NJ Monthly: The Best Restaurants in Maplewood

Known for its handsome old homes and canopied streets, Maplewood has a compact downtown, known as the Village—the blocks on either side of the train station that a number of the roughly 23,000 residents take to and from jobs in Manhattan.

Many of the newer residents are Manhattan, Brooklyn or Queens transplants—meaning their standards for restaurants are high.

Most of the notable places to eat in Maplewood are downtown, with a few exceptions on the outlying commercial thoroughfare, Springfield Avenue. Options range from one of the finest French restaurants in New Jersey (Lorena’s) to a beloved pizzeria’s new chapter (Artie’s).

Lorena's

Since its opening in 2005, chef Humberto Campos’s jewel box of French-inflected fine dining (named for his wife, Lorena) has been a standout not only in Maplewood but in greater Essex County and beyond. Aside from his signature creation—the lump crab and mushroom crêpe in beurre blanc—Campos delivers excellent contemporary takes on favorites such as duck breast, rack of lamb, filet mignon, halibut and molten chocolate cake. —EL

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