeknight business if possible since they lost a lot of food and business during Sandy (lost power and all their refrigerated and frozen food, then there was a 6pm curfew in the city for a week after they got power back).

That would be great and like the idea of supporting them during the week. Maybe try to find a date between T-Day and X-mas if all schedules permits.

Please add me to the list of potential wine dinner attendees at Soul Flavors. I think the last time we even got a few people to take the PATH from NYC.

I’m one of those who had taken the PATH to join a wine dinner at SF. Loved the fried chicken and the cornbread croutons on their salads. A couple o fmonths later, I even got my wife to get on the PATH and meet me there and enjoy more fried chicken.

The problem of course is that the PATH doesn’t run after 10pm currently. It puts a crimp in my NYC dining and will do the same for people travelling to JC from Manhattan. I suppose an early start would help there.

The fact that I did not know this shows I haven’t been commuting to the city…

Maybe in two weeks or so path service will increase which would help with NYC people. I was thinking in 2 weeks or so. Still waiting on some dates for holiday parties for work, but they are usually on 2nd week to 3rd week. In general Wednesdays are good for me. How would the 5th or the 12th sound for those interested?

5th does not work for me. 12th looks better.

12th is good for me. Shall we take it to email and work on that?