You can explores cuisines and find products from all around the world without ever leaving the Garden State.
One of the best things about living in New Jersey is the dizzying ethnic diversity on display here. Twenty-one percent of state residents were born outside the U.S., compared to 13 percent for the US as a whole. And the makeup of our foreign born population is broken down more equally among various countries than any other state.
But we are also an incredibly segregated state, which means experiencing that diversity means getting out of whatever bubble we happen to live in and becoming a cultural tourist -- going out and actively seeking places that offer a new experience. It strikes me as an especially refreshing thing to do given the divisive and racially tinged election we just went through.
I mean, there's no better way to come together than by stuffing your face with some exotic food bought by someone who speaks a language other than your own.
I decided to make a list of the best places to do it, places to channel your inner Anthony Bourdain without leaving the Garden State. My criteria was this: neighborhoods or places along the model of New York's old Little Italy or San Francisco's Chinatown -- walkable, accessible enclaves with a mix of eateries, shops, sights and sounds that transport you to another place.
Of course, food is the biggest part of this. But the chance to see or buy items, or chat with someone with a background wildly different from you own is another key element.
It was as struggle to narrow it to five (see how good we've got it?) -- so there's a few runners up at the end.
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Middle Eastern: Main Street, South Paterson
I spent a lot of time on Main Street in South Paterson in the 2000's and still have the hummus connoisseur bragging rights and rainbow-beaded Moroccan lamp hanging over my bed to prove it.
I hadn't been back in a few years, and when I did I was amazed by how spruced up and more inviting many of the shops and eateries had become, especially to outside visitors who might be less inclined to venture inside tiny hole-in-the-wall establishments.
The transformation taking place is apparent at Nablus Sweets and Pastries, an emporium of baklava and kunafa and scores of other types of Middle Eastern pastry. Nablus owner Abdullah Abedrabbo knocked down the building that housed his tiny bakery and replaced it with a shiny new edifice housing the bakery, two other businesses and six apartments on top. His new shop has a high ceiling, a second floor eating area, two-story windows and a tile floor with ornate inlays he admits he paid too much for.
Even in its expanded state, Nablus is just one of at least a half dozen bakeries within a short walk of Main Street. It's a baklava explosion.
"This neighborhood is really thriving, it's moving. It's becoming like little Italy -- everybody comes back," he said, referring to many first-generation immigrants who grew up in Paterson but have moved on to surrounding suburbs. But Main Street is on the cusp of becoming more than just a destination for folks of Middle Eastern ancestry to get a taste of flavors from the home country. Abedrabbo says he gets swamped with orders during the holidays from people of non Middle Eastern heritage ordering baklava as gifts.
Across the street from Nablus, the backyard patio at Abu Rass Fine Mediterranean Cuisine beckons on a warm fall day with people sipping clove tea under potted palm trees. It's one of a dozen places along Main Street that serve great shawarma, hummus, falafel and other Middle Eastern specialities.
The new stuff is terrific, but I still always fall back on Nouri Brothers Market, a 40-year-old supermarket where Syrian-born owner Albert Nouri says "we have everything but horses and camels." It still looks like it did 20 years ago when I first went inside, a beehive of shelves packed with things I'm dying to sample.
That includes an olive bar with fifty -- that's five-zero! -- types of olives and countless cheeses from across the Middle East. Roam the aisles and see a dozen things you've never tried. Then wander into the merchandise section for clothing, lamps, hookah pipes. Or a Moroccan lamp you'll still adore a decade or so from now.
Owner Abdullah Abedrabbo stands inside Nablus Sweets, a recently expanded Middle Eastern pastry shop on Main Street, the center of the Middle Eastern enclave in South Paterson. Brian Donohue | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Latino: Bergenline Avenue, West New York/Union City
Walk the three-block stretch of Bergenline Avenue from 52nd Street in West New York to 49th street in Union City and you will pass the following: Two Peruvian restaurants; two Mexican restaurants; a Cuban bakery; a Colombian clothing boutique; a Colombian bakery; a Mexican sportswear shop with a great selection of Lucha Libre masks. And on it goes along Bergenline Avenue for dozens of blocks, a pan-Latino promenade that feels like a busy thoroughfare in a mid-sized Latin-American city. The only thing missing is the motorbikes.
"A straight shot of Spanish for almost a hundred blocks,'' is how New Jersey-raised Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz described "the Bergenline'' in his famed novel "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."
Every time I visit Bergenline, I try to gauge which Latin American country is gaining the demographic upper hand here. Based on the number of shiny new Colombian bakeries, it seems like immigrants from that South American country are beginning to dominate. But move south toward Union City's 32nd street and you see more older Cuban places holding on, while a new Mexican restaurant seems to open up almost daily.
I worked on Bergenline Avenue in the 1990s and so fell in love with Hispanic culture that I quit my job and set out on a months-long backpacking trip from Havana to Tierra del Fuego. Now, almost two decades later, I still found my old standby Bergenline Avenue lunch, a Cuban sandwich and mango batido at La Gran Via Bakery, a 40-year-old Cuban eatery. I've been to Cuba twice but never actually had one of these sandwiches there. It's a Bergenline thing.
A sign above a Cuban bakery on Bergenline Avenue, West New York.Brian Donohue | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
Portuguese/Brazilian: The Ironbound, Newark
As earlier generations of European immigrants spread out from cities to the suburbs and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened the United States to newcomers from other continents, the old European immigrant enclaves like Hoboken or Newark's Italian neighborhoods or Union City's German stronghold have largely disappeared. Immigration has instead shifted toward an influx from Asia, Latin America and Africa. Newark's Ironbound section (named after the numerous railroads flanking its borders) is perhaps the last great European immigrant enclave remaining in New Jersey. But it is rapidly becoming more Brazilian.
For hungry visitors, that mix couldn't be better: You have great Portuguese seafood restaurants alongside newer Brazilian steakhouses. Walk down Ferry Street and you can smell it all coming together -- the grilled meat rodizio from places like Boi na Brasa and the garlic from the seafood places like Sol Mar. But for me, there's no better Ironbound experience than taking a number and getting on line at Popular Fish Market, where whole fish are cut up by sometimes friendly, sometimes charmingly crotchety fishmongers. On Fridays the line can be long with older Portuguese grandmothers stocking up for the weekend. Buy whatever's fresh, which is pretty much anything.
Manuel Nata, the proprietor of Popular Fish Market on 129 Ferry Street in Newark, holds a tile fish. The mural above him depicts a local fishing fleet at harbor. 5/27/99 Rich Schultz/NJNP
Indian: Oak Tree Road, Iselin
I set out on a recent trip to Woodbridge's Little India searching for a way to illustrate for you, dear reader, how much the area has become a destination for Indian-Americans across the East Coast. Inside my first stop, a dress shop called Aishwarya, I found a bride with her mother and bridesmaids seated on a bench while a saleswoman unfurled reams of fabric for her bridal dress.
She had come all the way from Florida to shop here.
That's Oak Tree Road in a nutshell for you. A place where scores of traditional south Asian fabric and dress shops, restaurants and supermarkets draw Indian-Americans by the thousands every week.
New Jersey has two "Little India" neighborhoods, the other being Newark Avenue in Jersey City. But for an outside visitor, Oak Tree Road narrowly edges it out, partly because it's more accessible and easier to navigate.
I don't wear dresses. And I hate -- hate -- clothes shopping. But walking from shop to shop here is like attending a fireworks display of color that makes me want to buy things and put them to use anyway. If you're doing interior decorating, you live in New Jersey and you're not coming to Oak Tree Road to find some fun ways to add gorgeous color to your home, you're doing it wrong.
Mostly, though, I come for the food. North Indian curries and south Indian dosas, served up in all-you-can-eat lunch buffets. The Afghan and Turkish barbecue joint. A mind-boggling array of sweets that startle and amaze my non-Asian palate, awakening me to entire worlds of flavor I never knew existed.
Recently, I've gone on a make-my-own soda kick and have been hitting the aisles of the jam-packed Subzi Mandi grocery for imported syrups ranging from rosewater to pomegranate that allow me to come up with bubbly new concoctions at home. There's even a new restaurant called Egg Mania with dozens of egg dishes I've never tried. So much Little India. So little time.
Ajay Dari works at the sewing machine inside Silk Heritage, a shop on Oak Tree Road in the Iselin section of Woodbridge Township, an area known as 'Little India.'Brian Donohue | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
5. Korean: Little Korea, Palisades Park
It was a dreary, rainy day when I headed to Broad Avenue in Palisades Park, the center of Bergen County's massive Korean-American population. And I managed to easily throttle the misery right out of the afternoon.
First, I took my aching back (sore from sitting in NJ Turnpike traffic) to Taji Oriental massage and got a hot stone massage -- the first massage I'd ever had in my life. Then I headed a few door down to the tiny noodle joint called Son Kalguksu for a huge steaming bowl of deeply flavored chicken and homemade noodles. Then it was down the block to Cafe Leah, a bright modern cafe whose menu lists espresso and lattes right alongside Korean items like bubble tea and crushed ice shakes. I ordered a strawberry waffle dessert.
A bowl of chicken kalguksu, a Korean dish of broth, meat, vegetables and homemade, knife-cut noodles served at Son Kalguksu, a restaurant on Broad Avenue in Palisades Park, NJ, an area often referred to as 'Koreatown.'Brian Donohue | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com
You could go on like this forever in Korea Town, sampling foods from the scores of eateries, ranging from bakeries to Korean barbecue. I'm a fairly experienced eater, but I could have easily found 100 things I'd never tasted before.
And like every other place on this list, people were largely excited and happy to explain their foods and culture to an outsider like myself. As I waited in the rain with several other customers outside the noodle joint, I met Leonia resident Clara Cho, who arrived in the U.S. from Korean 24 years ago and finds herself craving a bowl of brothy noodles on rainy days.
"Me too,'' I said.
And then it struck me. That's the thrilling essence of travel -- of finding you share something, even the tiniest bit of emotion or humanity -- with strangers who may have seemed so foreign to you just a few minutes ago.
Runners-up: Here's a few runners-up locations that are also worth a visit: Mexican: City of Passaic; South Asian/Indian: Jersey City's Newark Avenue; African: Newark; Polish: Wallington.
What's your favorite? What'd we miss? I'd love to hear your take in the comments section.
Brian Donohue may be reached at bdonohue@njadvancemedia.com Follow him on Twitter @briandonohue. Find NJ.com onFacebook.
