When it’s past 8 on a weekday in Hackettstown, the dining choices are beyond limited. I could have gone to Ruby Tuesday or something along those lines, but I decided to stop at Friendly’s instead. I haven’t been to Friendly’s for years. But the last time I was there, I remembered having a pretty darn good salad. So I thought I could try getting that again.
Indeed, I got that salad, the Asian Chicken Salad. It is a heap of mixed greens topped with sliced ginger-glazed grilled chicken breast, with mandarin oranges, almonds, and wonton strips with a sweet ginger-sesame dressing. This salad is really good! It’s especially good for those who like sweeter dressings. The chicken is really good too, cooked well and tender. I know it might surprise you, but really, this salad is quite good.
I was actually pretty full, but since I was at Friendly’s, I felt like I had to get a sweet treat. I got the Strawberry Shortcake sundae. It’s 3 scoops of vanilla ice cream with chunks of vanilla pound cake and strawberry topping. Well, this thing was kind of gross but kind of not gross. I thought it would be actual hunks of cake, but it was cubes of some weird packaged pound cake type substance that they must specifically make for this sundae. And as puzzled as I was whether I liked this thing or not, I ate it like it was my last meal and I only had 30-seconds to eat it. It was kind of disturbing how quickly I scarfed this down. But I’m still no sure what I thought about it. What I am sure of is that the lady who waited on me wanted nothing to do with me. And she was about the least friendly person that has ever served me, definitely ironic since I was at Friendly’s. Oh well. She can suck it.

Sonata is an adorable BYOB in Liberties Walk. When I say adorable, I really mean it. Both E and I could not get over how cute the space is. I mean it’s pretty much just clean and simple, but also totally cute. It seems like a fairly subdued place, but the night we were there there was a very large birthday party table so it was a bit noisy from their festivities, but that doesn’t seem standard. And I love the music-related name. Their menu changes seasonally and is very small. In fact, it’s probably changed to the spring menu by now. I like the small menu because I don’t have to waffle between too many choices. We did get some help from our awesome server on some of his recommendations.
Freshly baked complimentary bread. It was warm, delicious, and herby.
We got the crispy pork belly as an appetizer. It is a giant and thick hunk of pork belly with a thick crispy skin with smoked tomato marmalade, compressed apple, and calvados molasses. Holy crap, this thing is just awesome. I mean pork belly in an of itself is awesome, but then you put all this other stuff with it and damn, I just can’t tell you how good this is. And it’s so damn pretty, too!
E got the cod entree. There are three pieces of potato wrapped pacific cod on napa cabbage and hedgehog mushroom in a sweet onion cream. The fish was super fresh and cooked perfectly and E could not get over how much she loved the cabbage.
I was also pretty crazy about my entree, the chicken. It was a pan roasted bacon wrapped chicken with chestnut stuffing, bourbon whipped potato, haricot vert, and glazed cipolini onion. First off, the chicken was beyond tender, having been pounded, but then once wrapped in oodles of butter, it gets even more tender and beyond juicy. I love chicken that melts in your mouth. The potatoes were great, the green beans were just crispy enough, and I love the cute little onions so much that I wished the plate was full of them.
Ok, onto the dish that E loved the most… her dessert! It was basically a trio of chocolate goodness – warm chocolate beignets, chocolate decadence, and a chocolate hazelnut chipwich. Ok, so these beignets, they were warm and had ooey gooey chocolate on the inside. Like seriously. And she pretty much wanted to marry this chocolate decadence.
I got the apple pie for dessert, only these were adorable little mini fried apple pies with vanilla whiskey ice cream and caramel sauce. These were so cute and tasty! The ice cream was pretty intense… I thought to myself “it’s like vanilla, only with extra awesome.” Then I realized that the awesome was whiskey.
And with our check came these homemade chocolates with caramel and  sea salt. Yes, they were as good as the rest of the meal. E and I both loved our meals at Sonata so much that we can’t wait to go back. Not only was the food perfect, the service was excellent. Everything was just spot on. Even the executive chef, Mark Tropea, came out to check in with us after our meal. We felt so honored. We can’t recommend this place enough!

My mom’s birthday came around again, which meant it was time to go eat sushi! We stuck with the burbs, but since neither of us had ever been, we went to Bluefin in Plymouth Meeting. And even on a tuesday night, and after making reservations in advance, we still could only get a seat at the sushi bar. It’s kind of crazy how busy this place is. It’s so unassuming on the outside, being in a random sad little strip mall. But it’s quite nice on the inside. We indeed sat at the sushi bar and all the sushi dudes were busy, busy, busy the entire time we were there.
I always like to get a salad to check out what the dressing is like. It was good! I also thought the miso soup was quite good, but my mom thought it was a little bit too salty. I think she’s slowly going senile, it was perfectly good soup.
The server guy, or owner guy, or manager guy, recommended the Usuzukuri as an appetizer. It is extremely thinly sliced fluke served in a yuzu dressing with jalapeño paste. This was delicious but totally unecessary. The fish is super fresh (brought in daily except sundays) and it absolutely melts in your mouth. The jalapeno paste is also pretty darn spicy, but goes really well with the fish. I say it was unecessary because once we were done eating this thing, I was already getting fairly full, and we hadn’t even gotten our sushi yet. So it nearly rendered our entrees practically useless. This is typically why I’m not all that into appetizers, because I’m a fan of the main event.
I really love agedashi tofu, so I wanted to try it here. Boy, was that ever a mistake. I am hoping this was just a major snafu. It was like they had some sauce concentrate, an they forgot to dilute it. It was mad, crazy salty and not in a good way. The tofu itself was great and so were all the fixins, but the sauce was terrible. Major fail!
So my mom got the Sushi Dinner with 8 pieces of assorted sushi and a crunchy spicy tuna roll. Holy big pieces of fish, batman! Here’s something that blew our minds – how large these pieces of fish were. They do not skimp here! The ratio of fish to rice is about 4:1, no joke. Like the fish in our appetizer, it’s all super fresh and they also do not skimp with the wasabi either.
This is the Noname Roll I, with avocado topped on a shrimp tempura roll with unagi sauce, tempura chips, and roe. Oh man, this was good! The avocado was super ripe and buttery and melty and it’s also quite huge and filling.
I don’t know if they even have proper dessert here, but you just get free dessert there. You get some fruit and some fried bananas. Not too shabby! Overall, the food was good and the sushi was fresh. But it’s hard to overlook the major agedashi tofu fiasco. The service was good. Considering just how busy it was, the food came out at a decent pace. I’m not quite convinced that it’s worth all the hype, but it was a nice night out.