Lori-Ann Sciachitano
Distribution Manager

Food: ✮ ✮
Atmosphere: ! ! ! !
Service: ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
Price: $
Location: 61 New St
Distance from campus: .5 miles
Website: N/A

One would think that a restaurant close to a college campus would work extra hard to make the quality of their food better than average. That is not necessarily the case with Woodrow’s Café. While Woodrow’s does have some good points it was a generic sort of place.
The setup of the restaurant is really cute. It has lots of grouped tables with the ability to be moved around to fit whatever size party you have. Each wall is covered in different fiesta colors, as well as art from students at Rutgers.
The beverage choices are your average café style coffee drinks, the hot mocha being the highlight of the experience. Soda choices are the average Coke and Pepsi with a few Stewart’s choices thrown in.
As for food choices it was the generic café soups and sandwiches, with no salad choices at all, which was very shocking. I have never been to a café that didn’t at least have one salad choice. There are two soups of the day every day of the week, with one vegetarian option and one non-vegetarian option.
We tried the vegetarian mushroom soup, which had a fine puree of mushrooms and a strong flavor of garlic. It was served with fresh made whole wheat bread that was crusty on the outside and warm and chewy on the inside.
We had two sandwiches The Woodrow Special and Eggplant Balls. The Woodrow was fresh grilled chicken, roasted red peppers and balsamic vinegar. The only flavor that was really prominent was the red pepper, and the chicken by itself was pretty plain.
The Eggplant Balls were served with hummus and were bland as well. Both the hummus and eggplant balls were lacking flavor and were most definitely missing garlic. Both of the sandwiches were served on homemade pizza bread that was the only redeeming quality to both the sandwiches.
All in all Woodrow’s was a pretty big disappointment. I have walked past this restaurant numerous times and was intrigued by its promises of healthy homemade meals, only to be let down when finally trying it out.
If you regularly read the Newb, you know that four issues back, we reviewed a restaurant on Halsey Street called The Coffee Cave. The Coffee Cave offers many of the same amenities as Woodrow’s Café, and they are, in my opinion, of a better quality.
If you are looking for something in the same price range go to The Coffee Cave. If you are looking for something with similar atmosphere and service go to The Coffee Cave. If you are looking for a greater variety of soup choices and must tastier sandwiches go to The Coffee Cave.

Lori-Ann Sciachitano is a sophomore in Science Technology and Society and can be reached at distribution-manager@njitvector.com.

Lori-Ann Sciachitano
Distribution Manager

With the snowstorms we’ve had the past week the newb was stranded on campus. We figured it was a great opportunity to go exploring Newark for some great weekend eats. Little did we know that like our campus a lot of places in Newark close early or don’t open at all on the weekends. In light of this discovery we present a very special Newb. The top 10 places to eat on the weekend. We will provide the location and weekend hours with a general rating and a brief description of each place. There may be repeats. Happy eating!

Breakfast

3. Central Restaurant:    ****
30 Central Ave
Saturday 6:00am-5:30pm, Sunday 6:00am-4:30pm
Central Restaurant is a cute diner that serves breakfast all day, great for a late morning or after religious service. In the early morning there are breakfast specials that include your meal with juice, tea, or coffee with most being less than $6.

2. Intrinsic Café:    ****
5 Sussex Ave
Saturday: Closed, Sunday: noon-12am
Intrinsic Café has the best hot and cold drinks in the city. With bottomless cups of coffee, individual tea pots, and enough bubble tea flavors to explode your head. The atmosphere is great and the variety of baked goods, from bagels and rolls to Chinese steamed buns, is key.

1. Je’s Restaurant:    *****
260 Halsey St
Saturday 8:00am-7:30pm, Sunday 9:00am-7:30pm
When we original reviewed Je’s we went for lunch but we’ve returned on numerous occasions for breakfast. Je’s breakfasts are big cheap and good. Our favorite is the 2 eggs any style with slab bacon grits and biscuits. With that everyone’s welcome feel it is a great breakfast spot. Don’t forget to ask for a side of fried apples!

Lunch

3. Kara’s Roti Shop:    ****
579 South Orange Ave
Saturday: 8:30am-7:00pm Sunday: 9am-5pm
Kara’s has a great selection of traditional Trinidadian favorites from Roti and Doubles, to Bakes, there are great prices and friendly service. They don’t make you feel dumb when you ask what something is and you can choose the spiciness.

2.  The Coffee Cave:    *****
45 Halsey St
Saturday: 11am-8pm Sunday: 11am-6pm
The Coffee Cave has the best soup we’ve tasted in Newark. With new flavors everyday you’ll never get bored. Our favorites were the chicken tortilla and mulligatawny.

3. Hobby’s Deli:     *****
32 Branford Pl
Saturday: 11am-3pm Sunday: closed; they are also open until game time for every Devil’s home game
Hobby’s is one of the best spots in Newark, with an amazing staff, great sandwiches, great prices and tons of Newark History it’s a wonderful lazy Saturday lunch spot with pickles and a brisket wrap.

Dinner

3. Ando’s Restaurant:     ****
9 Wilson Ave
Open 24 Hours Saturday and Sunday
An awesome diner in the middle of the Ironbound Andro’s has great specials, large portions, and friendly staff. Most items are made fresh daily with new specials every day. Their French fries are to die for.

2. Adega Grill:    ****
130 Ferry St
Saturday 3:00-10:00pm, Sunday noon-10pm
This is not a place to go out with the boys, this is date night/mom and dad are visiting type of place. If you are looking to impress someone with the true taste of Newark Adega is a great spot. A little on the pricy side but portions are huge.

1.  Ferry Street BBQ:    *****
89 Ferry St.
Saturday and Sunday: 11am-10pm
With ribs and chicken seasoned to perfection falling off the bone, cooked right in front of you Ferry Street BBQ has large portions for awesome prices. Open late it’s great for a pre bar hopping or sporting event meal. Definitely not a spot to miss.

Overall Best Weekend Spot

Alta Horas:     *****
266 Ferry St
Open 24 hours Saturday-Sunday
Alta Horas has a great variety of burger choices, great drink selections, and is open 24 hours and will deliver to NJIT anytime before midnight. The best late night munchies or stuck in your apartment because of snow spot. Looking for leftovers? The Da Hora is the sandwich for you.

Lori-Ann Sciachitano

Distribution Manager

Food: ***

Atmosphere: ***

Service: 3333

Price: $$

Location: 6 Wilson Ave

Distance from Campus: 2 miles

We here at the Newb would like to issue a formal apology to you, our loyal readers. Back in October when we reviewed a local restaurant, we claimed that there were no 24 hour diners in Newark. After discovering Andros Restaurant in the Ironbound, we have what we are proud to say is a Jersey style 24-hour diner!

Located next to a strip club at the curve of Ferry St., it is a great spot to stop after a night out on the town. It is walking distance from the popular night clubs of the Ironbound and not far from the Prudential Center.

It is set up like a traditional diner with booths, tables and a long counter with stool seating facing the desert case. The color scheme is one we’ve seen many times in restaurants in Newark: pink and mint green. We chose to sit in a booth, and the seats were very comfortable. Unlike some diners, the cushions on the benches were still firm enough making the distance between the table and your mouth very far.

Andros offers a variety of beverages from traditional sodas, coffees and teas, to a complete open bar with house sangria, shakes and homemade lemonade. We tried a banana chocolate shake and homemade lemonade.

The coffee was a great cup, strong and never ending. The banana chocolate shake had a fantastic even flavor of banana and chocolate; it was served in a traditional silver mixing cup filled with that extra bit of shake. The homemade lemonade was a great mix of sweet and sour with pieces of fresh lemon served with the same extra cup.

For meals we had a traditional Reuben, a Cuban sandwich, a burger, and filet of sole franchise. The Ruben, Cuban and burger were all served with French fries, pickle and coleslaw while the sole was served with rice and steamed veggies. The filet of sole was a very generous portion with two large filets and a generous portion of rice. It had a nice tangy flavor of lemon and was tender and flaky.

The burger was a typical burger; nothing spectacular, nothing disappointing. The Ruben was made with corned beef, but you could choose to have it with pastrami or turkey. It was very moist and the Swiss cheese melted to perfection. The Cuban sandwich was a sandwich and a half packed with roasted pork, ham, pickles, mayo and Swiss cheese all pressed together through a Panini machine. The fries that were served with the sandwiches were great, perfectly crispy and spicy.

We ended the meal with desserts of carrot cake, rice pudding, and strawberry cheesecake. The carrot cake was moist with thick layers of cream cheese filling. The rice pudding was, while not the best rice pudding, a nice creamy blend of flavors. The cheesecake was served with two giant strawberries that complemented the sweet cake to perfection.

All in all, Andros is a great spot for typical diner food but straying from the typical diner fair may leave you disappointed. Andros gets bonus points for its fast, friendly service and its 24 hour status. So after a night of drinking or screaming your head off at a Devil’s game, Andros fits the bill.

Food: ***

Atmosphere: ☻☻☻☻

Service: ####

Price: $$

Location: 11 Lafayette Street (at the Prudential Center)

Distance from Campus: 1 mile

Website: www.brickcitycoffee.com

We here at the Newb are of course big fans of sports in Newark. Be it NJIT’s own basketball teams or NHL’s Devils we spend a lot of time at the Prudential Center. But recently we discovered an addition to the Rock, Brick City Coffee Company (BCCC).

Attached to the south side of the Rock near the Amerihealth Pavilion (where our men’s hockey team plays their home games), BCCC is a beverage haven; from hot coffees and teas, to cold blended beverages, they are prepared to heat you up or cool you down. The location has great hours; it is open from 8am, and it’s convenient to stop in while you wait to get into the game.

Pricing at BCCC is comparable to your typical coffee shop, but I feel better about giving them my money for a cup of coffee rather than a national chain. BCCC has Corey Booker’s seal of approval, as the mayor is a frequent customer; his favorite drink is a skim vanilla latte.

BCCC is a very nice location, the colors matching well with the home team’s colors of red and black. The seating options are limited with low and high seats and matching tables. The lighting is rather unique with very cute flame colored fixtures.

The space is very airy with a great exposed brick wall that brings the establishment’s name meaning. There is local art that lines the wall including a great collection of photos from around Newark. It is really great to see a local business that appreciates the sites and sounds of our city.

We tried a few of the beverages to get a rounded view of the different drinks they had to offer. We had the Brick City White Mocha, both hot and cold, a cinnamon mocha and a hot chocolate. The hot chocolate was creamy but could have used a little bit more chocolate flavoring.

The cinnamon mocha was a great blend of chocolate with a nice kick of spice from the cinnamon. The cold Brick City White Mocha had a much stronger white chocolate flavor than anything else, while the hot version had a much mellower white chocolate flavor that blended better with the coffee.

The food choices are fairly limited, with pre-made sandwiches and giant cookies rounding out the options. We tried two sandwiches that made for decent pick me ups, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to grab one. They also serve Hales and Hearty Soups; they don’t compare to the soups we’ve had else where, but the location of BCCC makes everything they have worth it.

Food: ★★★☆☆
Atmosphere: ☺☺☺
Service: ✔✔✔✔✔
Price: $$
Location: 63 New St.
Distance from Campus: .4 miles
Website: http://robertspizza.synthasite.com/

As your average American we have had our share of pizza. From chains like Dominos and Pizza Hut, to mom’s homemade, we’re what some may call aficionados. We look forward to a crispy crunch of the crust, the tanginess of the sauce, and the melted, yet not molten lava heat of the cheese. And in no way, shape, or form should pizza be eaten with a fork and knife.

Robert’s was not the best pizza we’ve ever eaten but for a change of pace it does the job. Located directly across the street from the Rutgers Newark campus, Roberts pizza does a few things right.

They have fast friendly service, big portions, and a good price. The restaurant has your typical American pizzeria feel with wooden bench seats that form to the shape of your body and traditional wooden tabletops. The kitchen is completely open to view so you can watch as the chef’s prepare your order. The walls are a colorful mix of yellow, blue and green with paintings and photos depicting the scenes from “The Old World”.

Drink options are many with Coke, Pepsi, Snapple and Juice in both cans and bottles, though there are no fountain beverages, which was a little disappointing but the amount of choices made up for it.

The service was extremely quick. I sat for barely a minute before my slice of pizza appeared in front of me. The crust was thin and crunchy, the sauce was a good amount and the cheese was melted just right. But nothing about it struck me as special; it was average pizza. We also decided to order a few of the other menu items to see how they faired to our taste buds.

The next item that came to us was the Italian Cheese Steak, with cheese, onions, peppers, French fries, and mozzarella cheese on crusty Italian bread. The bread was awesome. We have seen cheese steaks where the bread was not toasted and couldn’t hold up to the moistness of the meat, but Robert’s toasted there bread which was a welcomed surprise. The steak was thinly sliced, mixed with the onions and peppers, and packed into the bread; the cheese was then melted on top of the steak mixture with the French fries placed on top of the cheese. We actually liked that the fries were placed on after the cheese was melted so the fries wouldn’t get soggy.

The last dish we tried was a calzone. We were a little surprised that the calzone was made with pizza dough and not different dough. Pizza dough gave the calzone a thinner crust and therefore made it prone to leaking. We decided to get ours filled with cheese, ham, pepperoni and peppers.

The cheese was great and there was lots of it. The pepperoni was cut in normal slices that would go on top of a pizza, but there were too many peppers and not enough ham. The ham was sliced ham cut up into smaller squares, and there was more peppers then anything else. When we tried to eat the calzone with our hands all of the fillings gathered at the bottom of the calzone, making some bites only contain crust. We would recommend getting fewer fillings so it has equal flavor and cutting the calzone in half so it is easier to eat.

All in all, the word I was use to describe Robert’s is “Meh”. It wasn’t anything amazingly delicious that would knock your socks off, but it wasn’t the worst thing we’ve eaten. With a price of $15 for all three items and two cans of soda it isn’t a bad deal. And with free delivery and late night deals, Robert’s is a good option to consider.