The so-called Sunset Park concept plan includes a soccer field, riverfront boardwalk, kayak launch and other amenities. (Click to enlarge.)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank residents will get their first look Monday night at a concept plan for a new park on the town’s long-closed landfill site overlooking the Swimming River.
The audience at the Celestial Lodge Friday night. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank residents delivered a message to borough officials Friday night about a new park proposed at the town’s long-closed landfill site: not everyone wants it.
At a town-hall-style meeting held at the Celestial Lodge #36 on Drs. James Parker Boulevard, area residents expressed concerns that the dump might never be made safe for public use.
A map showing the extended former landfill site outlined in green. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
We need a skatepark. We need a playgrounds for West Side kids. We need to remember that this is a neighborhood that can’t handle throngs of out-of-town visitors.
Red Bank residents offered those and other suggestions as the process of shaping a new waterfront park out of the former town dump got underway with a community brainstorming session last Thursday night.
With planning underway to transform the former Red Bank landfill at West Sunset Avenue into an 8.6-acre park, the borough Parks & Rec Committee has scheduled a “concept design kickoff” to solicit public input on the project.
The former landfill at West Sunset Avenue, as seen in 2014. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank officials took another step toward the creation of a long-anticipated new park on the site of the former landfill and incinerator this week.
They also got some promises of help.
Duck confit tater tots from Red Rock Tap + Grill. (Photo by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
Soul-satisfying soups, beefy burgers, crusty pizzas…
From a year’s worth of lunches good, bad and inedible, PieHole‘s What’s For Lunch? feature picks the Top 10 of 2016.
Click to restaurant names to see complete individual reviews.
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A seasonal grilled chicken salad and a cup of Rhode Island clam chowder from the Windward Deli. (Photos by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
It’s easy to pass by the Windward Deli, set back alongside the railroad tracks at Drs. James Parker Boulevard and Maple Avenue in Red Bank. So PieHole is doing you a favor by telling you to stop in.
Plenty of parking in front of and behind the building makes it easy to swing by for not-your-usual take out deli grub. A small courtyard with inviting picnic tables surrounded by verdant shrubbery offers an additional reason to grab lunch and eat al fresco.
James Tulley of Asbury Park shows off his catch from the first day of trout fishing at Red Bank’s Mohawk Pond Saturday morning. “All the guys come out and laugh and joke and get in some fishing,” said Tulley, who stops at the pond every year on opening day.
The the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife does an annual restocking of the pond with trout. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
The fried cod platter at the Sea Bright Fish Company. Below, Kim Cognata, one of the owners. (Photo by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
“Our mission is to be hyperlocal,” Kim Cognata says of the two-month-old Sea Bright Fish Company. Working together with her father, Paul Diomede, and her brothers Paul and Justin, this restaurant, with a view of the Atlantic Ocean is a family affair.
An eat-in or take-out menu offers the expected fish sandwiches, platters and chowders, as well as some unexpected, upscale items.
Steamers and pitchers of beer dominate the tables at the Fair Haven Fireman’s Fair. Below, volunteers Raquel Falotico and Christina Schrank. (Photos by Susan Ericson. Click to enlarge)
By SUSAN ERICSON
It’s time for the first seating in the dining tent at the Fair Haven Firemen’s Fair, and the members of the all-volunteer fire department’s Auxiliary are once again organized and ready for the challenge.
It’s 6 p.m., and already there are more people in line for dinner than there are tables and seats. But they patiently wait their turn, some holding plastic cups of beer while chatting with neighbors, many with small children eager to hit the rides. A long line of baby strollers stands parked between the cashier and takeout window.
Engineer Christine Ballard, above, discusses sampling for toxic substances at the former landfill site. One result of the tests: new warning signs, below. (Above photo by John T. Ward; photo below by Brian Donohue. Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Red Bank is on track with testing for toxic substances at its former landfill and incinerator, but the painstaking process is unlikely to yield new parkland within the next five years, the town’s engineer said Wednesday.
Meantime, one immediate upshot of tests at the 8.6-acre West Side site: new warnings about eating fish and crabs caught from the adjoining Swimming River.
It was feeding time for bluefish and striped bass, and bunker was on the menu, when Max Berry of Pride Fishing and Tackle in Red Bank went out on the Navesink River and witnessed this moveable feast Wednesday. (Video by Max Berry.)
About a dozen members of Monmouth County sportsmen’s clubs turned out in a cold drizzle to clear debris and phragmites from Red Bank’s Mohawk Pond Sunday morning, in anticipation of this week’s annual restocking of the pond with trout by the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife.
Afterward, participants watched a pair of ospreys soar above the pond and a admired a blue heron, right, as it fed a the pond’s western edge. According to the state, the pond is slated to receive a total 960 rainbow and brown trout this season, which opens Saturday at 8 a.m. (Photos by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
An unidentified fisherman took a rowboat out onto our beautiful Navesink River between Red Bank and Middletown early Thursday afternoon. Using his lunch hour to catch some supper, perhaps? (Click to enlarge)
Chef Glenn Kovacs at work in the new Chowda House, set to open Saturday. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
It’s been almost a year and a half since redbankgreen first reported that Mary and Roy Jennings were planning a new seafood eatery on Bridge Avenue in Red Bank.
Sine then, apparently, the couple have been battening down the hatches, as indicated by the extensive use of a shipboard motif in the dining room of the Chowda House, their new restaurant located directly opposite the train station. Even the restroom doors look like bulkhead passages to a ship’s engine room.
It’s an environment that chef Glenn Kovacs says reflects the well-thought-out details of the business, which opens Saturday.
“There’s nothing like this around here,” in terms of atmosphere or menu, says Kovacs, whose travels have landed him stints in kitchens throughout the metropolitan region.
The floating dock at Boondocks in 2009. (Click to enlarge)
Boondocks Fishery, which revived riverside dining in Red Bank in 2009, got some short and sweet lovin’ from the New York Times on Sunday.
Kelly Feeney writes in the paper’s Metropolitan section that the “small red shack has an easy, low-key feel.”