CITY GUIDES | NORTHEAST
The New Jersey Michelin Guide We’d Like to See
From Jersey City to Collingswood, these are the New Jersey restaurants that make the case for Michelin recognition.
By Maria Rodriguez | May 1, 2026
Aarzu
AUTHOR BIO: With a day job that requires constant travel, Maria Rodriguez is likely a regular at your favorite restaurant. She’s reviewed restaurants since 2007 in magazines from Spain to Seattle.
These days, New Jersey has the kind of dining scene Michelin already rewards in nearby places: tasting counters, serious Indian cooking, old-school Italian restaurants with tableside swagger, wood-fired kitchens, farm-connected restaurants, Shore institutions, Jewish delis, and fine-dining rooms hiding in places that don’t need another Manhattan comparison to explain themselves.
Michelin’s U.S. footprint keeps expanding, including Philadelphia in its Northeast Cities guide. But New Jersey still sits in the odd position of being surrounded by recognized dining markets without having a proper spotlight of its own. That makes this list partly theoretical and partly overdue. The question isn’t whether New Jersey has restaurants worthy of the Michelin Guide. The question is how many inspectors could eat their way across the state before admitting the obvious.
Here are 15 New Jersey restaurants that should be in the Michelin Guide, with the recognition each one deserves.
87 Sussex, Jersey City
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87 Sussex gives Jersey City the sort of polished, seasonal dining room Michelin inspectors appreciate. Chef Brian Walter’s menu moves through global influences, with dishes like Tuscan ragu with braised rabbit and seasonal pumpkin showing the kitchen’s more serious ambitions.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Aarzu, Freehold
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Aarzu takes modern Indian cooking out of the familiar takeout shorthand and puts it into a sharper, more composed register, with dishes like New Zealand lamb chops, truffle malai jheenga, palak chaat, and zafrani chicken korma. The room has the polish to make the cooking feel like an occasion without turning dinner into a showroom.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
Black Sheep, Garwood
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Chef Nick DeRosa has built Black Sheep Bar & Provisions around hyper-local, tweaked-daily cooking. The menu leans modern American and seasonal, but here’s what would get Michelin’s attention: good sourcing, vegetables treated like they matter, meats handled with care, and a bar program that keeps up with the kitchen’s ambition.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Cafe 2825, Atlantic City
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Cafe 2825 is old-school Atlantic City with better tableside theater than a casino show. The Southern Italian menu still turns on handmade pastas and classics, but the signatures are the show: mozzarella pulled tableside, cacio e pepe finished in a Pecorino wheel, Caesar dressing made in front of the table, and enough confidence to make the whole thing feel earned instead of rehearsed.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Elements, Princeton
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Elements has long been New Jersey’s most obvious answer to the question of what a serious Michelin-style tasting menu looks like outside New York. Chef Scott Anderson’s kitchen builds around foraging, herbs, nearby farms, and long-format tasting menus, with the kind of cerebral cooking that makes Princeton feel briefly like it has a secret laboratory above dinner.
What it deserves: Two Michelin Stars
Hearthside, Collingswood
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Chef Dominic Piperno and Lindsay Piperno built Hearthside around a custom wood-fired hearth, which gives the restaurant both its literal center and its reason for existing. The format has shifted toward rotating prix fixe menus, and the cooking has the right South Jersey confidence: seasonal, disciplined, quietly technical, and not especially interested in begging Philadelphia for validation.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Heirloom Kitchen, Old Bridge
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Heirloom Kitchen started as a cooking school and chef’s counter, which still gives dinner here the feeling of happening close enough to the stove that nobody can hide. Chef David Viana’s kitchen changes constantly, and the restaurant’s mix of open-kitchen intimacy, serious sourcing, and playful New American cooking makes it one of the state’s clearest Michelin candidates.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
James on Main, Hackettstown
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Chef Bill Van Pelt opened James on Main in 2016 and gave Hackettstown a wood-fired, locally sourced restaurant with more ambition than its small-town setting might suggest. The kitchen works around an American-made Champion Tuff grill and prix fixe options, giving the place enough structure to let the produce, fire, and downtown setting do the talking.
What it Deserves: Michelin Star
Judy & Harry’s, Asbury Park
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At Judy & Harry’s, David Viana and Neilly Robinson take the Italian American and Jewish deli vocabulary of New Jersey and run it through a chef’s kitchen without sanding off the fun. The menu includes roast chicken Savoy, ricotta matzo ball soup with dill pistou, and chicken parm fried in clarified butter. Michelin loves restaurants that tell the story of the people back in the kitchen, and the dishes here are a family storybook.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Latour, Hamburg
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This is a New Jersey fine-dining destination that sounds transplanted from Aspen: a mountain resort restaurant with a serious tasting menu and a wine cellar that could make a billionaire envious. At the Crystal Springs Resort, Chef Florian Wehrli’s menu includes dishes like tuna belly with black tea-marinated tomato and dashi cream, brown crab tortellini with lemongrass and ginger, and Miyazaki wagyu with kohlrabi salsa and sweetbreads.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Ninety Acres, Peapack
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Ninety Acres has an idyllic setting for a farm-to-table restaurant. On the Pendry Natirar estate, it’s surrounded by rolling hills holding a farm that makes possible the restaurant’s seasonal cooking. The food is more relaxed than severe, with menus built around ingredients like burrata, hamachi crudo, wagyu carpaccio, harvest salads, and the sort of polished rural luxury Somerset County does with alarming ease.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Radin’s Delicatessen, Cherry Hill
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Russ Cowan’s Cherry Hill deli smokes its own pastrami, pickles its own corned beef, does its own baking, and turns out the overstuffed sandwiches, smoked fish, chopped liver, and soups. This is deli plates that explain why his 2026 James Beard semifinalist nod was spot-on.
What it deserves: Bib Gourmand
Saddle River Inn, Saddle River
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Saddle River Inn is romantic, expensive, and flawless in its execution of a contemporary French restaurant. Chef Jamie Knott works through prime dry-aged beef, line-caught seafood, local organic produce, and a twice-seasonal menu that favors precision over novelty, which is usually the harder trick.
What it deserves: Michelin Star
Steve & Cookie’s, Margate
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Steve & Cookie’s sits in a former supper club from the 1930s and has spent more than two decades proving that Shore restaurants can exude ambition. The menu stays close to seafood and classics, but the place has the lived-in confidence that can make a raw bar and a plate of fried oysters feel Michelin-worthy without the appearance of chef tweezers.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
Zeppoli, Collingswood
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Chef Joey Baldino’s BYOB Zeppoli is only 35 seats and built on the premise that good Sicilian cooking doesn’t need pom and circumstance. The menu has tried-and-true classics, like antipasto plates, tagliatelle al limone, spaghetti vongole, and spinach-and-ricotta gnocchi. Michelin tends to appreciate kitchens that understand simplicity, and Zeppoli is built on that winning premise.
What it deserves: Michelin Recommended
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