YDKJ’s 2015 in Pictures – Food

by Alice Magdziak • December 27, 2015 • Food • Comments (0) • 1988

We’re looking back at all the food we reviewed in 2015 and have picked out some of our favorites as a year-end wrap up. Enjoy this walk through the best and most beautiful things we ate this year.

Just a few weeks ago, Montclair Bread Company opened up their new giant baking facility around the corner from their retail location. We visited the new place on their open house day and got to sample fresh hot stollen. Normally, stollen is served cooled and slightly aged to get a hardier texture. Fresh out of the oven it was like a souffle. We ended up buying three of them.

In October, we reviewed some of New Jersey’s plethora of terrific pizza joints for National Pizza Month. This year we tasted pies and got recommendations from some artists we know. John Tacon of Brick + Mortar recommended Nino’s Coal Fired Pizza in Brick and we’re so glad he did. It ended up being our favorite pizza of the month!

September brought the much-anticipated NJ Taco Festival to Sussex County Fairgrounds and there was no way we were missing that! Quite surprisingly, our favorite tacos were these vegan ones from Tamerlaine Farms. We even ended up visiting their farm because we wanted to know more about them based on their tacos and hot sauces.

Our Seventh Annual YDKJ Hot Dog Tour happened in August. I can’t believe I’ve eaten a week of hot dogs for seven years in a row. It makes Ed happy though… as shown by this picture of him when we visited Vito’s Hot Dog Truck in Harrison. We love Vito and he let Ed onto the truck this year. I nearly had to drag him out.

Peach picking season is one of the things I most look forward to when the weather starts to heat up. We picked peaches this year at Demarest Farms in Hillsdale.

We’ve always wanted to experience sushi on a conveyor belt. It must have been something we both saw on TV as kids. Who knows? We just knew we were excited when YO! Sushi opened up in Paramus.

May was one of the most exciting months we’ve had since we started YDKJ five years ago. Our beloved Steve’s Burgers in Garfield agreed to create the You Don’t Know Jersey Burger for us. And, of course, it was amazing in every way. It was so good, in fact, that Steve’s has permanently kept it on the menu!

Over the summer we also took time out of our busy schedules to make pasta at home with as many New Jersey products as possible. The pasta (fettucine and ravioli), sauce, bread and sausage was all hand-made and delicious. It was also a ton of work that took ten hours from start to finish. Luckily, that ten hours made at least four giant meals’ worth of food and we ate it all summer.

With all this food talk, I’m thirsty which makes me think of coffee. We got to watch Mike, the roaster at Booskerdoo Coffee Company, roast beans one morning in August. What an education!

We started a series on diners this year which has led us to some surprising findings. Some diners are good at breakfast and not so great at dinner. Some are great at both. Other diners look shabby but have great food. Our favorite omelet so far has been this South of the Border one at Gotham City Diner in Fair Lawn.

And, finally, our favorite new restaurant this year was Burger Walla in Newark. Their shrimp burger (below), chicken burger, lamb burger… OK, all their burgers… are rich, juicy and delicious. The owners are extremely friendly. The side dishes are all really inventive. There are good vegetarian selections. It’s just great all around.