Rhonda and I agreed, just after our last visit to New Brunswick to see Aaron, that we’d trade in our annual visit to Rehoboth, Delaware, for another trip up to New Brunswick to visit Aaron. New Brunswick is peripheral to New York City, and represents the tip of the spear where New Jersey converts from bucolic and spacious to the stereotype of what most people associate with the Garden State: choked with cars and traffic, the Turnpike, jug handles, and road rage. Getting your bearings in Camden County is a good training ground for the asphalt jungle of central Jersey.
I had, until I graduated college, managed to exclusively experience the southern parts of Jersey, growing up in Cumberland County, and traveling north to my grandparents’ house in Milford, NJ, a sleepy bedroom town bereft of Wawas and McDonald’s and malls. The landscape transformed before my eyes as we lumbered up old Route 206 to Route 29 from flat farmland and pinelands into windy mountain roads, and later, up the fast but unscenic Route 55 to 42 to 295. Our route’s evolution went from slow but scenic to a blur of competing race car ya-yas, until the familiar undulations of the inevitable Route 29 found our tires.
One thing I learned about Camden County, a place I’ve worked in twice since graduating college, is not the density (which is there in spades), but the sheer variety of experience there. Moore Bros. Great restaurants. Revived downtowns, evolving from sleepy forgotten retails hubs forgotten by 80s mall culture into bespoke cafes, bakeries, and BYOBs.
New Brunswick, and the peripheral Brunswicks, and Edison, and Sayreville, and Newark, all offer bigger iterations on this theme: culturally diverse restaurants, long stretches of highway with every chain restaurant imaginable, and every tier of shopping mall, all within short drives of each other. On our trips, we pop, damp and happy, out of farmland wineries, into the dense traffic of a million souls piloting vehicles in an urgent rush to somewhere.
In a short 90-minute drive, we deliver ourselves from sleepy farmscapes to burgeoning cities, all clinging to the greatest city in the world.
OK Alex, Shut Up and Tell Me What You Ate
Our trips to Rehoboth always feature dinner at either new or favorite spots. We’ve eaten at Salt Air many times, because it’s a consistent favorite. We’ve dined at other memorable spots there, too, including Drift, Blue Hen, and Le Fable, and our stalwart lunch spot, Miyagi Ramen. We go off season, because we’re suckers for a quiet shore town.
And while the familiar, and small iterations thereof, are always enjoyable, Aaron’s decision to attend Rutgers offers our adventurous troupe many opportunities to try new places. So far, so good: The Frog and the Peach was a great dining experience, and we’ve had some of the best Asian food ever in Edison.
While I was tempted to revisit the Frog and the Peach, I found the Metuchen Inn while prowling Open Table, and I made a rez for our visit last Friday. The stately old house welcomed our eager party with dim incandescence on a dark and damp evening, and we were efficiently shuttled to our table. And since the rise and fall of our local and beloved Winfields in Millville, the “American Cuisine” moniker heartens me.
A very good first sign: our server didn’t bat an eyelash at my asking for our Tanqueray Martinis up with olives, mixed at a six-to-one ratio. The drinks were stellar; while Rhonda and I have taken to enjoying a Manhattan preprandial, we still enjoy a Martini as a treat at a nice restaurant.
Another encouraging sign: having a hard time picking out an appetizer. I was very close to ordering the Blue Point oysters on the half shell, wrestled with the mussels, but settled upon the clams with chorizo and black beans. I think there’s something about a clam I’ll always prefer to an oyster or a mussel, although in the former case, it’s a culinary crime to say so. I love the assertive brine of a clam, on the half shell or steamed. These littlenecks were steamed to perfection, with a tasteful appointment of firm black beans and small chunks of dried chorizo. Gilding shellfish with a greasy, smoky sausage is always a pro move.
Rhonda tried the lobster bisque, a dish she favors quite possibly due to serially excellent executions of the corn and crab chowder at the Knife and Fork. It was perfectly viscous, avoiding the gloopy texture you’ll find at a lesser establishment, and redolent of shellfish roasted into the stock.
Aaron tried the charred octopus, which I am always tempted by, but often avoid, having watched a lot of YouTube videos demonstrating how much smarter octopi are than, say, me. I tried a bite, and it was pleasingly soft, with a nice smoky chair.
For entrees, I went with the sea bass after wrestling with the wild boar tenderloin. Wild boar and I have a history: on our trip in 2000 to Sienna, Italy, wild board ragù was on every menu, often served with pici pasta, a long tubular noodle expressly designed for soaking up condimento. I recently found boar on a local eatery’s menu, but it had sold out before I tried to order it. I was similarly tempted by the pork osso bucco and the venison tenderloin; there is something about a chilly fall night that invites a curated meat dish, especially game. But I had sucked down my share of wine that afternoon, and future meals loomed in the horizon, so I went with the special.
This was a spectacular dish: perfectly crisp skin, tender, flaky flesh, all piled atop cherry tomatoes and asparagus. Not a carb in sight. It’s the kind of dish you can eat and lick clean and not feel bad about it.
Rhonda went for the lamb chops, which looked fabulous. Aaron, my adventurous counterpart in all things culinary, waited to hear what I ordered before pulling the trigger on the boar. Plated tastefully around a mound of mashed sweet potatoes and a pile of asparagus, it was a sous vide masterpiece, cooked to a perfect medium rare.
The service was attentive and brisk, with impeccable pacing. This all fell apart once dessert was ordered; it took a long time to come out, and we had to flag down a server to bring us our check. It had been a long day of driving, and we were keen to get back to the room for some rest. And maybe some more wine.
I would go back in a heartbeat. It is, to my taste, the perfect spot to celebrate with the ones you cherish the most on a chilly night. Or any night, I imagine.