As the semester and, as a whole, the academic year winds down, I’m starting to look back on all the places I’ve been over the past year in pursuit of the best Hoboken has to offer. After sampling everything from Asian to burgers to Mexican, from lunch to dinner to dessert, and from hole-in-the-wall to expansive dining area, I’ve built up a pretty decent repertoire of where to go for every scenario, cause, and reason to venture out into Hoboken. Enjoy!
Date Night: When you’re trying to impress someone or just make a night special without going broke, Hoboken Gourmet would probably be your best bet. Aside from being a popular brunch destination, their intimate environment, creative dishes, and attentive staff make for the perfect date environment. Plus, if you are willing to splurge a bit for something like an anniversary or birthday, I would strongly recommend their Wednesday night chef’s table special (you’ll thank me later).
Parents in Town: As everyone has experienced or, if you’re an underclassman, is beginning to experience, mom and dad like to pop into Hoboken from time to time. Contact with home is a great thing, even when it probably means putting off work due in the next day or two. At some point, your parents will probably ask where to get dinner, and if they’re over the dining hall like mine were by sophomore year, that means they’re buying in Hoboken. If personal payment isn’t the issue and your parents want to go somewhere nice, Court Street has a very upscale menu and is both classy and near campus. They are a bit pricey, but between their Prime Rib and Lobsterfest specials, they’re an excellent destination if going out is on the family.
Trying Something New: When I started this column, I didn’t have the most adventurous palette. I loved the same few restaurants in Hoboken, most of them close to either campus or 800 Madison, and I was a man of routine. The freedom provided by Cuisine Corner let me get a bit adventurous, and if you’re looking for adventurous, my suggestion would be Pho-nomenon Noodle & Grill is almost certainly something different. When I visited them back at the start of my column, I tried things like pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup, and drank out of a real coconut. My culinary experience at the time in the Asian sphere of cuisine was limited to Japanese and Chinese, so this was definitely something different.
Trying Something New 2 (Electric Boogaloo): If you only want to get a little bit adventurous while retaining some semblance of typical foods, Bareburger takes the conventional hamburger and dresses it up with all different kinds of meat, everything from wild boar to elk. On top of that, while their sides are relatively standard (fries and onion rings), their dipping sauces of everything from a smoke sauce to curry ketchup definitely christen the taste buds.
Best Place to Drown your Sorrows: It’s finals time—how could I neglect this scenario? If you are looking for a quick fix following a disastrous test or to celebrate nailing a group presentation, nothing is better than a dessert, and one of the best dessert stops in Hoboken is 16 Handles. With a large enough space to have a small party, 16 different flavors in endless combinations, and dividers for multiple creations, 16 Handles is close enough to campus and enough of a good time to celebrate for any reason.
Freshman year, a friend of mine (who happens to be graduating in about 20 days) had one simple goal: eat at every restaurant in Hoboken. “Hoboken’s not that big,” I thought at the time. “How hard could it be?” Asking her recently, despite her best efforts, Hoboken proved to be too much. With so many different restaurants and a decent amount of turnover, attempting to try every restaurant, bistro, cafe, and takeout joint is inevitably a fool’s errand that will run the average college student poor (both financially and in free time).
Since writing Cuisine Corner, I’ve started picking up that challenge, trying something new as often as possible (if not different restaurants, different dishes) in the amount of time left at Stevens. And after two full semesters of sampling everything Hoboken has to offer, all I can say is it’s a worthy endeavor, but Hoboken is quite the culinary beast.
Having a meal plan was certainly cozy freshman year, but being off it for a couple years now has presented itself the opportunity to taste, to try, and to expand my palette while working through the Hoboken food scene. A word of advice: get out there! Hoboken has so many restaurants and is evolving constantly; blink and you miss it. So in the words of a certain individual, don’t blink!
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