Where to Eat in Stone Harbor, New Jersey

I’m sure there are a lot of great places to enjoy a terrific meal in Stone Harbor, New Jersey when on vacation, but there are two restaurants that are must visits for me whenever I’m next door in Avalon.  One is Jay’s On Third and the other is Quahog’s. I went to both last year but didn’t write about them and plan on going back to both this year.  Purely for reporting purposes, of course.

My favorite Stone Harbor restaurant is Jay’s On Third. I wrote about Chef Jason Hippen and Jay’s On Third the first time I ate there a couple of years ago but didn’t write about my amazing meal last year when Meg and I dined there without the kids.

What I remember most about our dinner experience that night was how much energy there was in the room.  The crowd was lively and you could hear how excited people were about what they ordered and what they were being served.

Sometimes you go into a restaurant and there is no energy. People are eating but you can see they are not enthused by the menu. The night we were at Jay’s On Third, the entire room was buzzing and you could see people sharing their food with each other. Granted, we were at the Jersey shore after an incredible day on the beach and most folks were in vacation mode, but there was something special going on this night.

For me, a great atmosphere can somewhat make up for less-than-wonderful food, and wonderful food can sometimes make up for a dull atmosphere.  But, at Jason’s on Third, they are the whole package. The atmosphere and excitement elevate the food, and vice versa.

What Did I Eat at Jay’s On Third

Photo courtesy of Jay’s On Third

I’m not a big fan of waiters telling you what they tried on the menu and offering suggestions on what to eat. It’s usually the most expensive item and they don’t even know what I like.  But even so, I’m going to act like that waiter and try and tell you what I remember about what we ate and then whole-heartedly recommend all of it to you.

First up, the grilled scallops.  I know I had the grilled scallops last year and they were served with some sort of emulsion. It could have been what’s currently being served on the menu – Grilled Scallops – Smoked Bacon, Green Beans, Sweet Corn, and Oyster Emulsion. These may have been the most perfectly cooked scallops I’ve ever tried.

I also remember trying the Crisp Calamari and that, too, was cooked to perfection. Served with Chili Sea Salt, Napa Cabbage and Lime-Gin Aioli.

As for the fish I ordered, I can’t remember but it may have been the Pacific Halibut served with mussels, potato crisps, Kaffir Lime and Coconut-Shellfish Emulsion that’s now on the menu. It may have been some other dish entirely, but I can tell you that it was amazing, whatever it was.  You can trust me about this:  if the dish had been terrible, I surely would have remembered that, especially after having had the amazing scallops and calamari!

Desserts

Photo courtesy of Jay’s On Third

I do remember we planned on going a few blocks north to Springers for dessert where they serve the most delicious ice cream. This place deserves a post all by itself, and I will try to get around to it this trip. Fortunately, in this case, we didn’t get the chance to go to Springers because Chef Jason sent out a couple of his own desserts that were new to me and totally outrageous.

One of them was Yogurt Panna Cotta and the other was a Raspberry & Blueberry Tart made with vanilla mascarpone and Nutella ice milk.  Panna Cotta is an Italian dessert made by simmering milk, cream and sugar and then mixing this with gelatin. When it cools it sets into a soft custard like consistency.

There are many recipes to be found on the Internet combining a basic Panna Cotta with other ingredient, but at its heart, panna cotta is a simple dish that doesn’t take too long to make. I’ll post a recipe as soon as I find one I like and give it a try. If you have one you think I would enjoy, please send it along.

So Meg and I can’t wait to get back to this impressive seaside resort restaurant and eat more of Chef Jason’s cooking. If you are in south Jersey on vacation and looking for a great dinner in Stone Harbor, I recommend you give Jay’s On Third a try.  If you go, and you really should, please let me know about your experience.

My friend Chef Clark Gilbert, whose daughter Riley plays basketball with my oldest daughter Nell, just moved his restaurant Gemelli from Narberth, PA to Manayunk, PA. Last night my wife and I enjoyed an incredible dinner there with our friends Barbecue Bob and his lovely wife Bert.  I wanted to give Clark a shout out and let him know how much we all enjoyed everything we ordered.

Photo courtesy Gemelli on Main

I took photo’s of some of the dishes with my trusty Sony Cyber-shot and some came out fine while a couple were a little out of focus. I’d like to bring my Nikon D-80 but I find it a little conspicuous in restaurants. Hmmm!

We started out with a variety of appetizers including Caprese Salad, a classic Italian salad Clark prepares with oven roasted tomatoes, burrata (a form of mozzarella cheese), fresh basil and yuzu vinaigrette. I’m going to have to ask Clark about the yuzu vinaigrette since I’ve never heard of it.

Barbecue Bob ordered my favorite Vitello Tonnato made with tuna tartare, crispy sweetbreads and tonnato sauce. Bert enjoyed an asparagus salad loaded with fresh local asparagus and I tried the Rabbit Rillette served on top of Lentils du Puy.  Rillette is very similar to country style pate and Puy is in the region of Auvergne, France known for the best green lentils. Served with a little red onion marmalade and country style whole grain mustard, you have a mouth watering delight.

For our main courses, Bert tried the lobster and shrimp cannelloni served with braised pork belly and lobster cardamon jus. May sound like a strange combination but every worked well together. Bob enjoyed the most perfectly cooked sea scallops served with salt-cod risotto, zucchini and roasted chicken jus. I have to find out how he prepares the scallops so perfectly.

My wife Meg ordered a fish on the menu called Barramundi. Not familiar with it, I looked it up on Wikipedia and found out it is also called an Asian Seabass and gets its name from the Australian Aboriginal language and means “large-scalled river fish”. Didn’t notice the scales but this white, tender meat fish was delicious and served with the most tasty ratatouille seasoned with Indian spices. Loved it.

I had Clark’s signature Gemelli which is a goat meat bolognese with golden raisins and marcona almonds. When I go back with a group I might ask them to serve this as a first course for the table along with the other appetizers. It’s that good. The name Gemelli is the Italian word for twins. Gemelli pasta is a “single s-shaped strand twisted into a spiral.” Clark daughter and son are twins, thus the name of the restaurant.

If you live in the Philadelphia area or just visiting the area, I encourage you to make a short trip to Manayunk (a very cool little town) and try Clark’s restaurant. He is an amazing chef with an incredible knowledge of food and the food industry. I hope to convince him to contribute some writings and recipes to my blog and can’t wait to learn more from him in the future.

So SHOUT OUT to Clark and looking forward to many great meals with you.

Gemelli on Main
4161 Main Street
www.gemellionmain.com

Dinner at Vetri

On Friday I celebrated my birthday by meeting my wife in Philadelphia and checking into an historic bed and breakfast called the Morris House Hotel. This is a huge deal for us because we can count on two hands the number of nights we’ve both been away from our kids overnight. We did get some protest from our 11-year-old Maddie when she heard she wasn’t joining us.

After checking in and sharing a split of champagne, we headed out the door for the second part of my birthday surprise. We walked a few blocks over to Spruce Street to one of the best and most difficult restaurants to get into in Philly by the name of Vetri. I have met Chef Marc Vetri several times because of my involvement with The Great Chefs Event and have dined at his other restaurant, Osteria, several times but never at Vetri.

My wife booked the reservation 3 months earlier as part of this incredible birthday celebration surprise.  The tiny 35-seat restaurant has been voted “One of America’s top 50 restaurants” by Gourmet magazine. Mario Batali said, “Probably the best Italian Restaurant on the East Coast.”  I knew it was going to be great because of my experiences at Osteria and from all the great things friends have been telling me over the years.

Unfortunately neither Marc nor his partner Jeff Benjamin were there this evening but it didn’t matter. The restaurant runs like a well-oiled machine and the staff including general manager Bill McKinley know every ingredient in every dish and every grape in their rather large selection of wines. I know, I think we tasted a large number of them before the night ended.

There are two seatings at Vetri, 6 pm and 9 pm. We were there for the earlier and I’m thankful for that. At my age I don’t think I could have made it through 3 hours of tasting the vast amount of the most delicious foods paired with perfectly selected wines if we started at 9 pm.

The menu is exclusively a tasting menu. In the past, you could order a la carte but now you are handed a large menu with four categories and many selections under each one. Our very knowledgeable and friendly (but not too friendly) waiter explained we could let the chef know if there was something on the menu we had to have or something we wanted to stay away from or just let him choose. We requested the chef choose everything for us but we preferred if we weren’t served the Roasted Sweet Bread with Romanesco Salad but would eat it if put in front of us. It was not served.

I said our waiter but in reality, there are several staff members who work hard to make your dining experience as pleasurable as possible. They are all well versed in how the food is prepared and each ingredient involved, some I was unfamiliar with. They are also encyclopedic in their knowledge of each wine of which there were many. We decided to go all out and order the wine pairing for each dish and their 3-ounce pours were more than generous. I’m not saying we were overserved but it was close!

I’m not a food critic so I didn’t take notes on each dish. I didn’t want to ruin this incredible dining experience with my wife by writing down and taking photos of each course.  Besides, they give you the menu and wine list with all the pairings at the end of the night and we were having way too much fun.

The menu is a work of art by itself. It looks handwritten by Marc with an artistic drawing of a fork running down the middle of the page. It would look very nice framed and hanging in my kitchen as an inspiration of what can be done with simple fresh ingredients.

Speaking of inspiration, many of the dishes found on this menu can be found in Marc’s cookbook, Il Viaggio Di Vetri. I learned this when I asked the waiter if the Sweet Onion Crepe with White Truffle would be in his next cookbook and was told it is already in Il Viaggio. This was my favorite dish of the night and of course I ran home the next day and tried to make it in my kitchen. I’ll be writing more about this in a future post.

The bottom line is most of the dishes we enjoyed on this amazing night are available in his cookbook and more importantly doable. Some take a bit of prep and “slow cooking” but they are not overly complicated. I highly recommend you check out and purchase Marc’s Il Viaggio Di Vetri if not for the photographs and stories alone. I hope to eventually attempt every recipe in book. Enough said.

Here are some of the dishes we enjoyed on my birthday night. I may have left one out or included one I wish I tasted. I’ll skip the wine parings for now and talk more about them another time but you can also go to Vetri online and learn more about the food and wine.

Aperitivo E Assaggi (translated means Aperitif and Taste) - this consisted of a plate of locally grown vegetables cut into julienne sized pieces with a balsamic vinaigrette dipping sauce. I remember carrots and zucchini.

There was also this incredible plate with an assortment of little treats to get the appetite stimulated that included homemade salami, Foie Gras Pastrami with Pear Mostarda and brioche*, duck pate, and I think some roasted vegetables in a pastry and pickled radish but I’m not sure of these last two.

Sweet Onion Crepe with White Truffle Sauce* - my favorite dish of the night and not that difficult to make at home.

Burrata with Chanterelles and Watercress - Burrata is a form of fresh mozzarella cheese that is made with a pocket where pieces of the curd and cream are added. Chanterelles is a form of wild mushroom.

Spinach Gnocchi with Brown Butter - gnocchi is an Italian pasta that is sort of like a dumpling and some say got its name from the word nocca meaning knuckle.

Almond Tortellini with Truffle Sauce

I think we also had the Goat Cheese Agnolotti with Spring Onions - Agnolotti is a style of ravioli from the Piedmont region of Italy. They are very small and hand made.

Soft Shell Crab with Fregola and Green Beans. Fregula is a type of Pasta that comes from Sardinia, Italy and looks a lot like Israeli couscous. The dough is made from semolina and is rolled into 2-3 mm diameter bows and toasted.

Baby Goat with Freshly Stone Milled Polenta*

Alaskan King Salmon with Chickpeas and Spring Onion Agrodolce - agrodolce is the Italian version of sweet and sour sauce.

Desserts

We started off with a plate of various Italian cheeses and then had a taste of Molasses and Wild Berry Gateau. Gateau is a type of Italian sponge cake. For the life of me, I can’t remember what the other dessert was but I think it was some flavor of gelato. It could have been the incredible Domaine de Grange Neuve Monbazillac 2001 dessert wine that fogged my memory.

Most of all, I would like to thank my brilliant and beautiful wife for making this happen. Thank you sweetheart.

And here are some photos from Vetri’s Flikr Slideshow.

* recipe in Il Viaggio Di Vetri