30 Best Restaurants in New Jersey 2019: New NJ Monthly Rankings

There's still a month left of summer for you to enjoy everything New Jersey has to offer – and not just the beaches, the boardwalks and the amusement parks.

New Jersey has some of the finest restaurants in the nation, but there has been no list that perhaps definitively captures the ambience of the state's fine food food establishments than New Jersey Monthly.

Read more: All The Best Food In New Jersey You Need To Eat In 2019

Indeed, New Jersey Monthly says the state's restaurant climate is in a "golden age" and, as a result, the publication increased its annual list of the state’s best restaurants from 25 to 30 positions. Seven of the restaurants didn't make the top list last year, the publication said.

Below are restaurants that are in Patch towns that our readers may find to be the perfect retreat from the summer beach crowds – even if at least two of them are near a beach:

• Chez Catherine, Westfield. NJ Monthly says: "The haughty, haute French restaurant is a dinosaur. But modern French cooking is alive and agile at Chez Catherine...a comfortable, home-like dining room, where white tablecloths bespeak hospitality rather than hauteur."
• Common Lot, Millburn. NJ Monthly says: "Since opening in 2016, Common Lot has refined its marriage of French technique and Asian flavors...Punchy but not so simple is the torched avocado, a salad in which the flamed fruit is elaborated with sliced beans, almonds, puffed rice and a chipotle dressing that leaves a flicker of heat."
• Cucharamama, Hoboken. NJ Monthly says: "Cucharamama’s pineapple and pumpkin salad, with its contrasting flavors and kissing-cousin textures (compounded by pumpkin seeds), shows how gratifying plant focused can be."
• Elements, Princeton. NJ Monthly says: "When you settle into an armchair at one of the well-spaced tables in the spare, high-ceilinged room, the neutral colors soothe the day’s jitters."
• Fascino, Montclair. NJ Monthly says: "You don’t have to be vegetarian to avidly polish off the mascarpone and local-mushroom agnolotti with marsala glaze."
• Felina, Ridgewood. NJ Monthly says: "Felina boasts a dramatic space with a major bar scene, terrific pastas and fish crudos, and a nose-to-tail approach to pork that pays off in a variety of starters and mains."
• The Frog and the Peach, New Brunswick. NJ Monthly says: "The leafy garden room and clubby dining room look the same, but the food and drink are irrepressible."
• Hearthside, Collingswood. NJ Monthly says: "The beating heart of Hearthside is its side-by-side wood-burning oven and grill, which you can see through the glass walls before you even enter."
• Jockey Hollow Bar & Kitchen, Morristown. NJ Monthly: "Main floor: Great burger? Soups you could actually swoon over? Divine pastas? Check, check, check."
• Poached Pear Bistro, Point Pleasant Beach. NJ Monthly says: "Just blocks from the Shore and its siren call of deep-fried and sugary treats, Scott Giordano’s New American dishes deliver Ferris-wheel heights of pleasure of a more sophisticated sort."
• Mistral, Princeton. NJ Monthly says: "Hitting several sweet spots—affordable prices; dishes emerging swiftly from the kitchen; exciting, pleasure-packed food—Mistral is unbeatable at lunch."
• Modine, Asbury Park: NJ Monthly says: "When you burst from the gate as a Southern-influenced restaurant, as husband-and-wife chef/owners Chris Davin and Jill Meerpohl did 18 months ago, and your fried chicken with biscuits and sides is so good it becomes, as Davin puts it, 'the cornerstone of what we do,' the question becomes, got anything else up your sleeve? They do."
• Nicholas, Red Bank. NJ Monthly says: "Each of the two dining rooms has its own ambience, and the big-windowed bar has its own fetching menu, not to mention sensational cranberry-walnut rolls they don’t serve in the dining room."

Read the entire NJ Monthly list here.