Beautiful Tenafly

[menton1]

Segreto's is on a side street in the space formerly occupied by Jerry's Osteria.

Cafe Cafe looks closed and dark. Is it premature to say they are history?

[Rachel Perlow]

OK, that place. Has anyone been to Segreto's? Please post on the linked thread.

No, Cafe Cafe is closed, as the owners moved on to a bigger venture, Griffin's in Cresskill. This would be an example I cited earlier, not all restaurant closures are a failure.

[DrNuke]

Steering this back to food, as Rachel says, Tenafly is no different in terms of its ability to "kill restaurants or food establishments" than any of the surrounding towns. Certainly, Cresskill has many of the same qualities, as does Teaneck, which for a while had a lot of vacant storefronts on Teaneck Road. Plenty of places fail in Englewood too, you just don't notice them as much because its a much larger town. Bergenfield also has restaurants fail pretty frequently, although we don't notice them as much because there are few places we like to go to in Bergenfield. Demarest is pretty non-existent in terms of any kind of dining.

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Non-existant? Our town is still abuzz about the recent Dunkin' Donuts shop. And we're definitely a destination spot if you want bad pizza...

Anyway, we tend to go out to Tenafly as much as we go to Closter or Cresskill or other towns in the area. It's all pretty much the same place to me. Unfortunately we're not such an easy area to get to via 80/95 or the GSP so a restaurant would have to be pretty darn special to pull people in from elsewhere. In theory Tenafly should have more of an advantage in getting customers from bordering Englewood than the towns to the north, so I was surprised to see America go under. (Does anybody know the story behind that? I was there not long before they closed and the place was full.) I can only speculate that Sapphire couldn't compete with the more 'established' Samdan just down the road.

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Actually, we frequented both Samdan and Sapphire and found Sapphire to have the superior menu. The Missus felt that their appetizers had a more Israeli-Lebonese slant where as Samdan was more towards Turkish. And, Sapphire seemed to be packed every time we went. So, it was a shock to me that they had closed.

As far as all the talk of Tenafly being a "restaurant graveyard", there is a common thread that runs through these towns - or, literally lack thereof. Jason touched on part of it in that there are no accessible major highways (or trains) to the central business districts. Towns such as Englewood and Ridgewood are easily accessible by car. They're well established and have very large commercial zones. In the case of Ridgewood, very few industrial portions and there was some planning done.

That brings the second point that so many other towns have suffered from explosive growth with houses and commercial zones developed haphazardly (thanks to planning boards with questionable agendae) that it creates bad asthetics. People just don't feel comfortable dining there. Towns like Ridgewood seem almost chic by comparison. There's something to feng-sui. People are shallow. So, if you add this factor to the already high business mortality rate of restaurants, you can understand why there's a high turnover in places like Tenafly.

Jason also mentioned back on 2/24/06 about Koreans not eating in any place local unless it's Korean. From my experience, we've found many large Korean families from "the old country" dining in places as odd as Indian and Middle-Eastern restaurants. We'll see at least one table in Sapphire with such an extended family - and they weren't eating anything resembling man-du, bul-go-gi, or kim-chi. I can see Rachel telling you not to be the "ugly white guy".

[menton1]

Grand opening in Tenafly, La Forchetta. Any reports?

[menton1]

David Bonom in the Record seems to concur that Tenafly has lost a lot of restaurants in the past couple of years. And, astoundingly enough, a less-than-flattering review here of the new Sanzari's. With the NY pricing, it sounds like a place to miss:

Bergen Record Review-- Sanzari's

[Jason Perlow]

Appetizers sound good. The restaurant seemed geared to more of a bar crowd, in any case.

I'm also curious as to why Bonom chose to review a place that is proportedly an "Oyster Bar" and didn't order any oysters or anything else from its raw bar? I mean isn't that the main draw of the place?

Edited May 10, 2006 by Jason Perlow (log)

[Rosie]

Grand opening in Tenafly, La Forchetta.  Any reports?

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Isn't La Forchetta in Englewood? Is there another one?

[menton1]

La Forchetta is a new incarnation of a restaurant in a building that used to be home to several awful Chinese restaurants. It is on Piermont Road, definitely in Tenafly.

[Ryderpond]

Has anyone been to Axia Restaurant, the new Greek one in Tenafly? I heard an interview with Alex Gorant, head chef, and Diane Kochilas, the restaurant's food consultant yesterday on WOR's Food Talk.

Sue