The OpenTable list, culled from its customer reviews, feature the Saddle River Inn, the Franklinville Inn, Sette, Lorena's and the Peter Shields Inn
Five New Jersey fine dining restaurants have made OpenTable's list of 100 Best Restaurants in America list for 2016. based on more than 10 million restaurant reviews on the upwards of 24,000 restaurants in the reservation website's catalog.
New Jersey's showing was strong: Only five other states -- New York, California, Virginia, Texas and Florida had more restaurants on the list. North Carolina had five as well.
The restaurants are: the Saddle River Inn in Bergen County, the venerable French restaurant that changed hands in 2013 and now features a more wide-ranging menu; the Franklinville Inn in Gloucester County, an old school steakhouse with strong seafood offerings; Restaurant Lorena's in Maplewood, the recently expanded French gem; Sette, a bastion of Italian cooking in Bernardsville; and the waterfront Peter Shields Inn in Cape May, which offers both classic and contemporary dishes.
Both the Saddle River Inn and Lorena's made Inside Jersey's just-released list of top 30 fine dining spots in New Jersey. Somewhat surprising omissions: Jockey Hollow in Morristown, which was named one of the best new restaurants in America by Esquire last year; Restaurant Nicholas in Middletown, which often tops Zagat's rankings; and Elements in Princeton, whose chef Scott Anderson has been nominated several times for a James Beard regional best chef award.
Last year's OpenTable list had four N.J. restaurants: Sette and Lorena's, plus the aforementioned Nicholas and Clementines in Avon-by-the-Sea. (Clementines is no longer in the OpenTable network, which may account for that.)
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