Steve & Cookie's

If you want to go to Steve & Cookie’s on any weekend night in the summer, you’ll have to try to make a reservation on the first day of spring, either in person or on the phone, and hope you get lucky. Otherwise, you can cross your fingers and pray that something opens up at 5pm on a Wednesday. But if you do get in, it’s one of the best meals you’ll have in the entire state of New Jersey. The produce is all local and incredibly fresh, as is the seafood, and you shouldn’t leave without at least one order of the butter-poached clams.

photo credit: Emily Schindler