Monday, March 17, 2014 –Jersey Shores

Last semester in my art history class, I learned about a series of paintings by Joseph Stella, an Italian-American artist.  Entitled New York Interpreted (The Voice of the City), these paintings convey the excitement of life in New York City in the 1920s, when modern skyscrapers, colored electric lights and engineering marvels such as the Brooklyn Bridge were transforming the urban landscape.  The five paintings in the series pulsate with such vibrant energy that I knew I simply had to see them in person.  And that is why last Thursday, on a bitterly cold morning, I set off with suitcase in hand for New Jersey.

Yes, Stella’s masterpiece resides in the Newark Museum of Art.  In all of the years I lived on Long Island, I never once set foot in the neighboring state of New Jersey.  I first visited New Jersey a couple of summers ago, when I spent a few days visiting my friend Audrey in Princeton, where she was teaching at a piano institute. Otherwise, in more recent years, my only view of the so-called Garden State was from the windows of a bus zipping (or crawling) along the New Jersey Turnpike.  Quite frankly, New Jersey didn’t look particularly appealing.  While the names of the cities were all familiar from the exit signs – Newark, Elizabeth, Trenton, Jersey City – they remained a big geographic jumble.  

Since I knew absolutely nothing about Newark, I had to do a little research before I began my quest. Newark is the largest city in New Jersey, but what I learned next wasn’t very promising.  It has a reputation as the crime capital of the state.  Just when I was starting to reconsider making this trip, my art-loving Tucson-based friend Gale expressed an interest in meeting me in Newark.  Suddenly, all of my hesitations evaporated. 

What I discovered during our brief (less than 48-hour) stay in Newark last week was a bit of a surprise. First of all, we survived without any violent encounters.  Secondly, while Newark isn’t full of beautiful architectural sights, it has a certain working-class grittiness and charm.  And last, but not least, you can find some very good food in Newark.  On our first evening, we battled sub-freezing temperatures and a stinging wind to walk one block from our hotel to a wonderful Spanish restaurant.  At Don Pepe, we warmed up with red wine from Spain, bread and herb-infused olive oil, hearty chickpea soup, camarones in a creamy garlicky sauce (when I first wrote this on my iPhone, it auto-corrected camarones to canaries), and vegetable paella. After all of that food, we barely had room to share a flan for dessert. 

Dinner at Don Pepe's in Newark

Delicious flan for dessert

The temperature was only a few degrees warmer on Friday morning, but we bundled up and braved the cold as we set out to explore Newark.  Just by chance, on our way to the Newark Museum, we found ourselves walking past St. Patrick’s Pro-Cathedral (what's the "pro" mean?) just as a throng of people, nearly all dressed in green, were spilling out after a special St. Patrick’s Day mass.  There was a great sense of excitement in the air. Nearby streets were already blocked off for a parade.  Since the museum wasn’t yet open, we ducked into an Irish restaurant, the Kilkenny Alehouse, which was brimming with green-clad revelers, Newark fire fighters in uniform, and men in kilts.  I had my first taste of Guinness – not bad!  And I was delighted to find Irish soda bread and grilled salmon on the holiday menu.  As soon as we finished eating lunch, we headed out for a view of the parade, which included Irish flags, bagpipers and even a band from Dublin.  It wasn’t a glitzy procession, but just a genuine neighborhood celebration. 

Dressed in green at St. Patrick's Pro-Cathedral

Kilkenny Alehouse

St. Patrick's Day parade in Newark

The museum offered a quiet respite from the St. Patrick’s Day exuberance.  We were thrilled to seethe Stella paintings (definitely worth a visit if you’re in the New York City area) and we found other displays in the museum quite impressive as well.  A Buddhist altar dedicated by the Dalai Lama was one of the highlights.  The temporary exhibition of Norman Rockwell paintings seemed to draw the most viewers. 

in front of one of Joseph Stella's paintings

The Buddhist altar

from the Norman Rockwell exhibit

Once we had made a thorough tour of the museum shop (I bought Matisse socks), we drove a short distance to an area of the city called The Ironbound District.  This is the neighborhood where Portuguese and Brazilian immigrants settled early in the 20^thcentury, and it has retained its ethnic identity.  Small shops, bakeries and restaurants, signs in Portuguese, humble row houses (some with traditional tile decoration) make it clear that the area hasn’t been gentrified. We stopped into a typical Portuguese bakery/coffee house on Ferry Street for coffee and some authentic treats. And of course I couldn’t resist going into a pan-Latino supermarket, where aisles were devoted to products from Portugal, Spain, Peru, Ecuador, and Central America.  Although it wasn’t practical to bring home any of the dried salted cod, I picked up tins of sardines, squid, and octopus, along with a bar of Portuguese dark chocolate (85%) and some dried figs from the sunny Mediterranean. 

The Ironbound District

In a Portuguese bakery

Salt cod in the supermarket

With all of the restaurants in The Ironbound, we decided to stay in the area for an early dinner. Most of the restaurants specialized in Brazilian barbecue (grilled meats) or in Portuguese seafood dishes. However, after all that we’d already eaten, we weren’t in the mood for a big meal.  We found the perfect solution– the tapas happy hour at the Spanish restaurant Mompou:  butternut squash soup, salt cod fritters, grilled squid, chicken albondigas with mushroom sauce – and more red wine!

Tapas at Mompou

Early the next morning, Gale and I said farewell to Newark.  She drove off to a family event in South Orange.  I took the train into the city (about 20 minutes from Newark’s Penn Station to New York’s Penn Station) to spend the rest of the weekend with Elisa and Christian.  I love being back in their Lower East Side neighborhood.  Since it was still early(according to their weekend schedule, anytime before 11:00 a.m. is considered early), I spent half an hour sipping cappuccino at the Black Cat Coffeehouse on Rivington Street before I dared to ring their doorbell.  Later that day, we went uptown to the theater district for a matinee performance of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, a very entertaining musical comedy.  

Elisa and Christian in front of the Walter Kerr Theater

Saturday dinner was a Greek-Belgian affair, all within a few blocks of E&C’s apartment.   At the first stop we showed restraint, ordering hummus, tzatziki, and salad.  When we stopped at Wafels and Dinges for dessert, however, we abandoned all pretense of restraint: crispy sweet waffles with strawberries, waffles with chocolate, waffles with cream.  I finally wrapped up my extended eating extravaganza on Sunday morning with cappuccino and a croissant, which I ate in Elliott’s honor - so the calories don’t count, right? 

The most delicious Belgian waffles at Wafels and Dinges

On Sunday night, the snow was just starting to fall as the bus crossed the Key Bridge into Arlington. It continued to fall throughout the night.  By Monday morning, five or six inches of snow lay on the ground and big cottony clumps of white adorned the bare trees.  I’m not thrilled with the late season storm, but shoveling will give me a chance to burn off some of the calories I consumed during the past few days.