Best of New Jersey: Visiting Tenmomi, a small ghost kitchen in Nutley

Best of New Jersey: Gabriella's Italian Steakhouse in Red Bank

Best of New Jersey: A taste of Mediterranean food at Taverna on the Hudson in Bayonne

Best of New Jersey: Digging in all-you-can-eat ribs at Big Ed's BBQ in Matawan

Best of New Jersey: Grabbing sweet treats at The Ice Cream House in Edison

Best of New Jersey: Grabbing a bite at Labebe Prime in North Brunswick Township

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News 12 Staff

BestOf630a0220NJLE_2024-02-20-06-59-56

It's Tuesday and that means it's time to check out another spot that makes up the best of New Jersey. Meteorologist Mike Rizzo takes us to the Freetown Road Project in Jersey City for some delicious Caribbean food. I'm back with chef Claude Lewis and the owner of Freetown Road Project here in Jersey City. And now we're gonna make something amazing. Tell us what we got right here. So what we have here um is uh one of our most popular dishes are rasta pasta. Uh Now it's not the traditional rasta pasta. It's more like with any chef that's doing something. It's kind of like that ratatouille moment where you want it to taste like you're going back uh to your mom's kitchen. And when my parents, when I, I was young, they used to make this cheesy pasta with meat or protein like nice and spicy and it would be something that I would like run downstairs and try to eat in the middle of the night and then smells. Yeah, man, it has all the flavors of the Caribbean pepper sauce, the cheese, some cream cheese and of course, you know, spiced uh shrimp. So we're doing the shrimp brasa pasta for you guys today. When you have this dish out on the table, is there another dish that complements it very well. Uh perhaps, maybe an appetizer that you would make with this or order with this. They would usually start with uh codfish fritters and either get something like this or get the oxtail rasta pasta as well. Uh And then they would uh end off with our bread pudding. Sounds delicious. Well, listen, we gotta check out more of this. I mean, this rasta pasta, not only just looks delicious, it smells amazing. So this is the shrimp one. They have different kinds right here at the Freetown Road Project in Jersey City.

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BestOf730a0220NJLE_2024-02-20-07-56-16

It's Tuesday and that means it's time to check out another spot that makes up the best of New Jersey meteorologist Mike Rizzo taking us to the Freetown Road project in Jersey City for some delicious Caribbean food. We're back here with chef Claude Lewis and we're making a West Indian staple roti. What do we got? Yes. So here at Freetown Road, we make our roti fresh and then we portion it out so that we can cook it fresh for each order. Now, when you're rolling out roti um dough that are made like this, you have to go out from the inside, not just going back and forth because it's a wet dough. So it's going to stick a little bit. And as soon as you do that, you wanna put some oil on your heating surface, we use vegetable oil here, spread it around and then you pick it up and you lay it down, you fix it, but you gotta get oil or shortening whatever you're using or butter on top of it. Now you should get it there before it starts to bubble. We're gonna check it. You got some nice brown spots there. I think at this point, I'm gonna flip it over. So now this is the most important part to release those layers. And I'll tell you this is like an art, you know, the care and the, the concern it takes and also the speed. It's almost like you gotta be quick with it, but then you gotta be accurate with it as well. And like as the weather man, I know the importance of, of all of that. But man, that looks good. It smells amazing. Wait to see what we pair that with right here at the Freetown Road project in Jersey City.

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BestOf8a0220NJLE_2024-02-20-08-20-29

It's Tuesday and that means it's time to check out another spot that makes up the best of New Jersey. Meteorologist Mike Rizzo takes us to the Freetown Road Project in Jersey City for some delicious Caribbean food. We're back with the chef and owner of Freetown Road project here and Journal Square in Jersey City and the food here is, it smells amazing. It tastes delicious. And when you have people walk in your front door here, what kind of experience are you looking for them to have? Well, the experience I want them to have is uh feeling like you walked into like home, like your grandmother or aunt's house because the smells should be hitting you in the face. There's booths, but then there's also tables. So we really want people to come in and come kind of like, feel like they wanna take their shoes off. It was almost like I was transported to the Caribbean when I walked in here and I, and that's the vibe you're kind of looking for. Right? Yes. A nice hard um you know, uh change from like the hard city coming and taking a vacation. We have a lot of authentic Caribbean dishes. Um, but also I'm a Jersey boy. So, you know, I gotta have my wings. I gotta have the quesadillas. We gotta have our burgers and things like that with a little bit of a Caribbean twist for the adults that want to come in, Byob. Yes, we are, Byob. A lot of these drinks are good for mixers. You know, this is for, uh, light rums and tequilas and things like that. This is our lime A, this is actually our most popular drink uh made with fresh limes and almonds. Excellent. So listen, everybody, this is the place to be. You got a variety of food, you got a variety of drink and you have excellent company, Jeff Lewis. Thank you so much for having us here. No problem. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me Freetown Road Project here. Jersey City. Check it out.

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News 12's Mike Rizzo visited a Caribbean eatery for this week's Best of New Jersey.

Best of NJ: Taking a bite out of Freetown Road Project, a Caribbean eatery in Jersey City

News 12's Mike Rizzo visited a Caribbean eatery for this week's Best of New Jersey.

More Stories

Best of New Jersey: Visiting Tenmomi, a small ghost kitchen in Nutley

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Best of New Jersey: A taste of Mediterranean food at Taverna on the Hudson in Bayonne

Best of New Jersey: Digging in all-you-can-eat ribs at Big Ed's BBQ in Matawan

Best of New Jersey: Grabbing sweet treats at The Ice Cream House in Edison

Best of New Jersey: Grabbing a bite at Labebe Prime in North Brunswick Township

Best of New Jersey: Visiting Tenmomi, a small ghost kitchen in Nutley

Best of New Jersey: Gabriella's Italian Steakhouse in Red Bank

Best of New Jersey: A taste of Mediterranean food at Taverna on the Hudson in Bayonne

Best of New Jersey: Digging in all-you-can-eat ribs at Big Ed's BBQ in Matawan

Best of New Jersey: Grabbing sweet treats at The Ice Cream House in Edison

Best of New Jersey: Grabbing a bite at Labebe Prime in North Brunswick Township

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