Call us provincial, but we do make a fuss when a New Jersey restaurant makes a showing on national best dining rankings, even if we take those lists with a grain of salt.
We may need an entire salt shaker for the Daily Meal’s upcoming 2017 rankings of the 101 best restaurants in America: In a survey the website sent out Monday to food critics and restaurant writers across America, it only included one New Jersey restaurant among the hundreds nominated. And that restaurant closed in 2015.
The Daily Meal asked us not to name the restaurant, citing the proprietary nature of the survey, but feel free to speculate in the comments below! The Daily Meal editor in charge of the survey said the inclusion of the long-closed restaurant was an oversight, and that he is working to add five other New Jersey restaurants to the list.
The website has been ranking restaurants since 2011 and the list is widely read and cited, certainly by the restaurants included. Initially it depended on its own staff for the list, but has since reached out to food critics and dining writers for other nominations and to vote for their picks.
We’re not saying our dining scene could compete with perennial favorites French Laundry, Daniel or Le Bernandin, but no other New Jersey restaurant was even nominated among the hundreds of eateries in contention.
Not Morristown’s Jockey Hollow Kitchen & Bar, which Esquire named as one of the top 15 new restaurants in America in late 2015. Nor Cucharamama, whose chef-owner Maricel Presilla took home the James Beard Awards’ best chef Mid-Atlantic in 2012, competing against top toques in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. Or Princeton’s Elements or Collingswood’s Zeppoli, whose chefs have been named semifinalists for that award for four years in a row. Nor Restaurant Nicholas in Middletown, consistently at the top of Zagat’s rankings for New Jersey.
Just to name, oh, FIVE.
Tell us: Which New Jersey restaurant do you think belongs on the list of the best restaurants in America? Let us know in the comments below.
Vicki Hyman may be reached at vhyman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @vickihy or like her on Facebook. Find NJ.com/Entertainment on Facebook, and check out Remote Possibilities, the TV podcast from Vicki Hyman and co-host Erin Medley on iTunes, Stitcher or Spreaker, or listen below or here.
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