Two of the Meadowlands’ finest restaurants, Marcus Live! Bar and Grille in the American Dream Mall and the Roosevelt in East Rutherford have made it onto New Jersey Monthly’s Best Restaurant List in their February issue. The list is composed of 21 restaurants, all of which opened in the past year and all of which thoroughly impressed NJ Monthly’s team of editors and critics.
Marcus Live! first opened its doors in the second half of 2023, promising patrons a dining experience curated around chef Marcus Samuelsson’s personal cooking style, mixing traditional and international cuisines. In a night reminiscent of one at Disney World, the restaurant’s head chef, Ernest Bent, wowed critics with his hot-honey salmon, brown-sugar wings and most of all with his banana pudding, featuring a praline wafer, swirled salted caramel and caramelized bananas.
The Roosevelt offers a different dining experience themed around the Roaring Twenties. With its magnificent saloon on the ground floor and the cleverly hidden speakeasy in the basement, it is sure to provide guests with a good time. Frank Pinto, Principal Managing Partner of Paramount Hospitality Concepts, which manages The Roosevelt, states that the restaurant earned it’s top spot on the list due to the “attention paid to the detail in being a prohibition-themed restaurant,” including its “vintage chandeliers and period-based marble flooring,” as well as the “ownership having a good handle on being in the hospitality industry for many years and having a chef that prepares phenomenal food. The food is priced properly and we have really innovative cocktails.” This was all echoed by the editing staff of the Monthly, who particularly enjoyed the 10-ounce skirt steak topped with chimichurri sauce, as well as the monthly performance put on by Drew, the restaurant’s colorful singer/DJ and a menagerie of other artists, including acoustic singers and duet performances.
The New Jersey’s Monthly’s February issue only confirmed what we already knew: that hospitality in the Meadowlands is alive, well and growing fast. For more information, visit Marcus Live! at marcuslivebarandgrille.com and The Roosevelt at theroosevelt.us.