The premise of Farm2Bistro, a new restaurant in Nutley, is intriguing enough: get food as locally as possible and cook it up right away. Owner-chef Michael Madigan Jr., who also runs Snails to Quails, a supplier to New York yacht kitchens, searches the farmers market circuit each morning, then comes back to cook the food at night.
But Farm2Bistro is an experience even before you taste your first bite. You walk into the funky Nutley restaurant, where four leather-upholstered picnic tables and a palm-frond canopy await you, and Madigan immediately greets you, wants to know how you found out about his restaurant and sits down at your table like your new best friend. He asks if you like ice tea after you nod yes, goes to a candy/tea bar to mix you a concoction. I was served black oolong tea with cranberry half-sweet, my son Noah got mango-kiwi-raspberry with Gummi bears, and Mista Barista was served raspberry full sweet. Mind you, we didn't ask for these combinations. Madigan sized us up, brought us our teas, and we were all happy.
All this makes the experience fun, but the real thrill of the restaurant comes with your first bite.
I got the pork loin (special that day), which came with roasted carrots and potatoes and a little mound of something green, which turned out to be sauteed arugula. For some reason, I tried a carrot first, and I can honestly say that was the best carrot I've ever eaten in my life. I could have eaten a whole plate with just those carrots and left the restaurant a happy camper. But then I tried the sauteed arugula, which makes you wonder why anybody bothers with it as a salad in the first place. The pork loin, encrusted in herbs, was fabulously savory.
Noah, a vegetarian, tried the chicken quesadilla -- without the chicken. We were warned that the quesadilla was merely a wrap, but it came toasted (a great idea for wraps, why don't more restaurants try that?) and each bite offered a melange of densely packed vegetables and amazing seasonings. Mista Barista's Sunflower Chicken, a sunflower-seed encrusted and served in a honey-lime sauce, was also a winner.
We all sat there in a state of bliss, marveling that this little unassuming restaurant, where the most expensive item on the menu is $17 and you eat at picnic tables, could have served us one of the best meals we've ever had at a local restaurant. "Do you think this is what it's like to eat on a farm?" Noah asked.
Madigan has stumbled onto a restaurant concept that feeds all kinds of politically-correct notions of supporting local business and environmental sustainability. But as his website says, "There are many reasons to buy local, but the best reason is flavor." It remains to be seen whether he can make it in what he calls "the pizza triangle" (the Weehawken chef ought to have chosen Montclair), and what will happen in November when the farmers markets close. Madigan says when that happens, he'll have to travel southward to Delaware and eventually Georgia. "We seek the farmers and growers closest to New Jersey."
On Tuesday nights, your dining experience is augmented by the keyboard and guitar duo of Mark Walsh and James O'Malley. It's worth it just to see O'Malley's improbable guitar.
And then there's the bathroom. A light goes on when you walk in, and you read a sign explaining that the lights are motion-activated. It warns you that if the lights go off while you're in there, all you have to do is wave your hands. Well they did, and I did. But sitting in the pitch black there for a moment before the lights went back on was just another reminder that I'd finally found a restaurant in Baristaville where the surprises never end.
Or as they say, from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Farm2Bistro, 177 Franklin Ave., Nutley, NJ 973.667.3276.
"(the Weehawken chef ought to have chosen Montclair)"
Wow - what snobbery. I sure hope that I, and my fellow Nutley-ites, can handle such a restaurant. (Must remind myself to use eating utensils!)