$155. Thanks for your post on Sushi Aoki. I had missed it.
How were the pre-nigiri dishes? They were certainly tasty at Aoki but more sushi-like than at NYC places (or a salad with some sashimi, a skewer of tuna, etc)
Wow, what delicious food
Loved the corn ravioli, market salad , octopus, and cod. Goat cheesecake and apricot bread pudding might have been the stars
Octopus is outstanding! Next time try the mussels. WOW!!!
Mussels were outstanding! I think the pork chop was even better though.
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I wish I knew you were going. This is one of our regular spots.
You have good taste 
First time Arnold was taking me, his mom and his aunt out for my birthday. Second time I was taking them out for watching the dogs while I was in the FL.
Sure wish this place was around before I moved. My dad’s office was in Plainfield for over 40 years and I grew up 20 minutes away.
We went tonight. Shared the shrimp and mushroom crepe which we both liked, I had the pork chop which was tender and cooked perfectly. We also shared the apricot bread pudding, very tasty.
Anything new/noteworthy BYO in or near Essex County/Morris County? Visiting family for the upcoming Jewish holidays and have a couple free nights.
Common lot in milburn
That’s in my home town (!) and was open for a few years before I moved away! Was wondering if anything more recent?
The Gov is trying to get more liquor licenses out there which will cut back on BYO’s. The part about allowing wineries and breweries to serve food makes sense to me though. As a consumer of course I like the BYO options but I could see why restaurants want more licenses
I have mixed feelings on this. The serving food at breweries and wineries is fine and to me didn’t make sense but I understood where the bar owners were coming from. On the other hand, being in distribution this would be such a logistical nightmare and headache.
The restaurant’s food focus has changed tremendously since you lived here. It has slowly moved to more Asian influences on most dishes. Personally, I miss the old Common Lot.
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Expect a fierce fight from existing restaurants that paid big $$ for a liquor license. Will see how well they can lobby against it.
Murphy is envisioning a gradual rollout of some sort by increasing the ratio of licenses to population
I think it’s 50/50 at best that there are more licenses issued. That would be a big devaluation for current holders
NJ craft breweries just got hit with a ton of new restrictions. This is due to liquor license holders protesting them siphoning off revenue without having to pay market rate
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I’m totally fine with expanding liquor licenses to NJ restaurants as long as those restaurants will also offer corkage. Right now there are few NJ restaurants with licenses that offer a BYO option with corkage.
Paul
Agree, but requiring corkage is unlikely to be legislated. Is it required in any other state?
Here’s the details of his plan. Increase the ratio of licenses to population limit by 10% each year for 5 years and then remove the limit altogether after that.
“It is expected to be hotly contested by existing license holders”
https://whyy.org/articles/nj-gov-murphy-state-of-the-state-address-2023/amp/
I don’t expect it to be required but I would hope most restaurants would offer it. Otherwise I won’t be eating out often in NJ.
The thing is we have some byo restaurants that have great food that we can pair with great wines. Very unlikely that these places will have well curated wine lists, so we end up with sub par wines.
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