The Bistro at Grove Square Visited 1/15/2018 3 Forks

The Bistro at Grove Square  116 Newark Ave, Jersey City, NJ 07302

I am totally spending way too much time in Jersey City these days.  I blame it squarely on my job but I guess it could be worse.  After a super long day working on MLK Day and doing Escape the Room with a bunch of screaming teenagers, all the 8 of us from my team wanted to do was to grab a seat at a bar, down a couple of beers and maybe a burger. 

The Bistro is literally right off the PATH train and it's some weird combination of 5 restaurants all joined together.  Since it was right there, it was honestly the path of least resistance (no pun intended).  The Bistro is the center piece of these 5 restaurants and it's as you would imagine with the name "The Bistro" a very standard cafe.  On their website, they call it casual and classy.  I'll give them casual, not so sure about classy not that it's skanky or anything like that but it's not fancy by any stretch of the imagination.  The menu is extremely safe - fried calamari, mozzarella sticks, mac and cheese, burgers, pastas and pizzas.  It's nothing exciting but sometimes when you're tired and just need a bite to eat, this kind of food will suffice. 

They have a happy hour deal where you can get 1/2 off appetizers (limit 1 per person) so since we had 8 people, we got pretty much one of every appetizer and I went with a standard 1/2 roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and green beans.   I won't go into all the appetizers but they were your garden variety bar apps  - there wasn't one that really stood out but we were so hungry that it honestly wouldn't have mattered.  My chicken was a pretty large portion (it seemed much bigger than 1/2 a chicken) and it was a super homey dish with the mashed potatoes.  They left off the green beans which was kind of annoying because I was trying to have some veggies with my meal but I was too tired to bring it up with the waitress.  I was super full when I left and had no real complaints about my meal in general. 

Overall, my experience here kind of re-enforced my continue impression that JC still isn't there when it comes to being a culinary destination.  One small note was  that the service was super slow but I felt bad for our waitress because she seemed to be the only one in the whole restaurant so I'll give her a pass.  One other note, don't get their cocktails, I'd stick to basic wine or beer.  I got an Old Fashion because it was on their specialty list and it was overly sweet and not very good.  This place was fine in a pinch but I was ready to get the hell out of JC as soon as we got the bill.  Total bill:  $400 for 8 people with tax, tip and drinks

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Porta Visited 1/10/2018 3 Forks

Porta  135 Newark Ave., Jersey City, NJ 07302

Even though Jersey City isn't really that far from the city, I don't often find myself there unless it's for work and even then I'm kind of lazy about it and try to get out of any dinners.  But since I rarely get to see my work colleagues, I figured I should show my face and crossed my fingers that it would be a better experience than the last time we all got together.  

The space at Porta is spacious, nice and casual.  It seemed like it's a fun place to catch up with friends over some pizza and beers.  We started with a bunch of appetizers for the table since we were all starving but hadn't yet made up our minds about entrees.  We got the  kale salad ($14), house made mozzarella ($10), salumi e formaggi ($19), house made meatballs ($9), fried artichokes ($9) and calamari ($14).  They were all pretty solid appetizers - the salad was nicely dressed (it was served with tuscan kale which can be a bit tough but I don't mind it at all) and the mozzarella was tasty and paired well with the soft yet crunchy bread.  The housemade meatballs were also super moist and served in a tangy tomato sauce.  The meat and cheese plate was ok - they had a nice blue cheese that I devoured but I wasn't super impressed with the meat selections.  I didn't get to try the fried artichokes and the calamari was fine albeit a bit small and too friend.  If the meal had ended here, I might have given it a 3.5 fork because it was good but nothing mind blowing.  Unfortunately, it went downhill once we ordered our entrees. 

While they also have pastas here, it seemed like you shouldn't come to a place this like and not get their pizza.   They are small Neapolitan pizzas (about 6 small slices) but if you aren't hungry you can get away with 2 people splitting 1 pie.  I was hemming and hawing between getting the Carbonara ($16) or a red sauce pizza.  I normally prefer any of my Italian dishes, pasta or pizzas, with red sauce but I had seen a few pictures of the Carbonara pizza with the egg on top that looked delicious, so I decided to go with that choice.  Then things got a bit weird.  Two of my co-workers wanted to get a margherita pizza but  also wanted to add some greens like arugula to it but the waiter said they couldn't do it.  What the hell?  You can't dump a bunch of greens on top of a pizza?  He said, they could take items off a pizza but they couldn't add to it.  I can understand for certain dishes but this is pizza, it's not that hard to add something to it, especially if it's a topping.  Instead my co-worker was able to order the arugula pizza but without the garlic or truffle oil - essentially making it the exact same thing as a margherita pizza with arugula on it.  Go figure. 

As soon as I saw the Carbonara pizza I knew I should have stuck with my gut and gotten a red sauce pizza.  With no sauce or cheese, it just didn't look like a pizza at all to me but I take total responsibility for my decision.  It came with guanciale, parm, extra virgin olive oil, parsley and a roasted egg on top.   I took one bite and it was so salty I couldn't believe it.  When the waiter asked me how it was, I had to be honest and say it was unbelievably salty and his answer was "oh yeah, I probably should have told you that.  The guanciale makes it really salty".  The egg was overly cooked  - I thought it was going to be more of a runnier poached yolk version but this was closer to a dry hard boiled yolk.  I will say that the crust was chewy but good and the only thing I really liked about it.  I ended up only eating 3 slices and left the rest behind.  I felt like I was pretty much eating a salt lick and pounding water like it was my job.  Then they totally forgot one of my co-workers pizzas but luckily there was enough food leftover from everyone else that he didn't bother re-ordering and waiting for his food. 

While I don't want to sound like a total snob, I just don't see Jersey City as a culinary destination yet.  The few experiences that I've had there have been really average despite all the great press the city has been getting.  I really want to be open minded and enjoy places that aren't necessarily Manhattan or Brooklyn, but my experience at Porta hasn't really tipped me over the edge to this area just yet. 

Photo Credit:  Yelp

Talde Visited 8/30/2017 2.5 Forks

Talde  8 Erie St., Jersey City,  NJ 07302

There's been a lot of buzz around Jersey City as the new place to live and eat given how expensive everything else in Manhattan and Brooklyn have become.  Talde's original location is in Park Slope and I remember given it a scathing review but I had to actually go back and re-read to job my memory on why I hated it so much.  Yikes, I did not like it at all.  But when my VP was in town and suggested Talde in Jersey City, I was trying to keep an open mind that maybe it would be different at this location, plus I've never really eaten in Jersey City so I wanted to see what all the buzz was about. 

Umm, not to sound like an elitist but if this is one of the better restaurants in JC, I don't have a ton of high hopes for the area.  It is located on a bustling cute street in the neighborhood which seemed to be lots of fun.  The restaurant itself was open and spacious and nicely designed.  We got there on a Thursday night and they had a live band in front that was so loud that I could barely hear or understand the person standing 2 inches from me.  That was one of my first problems with this place - you're not a bar so why do you have deafening music playing?  We were a fairly large party (about 15 people) so we were seated at this long concrete slab in the middle of the restaurant.  Our waiter was very nice but when you have this big of a party, the waiter should try to take control of the situation otherwise it becomes chaos with ordering, which is what happened.  Everyone was confused, no one knew who was order for who and in the end we split up into 3 sections and had people from each part of the table ordered for their little area.  The menu overall isn't huge, it has about 5 noodle dishes and 5 entrees and a handful of appetizers and sides.  We asked the waiter how we should order and he said something crazy like 4 appetizers, 1 noodle, 1 entree and a side PER PERSON (turns out he wasn't entirely wrong).  We all thought that sounded crazy to order 6-7 dishes for person, so we ordered 4 total appetizers and 4 total noodle + entree + sides for our little corner of 5 people.  We got yuzu guacamole, edamame bao, pretzel pork and chive dumplings, spring rolls, chow fun, whole branzino, hanger steak, and blue crab fried rice. 

The waiter did warn us that the food will come out as it's ready but with this big of a group that's a huge mistake.  They should course it out otherwise only certain parts of the table will get food while others will be waiting around.  And that's exactly what happened.  We waited FOREVER for even just the appetizers to come out and they were so small for a group of 5 that we were splitting them into tiny pieces so that everybody could have something and not starve to death.  The descriptions of everything on the menu seemed a little off than what they were.  For example, the yuzu guacamole was really more crispy rice with some avocado spread on top.  Granted the menu did mention crispy rice, but the headline was guacamole and that's not how people expect to see guacamole.  The edamame bao was weird and again it did say on the menu that it was a falafel format but that was buried in the description.  When most people see edamame, I don't think they assume it's chopped up into a falafel.  As someone who loves chow fun, this one was not good.  First, it comes out all rolled up which is such a mistake because it gets sticky and dried out really quickly if it's not soaking in moisture.  I immediately tried to break it apart and drown it in the pork and mustard green base but it still ended up being really dry and hard to eat - good chow fun should be slippery and moist (that sounds kind of gross).  Where the food did redeem itself was with the branzino and blue crab fried rice.  The branzino was wrapped in a banana leaf and steamed with turmeric and tomato - nothing more delicious and Asian to me than steamed whole fish.  The fried rice was a good addition and not too greasy or salty and it had a nice generous helping of blue crab meat in it.  The other parts of the table ordered a bunch of other things like the chicken, short ribs and pork that got passed down and weren't too bad.  By the time everyone got their food and we ate it, we had probably been at the restaurant for almost 3+ hours.   It was an incredibly exhausting meal. 

While the last few courses did redeem this place a bit, the insane amount of time we had to wait for our food and the obnoxiously loud music made it really hard for me to like this place.  After re-reading my previous review, it doesn't look like too much has changed from my last experience. While I'm still interested in seeing what JC has to offer, I'm not sure if this is really the best first impression.

Photo Credit:  Yelp

MAE Visited 8/11/2012 3.5 Forks

MAE (Modern American Eatery) 339 Communipaw Ave., Jersey City, NJ 07304

This is my first Jersey City review and I owe it to my lovely friend Patrick from work.  He had mentioned that he had eaten at this gem of a restaurant in Jersey City and wanted me to try.  I was more than happy to try something different and broaden my horizons and even better Patrick was willing to pick me and my friend Allison up from the PATH train.  I will caveat that if you don't have a car, it's not very easy to get to and it might even be a bit dangerous to get there via public transportation.  While Patrick gave us on a very nice tour of Jersey City (I had no idea they have such beautiful brownstones there), we did literally cross the other side of the tracks and you could immediately tell we were in the more "up and coming" part of town.  So MAE literally sticks out like a sore thumb in the neighborhood.  But it's a lovely bistro type place that I think would do really well in Brooklyn (they already have a hipster waitstaff afterall!).

The brunch menu is a prix fix of either a $12 option or $15 option depending on what entree you order.   It comes with either coffee and juice or a choice of bloody cesar (same thing like a bloody mary but with clamato juice), screwdriver or mimosa.  There were tons of great sounding options and I was torn between the crab benedict or the fried chicken breakfast burrito.  I ultimately decided on the crab benedict (surprise surprise), Patrick got the breakfast burrito and Allison got the vegetarian omelet.  As any long time reader of this blog would know, I am a harsh judge on a brunch place based on how well they poach an egg.  I am happy to say that MAE beautifully passed this test.  It was perfectly poached and super runny.  The crab cake underneath was pretty good (obviously it's not a MD full of crabmeat kind but it wasn't all filler either) and the muffin was perfectly soft.  The dish came with a side of homefries which were really roasted herb potatoes.  They were good, a bit on the undercooked side but they weren't raw.  I had a bite of Patrick's fried chicken burrito and sadly this was a disappointment.  It sounded so good, but it was very dry inside and out.  The tortilla was too thick and dry and you couldn't really taste the chicken.  Poor Patrick had to douse it with hot sauce just to get any flavor and moisture to it.  I didn't try Allison's veggie omelet but it did look really healthy and tasty.  We also this dessert that was a homemade biscuit covered with whipped cream and berries.  It looks delicious when it came out and we were all super excited to try it.  Unfortunately something was off with the biscuit.  It had this sour almost curdled taste to it.  But the berries and cream were great and I could see the potential in this dish and that if the biscuit was done right, that it would have been a great summer dessert.  Maybe there was buttermilk or sour cream in it? Who knows, but we did end up telling the waiter about it and he did feel bad about it.  Luckily, we all felt fine afterwards, so at least no one got food poisoning.

Even though 2 of the 4 dishes weren't stellar, I can see a lot of potential in this place.  They try to cook locally and organically which is pretty unique in a neighborhood filled with strip malls and check cash places.  If you happen to be in the neighborhood or have a car, I would say give it a try (maybe for dinner instead) and I do hope they consider opening a branch closer to the city because I would love to see them do well.  Total bill: $20/pp with tax and tip

Photo Credit: Yelp