{"id":4652,"date":"2024-03-30T10:07:24","date_gmt":"2024-03-30T14:07:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/?p=4652"},"modified":"2024-03-30T10:37:33","modified_gmt":"2024-03-30T14:37:33","slug":"rules-for-tri-state-italian-food","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/rules-for-tri-state-italian-food\/","title":{"rendered":"Rules for Tri-State Italian food"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Piers emails me:<\/p>\n<ul>You\u2019re a NJ native and great at finding good restaurants.<\/p>\n<p>    So what are the rules for finding good old school American Italian restaurants?  Not like modern farm to table places full of natural light in Brooklyn or SF, you know what I mean?<\/p>\n<p>    Review aggregators are useless.  Horrid \u201cegg noodles and ketchup\u201d places get high scores just for being family run.<\/ul>\n<p>It is harder and harder to find such places. I think the Latino-ization of the New Jersey heartland largely has been a good thing, and also a good thing for food (Peruvian!), but it hasn\u2019t helped Italian dining very much. More and more New Jersey Italian places sell to the upper middle class, rather than to the diehards. I have two pieces of advice:<\/p>\n<p>1. Go to a classic heartland road, such as Rt.17 or Rt.46, and try to learn which places still have Mafia ties, or had them recently.<\/p>\n<p>2. Go to a town in the heartland, and ask a person working at a fire station. Heed the answer only if that person has a New Jersey accent.<\/p>\n<p>As a side remark, the good places have either \u201ctoo good but tacky\u201d decor, or poor, not good enough decor.  Either way, it should not feel pleasant, that is a sign the ravioli and lasagna will be ordinary.  And you can always resort to Staten Island, the Bronx, and parts of Connecticut, in that order.<\/p>\n<p>If you need to ask what \u201cthe heartland\u201d means, you shouldn\u2019t even be trying to eat this food, just drive to Kearny and opt for the lomo saltado or maybe something Brazilian, Dominican or Puerto Rican in Paterson.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/marginalrevolution.com\/marginalrevolution\/2024\/03\/rules-for-tri-state-italian-food.html\">Rules for Tri-State Italian food<\/p>\n<p><em>Originally posted on Marginal Revolution<\/em> &#8211; click to see comments and suggestions.<\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class='related_post_title'>Related Posts:<\/h3><ul class='related_post'><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/the-curious-surge-of-productivity-in-u-s-restaurants\/\" title=\"The Curious Surge of Productivity in U.S. Restaurants\">The Curious Surge of Productivity in U.S. Restaurants<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/why-do-the-servers-always-want-to-take-our-cutlery-and-plates-and-glasses-away\/\" title=\"Why do the servers always want to take our cutlery and plates and glasses away?\">Why do the servers always want to take our cutlery and plates and glasses away?<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/san-francisco-dining-2\/\" title=\"San Francisco dining\">San Francisco dining<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/around-since-xxxx\/\" title=\"\u201cAround since xxxx\u201d\">\u201cAround since xxxx\u201d<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/how-to-eat-well-in-sri-lanka\/\" title=\"How to eat well in Sri Lanka\">How to eat well in Sri Lanka<\/a><\/li><\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Piers emails me: You\u2019re a NJ native and great at finding good restaurants. So what are the rules for finding good old school American Italian restaurants? Not like modern farm to table places full of natural light in Brooklyn or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/rules-for-tri-state-italian-food\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,1972,124,197],"tags":[2121,1364,1961,1216,2120],"class_list":["post-4652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italian","category-new-jersey","category-new-york","category-outside-dc","tag-bronx","tag-italian","tag-marginal-revolution","tag-peruvian","tag-staten-island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4653,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4652\/revisions\/4653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tylercowensethnicdiningguide.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}