These 4 NJ Restaurants Were Named Favorites By 'Bon Appetit'

4 New Jersey restaurants were recommended on the pages of a well-known culinary magazine. Bon Appetit included the local spots among its list of "America's Favorite Neighborhood Restaurants."

In the feature, the magazine said it asked 80 of the "most interesting" people — celebrities, professional athletes, fashion designers and more — where they like to eat. They then compiled the selected restaurants into a list divided up by geographical locations.

"These are the spots we return to again and again, the places that make no claim to be the "newest" or the "trendiest" and that's precisely why we love them," the magazine says.

Here they are:

Liberty Hall Pizza in Lambertville

Turns out, famous fashion designer Zac Posen is a fan. Posen tells Bon Appetit his family is from Bucks County. Usually they cook dinner at the farm, but when they need to escape, they head out to Liberty Hall.

"There’s a nice, happy simplicity to it: wood fired pies in a small, colorful, welcoming place. I always order a margherita or something more creative, like a Meyer lemonbasil pizza with smoked mozzarella, then the roasted beet salad with gorgonzola, and a root beer float to finish," Posen is quoted as saying.

Liberty Hall Pizza is located at 243 N. Union St, Lambertville.

Petite Soo Chow in Cliffside Park

Prominent chef Deuki Hong says: “The only places I like to eat at are the Asian-mom-yelling-at-you-horrible-service-but-you-don’t-care-cause-it’s-so-damn-delicious kind of restaurants. And my go-to place for the best food (with the worst service) is Petite Soo Chow in Cliffside Park, New Jersey. Get the salt-and-pepper pork chop and soup dumplings. They have legit removed my food before I was done because the staff wanted to go home, and they asked my friend for more of a tip once, but yeah, it’s awesome."

Tony's Baltimore Grill in Atlantic City

Emily Schultz of Bon Appetit says: "Eating at Tony’s Baltimore Grill in Atlantic City, New Jersey, is like that one scene in every cheesy Italian-American movie where all of the characters sit down to have a family dinner. It’s full of big groups of loud people, and the matriarch is always reaching over everyone, plopping a meatball onto her son’s plate."

Swagath Gourmet in Edison

Mayukh Sen, a writer, says: "Singling out a favorite Indian restaurant among Edison, New Jersey’s dizzying array of them is, plainly, a real idiot’s errand. Why even bother? This exercise forces you to succumb to the irrationalism of your silly heart. And for the better part of two decades, mine has guided me to Swagath Gourmet."

See the full feature here.

Image: wood fired pizza via Shutterstock