One of my favorite parts about what I do is seeing how different chefs choose to tackle the eclectic seasonal changes that the Garden State is known for. Even now, as the shift from summer to fall, fall to winter, looks vastly different than it may have a decade ago, I still can’t help but marvel at the continued strive by chefs to always mold themselves into whatever the seasons might call for. I find this especially impressive in a tasting menu environment—where the menu is not just allowed to change often but is expected to.
For Chef Nick Pescatore of That Pasta Club, an ever-changing menu is the draw. The current winter menu offering at his supper-club-style tasting menu, set inside a Park Ridge empanada shop, proves that though his food doesn’t exist in a “traditional” restaurant context, he is just as skillfully equipped to hang with the culinary big dogs of New Jersey. Moreover, I personally believe the unorthodox setting to be one of That Pasta Club’s greatest draws.
Inside this unassuming space, you are treated to culinary luxuries like imported Japanese scallops and silky smooth foie gras parfaits—staged right beside hyper-local produce and approachable bites. It is the dichotomy between complexly alluring ingredients and blatantly simple pairings that makes meals like this so enchanting. You might step outside of your comfort zone for certain courses, right before the next one brings you back home. This is what great meals aim to do. This is what the best meals strive for.
Read more about That Pasta Club: This Supper Club Is NJ’s Best-Kept Culinary Secret
An amuse bouche trio hits the table first. An introductory series of bites for the evening. Foie gras tartlet features a delicately crisp pastry shell, piped full of foie gras mouse and adorned with a perfect circle of nori-compressed melon.
Right next to it, a simple skewer of lamb yakitori served over a sliver of braised chard. The lamb is unassuming at first, but Pescatore explains the extensive process. He butchers lamb and wraps it in kombu (dried kelp) for a day to lightly cure. The meat is skewered, seasoned with salt, pink peppercorn and juniper and cooked on a traditional yakitori grill over charcoal. A bite so good that it converted this lamb hater into a believer.
The star of the trio was undoubtedly the torched Hokkaido scallop, which came perched atop a prism of crispy sushi rice. A touch of Asian pear and dark soy helps to add the sort of zing necessary to elevate the sweet scallop and slightly tangy rice to the next level. I would’ve been happy to eat an entire plate of these.
If you must—and you absolutely must—feel free to add on a half-dozen oysters, playfully garnished with gooseberry and fermented ramp mignonette. It’s a fun way to eat oysters—unique enough to shine above your typical oyster, without being too crowded in flavor to cloak the natural oceanic flavors of the bivalve. Oysters are one of the two optional add-ons for the current TPC menu.
One of the things I remember most from my first visit to That Pasta Club was Pescatore’s pure understanding of what makes for a good salad. I rarely order salads because I find that a majority of the time, they are improperly dressed, with lackluster ingredients and construction—treated in many cases as a sort of afterthought. However, when a salad is good, I can’t get enough.
The winter salad is much heartier than your typical lettuce-based offerings. Charred and shaved brussels make up the base, along with local apples and thick lardons of bacon. A nutmeg and quince vinaigrette and grated Manchego cheese round out the salad along with a drizzle of sweet, aged vinegar around the plate. When a majority of salads remain, to me, forgettable, That Pasta Club has twice now knocked it out of the park.
A crispy lobster-stuffed rangoon is as delicious as it is fun. The plumply flavorful dumpling is placed atop a shallow pool of Panang curry—a red curry from Thailand. It’s explained that the best way to eat it is by cutting into the rangoon, allowing for some of the lobster cream to seep into the curry, which will further flavor it and tame the spice. So, that’s what I did.
Bites like these stand out—it’s an innovative approach to a marriage of cuisines that delivers on flavor just as much as it does on concept. You’ll soon find that that’s the name of the game at That Pasta Club.
I previously mentioned another add-on available on the current menu. 45 day, dry-aged filet of beef, served simply with flaky salt and a fermented black garlic emulsion. Dry-aged steaks are pretty standard these days, but still, filet seems to always fly under the radar. It’s stupidly tender, with a noticeable uptick in flavor due to the lengthy age. Pescatore keeps it pretty rare on the inside and when paired with the uber-funky black garlic sauce, it makes for an impactfully flavorful bite that coats your entire palate.
You’re probably thinking: Okay, but where’s the pasta? Well, here we are. You will enjoy two pasta courses for your final savory bites of the evening, each one a healthy portion of pasta—one extruded and one a filled pasta.
The first dish is a classic. Mezzi rigatoni with spicy vodka sauce and guanciale show Pescatore’s commitment to the Jersey classics. A perfectly encapsulated version of a well-known staple. It’s the second pasta that I haven;t stopped thinking about since my meal. Tortelloni stuffed with tender braised short rib. Surrounding it is a chorus of components you might expect to find with a roast dinner in the UK—surely not with pasta.
Winter vegetable puree which screams with parsnip flavor, juxtaposed against a sweet and unctuous cippolini onion jus. Toasty sage breadcrumbs and a roasted carrot adorn the plate. It’s unique and varied, proving that pasta does not have to be one-dimensional, and it doesn’t have to be what’s expected, either.
As we wrapped up, I was delighted to be presented with a zabaione—an almost custard-like Italian dessert consisting of gently cooked egg yolks, sugar, and sweet wine. Pescatore riffs on this idea by swapping out the typical marsala for pear-flavored soju, a Korean distilled alcohol made from rice. The zabaione itself is noticeably boozy but balanced out by the syrupy macerated berries it drapes over—a perfect cap to the meal.
That Pasta Club continues to impress in its unassuming setting, where for a few hours every Thursday, Friday and Saturday, an empanada shop transforms into one of New Jersey’s great tasting menus. As Pescatore continues to improve, he hones in on what he does best: merging contemporary flair and luxury with a wholehearted commitment to seasonality. It’s simple and complex at the same time—a true culinary paradox. This is an idea that all of my favorite restaurants excel at and That Pasta Club is no different. It gets a big checkmark from me.
