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Restaurants
Park & Orchard
City:
East RutherfordCounty:
Bergen CountyPhone:
201.939.9292
Price:
$$
Cuisine:
Eclectic
Key:
Full ReviewPark & Orchard
**240 Hackensack St.
E. Rutherford
201.939.9292
parkandorchard.com
This crazy quilt of a restaurant focuses on healthful fare, with a wide range of options for vegetarians, vegans, and those avoiding dairy, salt, fat, or artificial ingredients — not to mention an entire menu of gluten-free dishes for people with celiac disease. It even offers gluten-free beer.
All entrees come as oversized portions of hearty, grandma-style food, although “grandma” might be Italian, Mexican, Cajun, Southwest-American, Chinese, Middle Eastern, or Eastern European— or a mixture. Examples include crawfish enchiladas, dairy- and wheat-free vegetarian lasagna (made with polenta and tofu “ricotta”), stir-fried Cajun shrimp and andouille sausage, and chicken shepherd’s pie. The big surprise is that many dishes taste good, and a few are very good.
The most unexpected quirk of all? This restaurant is one of only two in the Garden State to receive Wine Spectator’s Grand Award. It’s the magazine’s top designation, one that wine connoisseurs take seriously. (The state’s other winner is Restaurant Latour in Hamburg.)
But the 2,000-plus wines are served in an open, high-ceiling space that has been likened to an upscale diner. Although the restaurant has been around for only about 20 years, the space has a 1930s look, with a black-and-white checkerboard floor, rows of glass-block curves, and an overall sparseness. It can be noisy when full.
I enjoy the strange juxtapositions here, but there are shortcomings. Our server exuded charm and patience but was clueless about the wine and even the food. She couldn’t identify the “Ethel” behind Ethel’s Famous Pot Roast (turns out to be the owner’s mother) and she neglected to tell us the soups of the day. We ordered a bottle of pinot noir from the $35-and-under list only to have it poured into small, heavy-rimmed wineglasses. Other tables sported better glasses; I can only deduce they ordered pricier wines.
Although much of the fare does not rise above acceptable, many appetizers are outstanding. Smoked trout with horse-radish cream is exemplary: light in texture, moderately smoky, not oily. I feared for my companion, who ordered mushroom barley soup, but it tasted homemade and not at all like the pasty glop I was imagining.
A half-portion of potato-cheese pirogi shone with nimble, fluffy filling and thin pastry wrappings, plus a slathering of butter. Desserts, too, get a thumbs-up — the Ultimate Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake is one delicious representative.
Entrees constitute a relative letdown. Ethel’s pot roast benefits from being made with Coleman beef, but it is topped with merely serviceable gravy and accompanied by nondescript mashed potatoes. The tofu-polenta lasagna is tasty, but its many components, which also include spinach, cauliflower, and good tomato sauce, all have the same mushy texture. Still, I would order it again. Not so the Baked Scallops à la Faye. The menu promises Dijon mustard sauce, but mostly the scallops are drowned in butter. Perhaps because we dined on a Sunday, the scallops were less than fresh, and the dish contained many more bits and pieces than whole specimens.
Everyone should visit Park & Orchard at least once. Some will become regulars —and not only vegetarians, the health conscious, and wine aficionados—while others are bound to simply shrug.
