SECOND
HELPINGS
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Starters: The Stable in Ridgewood, NJ
Friday, December 5, 2008
Last updated: Friday December 5, 2008, 9:54 AM
STAFF WRITER
LESLIE BARBARO / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
The Stable, Ridgewood's newest restaurant,
features rodizio, 12 different meats slow-cooked
over an open flame; as well as horses on
the
walls. |
You'll
know you're in The Stable by the horses, the barn
and, of course, the smell.
No,
not that smell. The smoky seduction of beef, pork
and lamb, slow-cooking on a spit over a bed of smoldering
charcoal and fiery oak.
It's
the first thing you'll notice when you pull open
the heavy wooden door and enter The Stable, Ridgewood's
newest restaurant in one of the village's most visible
spots, and one of the few places you'll find rodizio
north of Newark's Ironbound district.
The Stable Restaurant
* 20 E. Ridgewood Ave., Ridgewood, NJ;
*
Cuisine: entrées $12.95 to $28.95.
Rodizio $25.95.
*
Open 11:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Sunday, 11:30
a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday, 11:30
a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Rodizio
begins at 5 p.m. weekdays, 4 p.m. Saturday
and Sunday.
*
Credit cards: AE, D, MC, V.
*
Wine/liquor: BYO.
*
Parking: metered street, lots.
If
you've never had rodizio, bring your appetite. Servers
visit your table every few minutes to liberate slices
of slow-cooked meat from long skewers: spare ribs,
chicken thighs, sausage, bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin,
leg of lamb, rib-eye — the list goes on. When
the kitchen has sent out all 12 of its daily meats,
it starts over at the beginning.
Eat
as much as you'd like, for as long as you'd like.
"What you don't eat, the staff will have afterward.
They eat well," laughed chef-owner Marcello
Czernizer. A two-sided button indicates your intention
to the wait staff. The green side means they should
keep the meat coming. Red means you're done, or
at least paused.
Czernizer
built The Stable to resemble his homeland of Argentina
— it's a temple of wood, terra cotta, smoke
and beef. He spent 15 months and $350,000 transforming
the former Zarole French restaurant into a stone,
brick and wood barn, complete with horses painted
on the walls. An open kitchen, with its wood- and
coal-fired grills, looks out onto East Ridgewood
Avenue.
The
non-rodizio menu is big and beefy, with six steaks
— from the 12-ounce filet mignon to the 18-ounce
bone-in rib-eye — and short ribs. "In
Argentina, steak is big. Beef is big," Czernizer
said. The kitchen also smokes baby back ribs and
chicken quarters and grills pork, lamb and veal
chops.
A small Italian pasta menu includes such homemade pastas as penne vodka and fettuccine Alfredo, for customers more familiar with Czernizer's other restaurant, Marcello's Ristorante at the Station, a few blocks away on Wilsey Square.
Website: www.thestablerestaurant.com
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