After a long Saturday, I felt I deserved to treat myself to a brunch. Since I am new to the area – originally from Newark, NJ – I thought I’d go to this little place I drive by that is ALWAYS busy on the weekends. The Brownstone Pancake Factory is located at 860 River Rd, Edgewater, NJ 07020. This restaurant is considered New American. For those who don’t know what “New American” is: “New American cuisine is generally a type of fusion cuisine which assimilates flavors from the melting pot of traditional American cooking techniques mixed with foreign and sometimes molecular gastronomy components” – thank you Wikipedia!

Upon arriving, this place is valet parking only. Luckily the wait for the cars and table were pretty synced up. The restaurant’s design aesthetic is comparable to some restaurants you would see in the village, which makes sense when you take into account how close they are to NYC. As a photographer, one of my biggest pet-peeves is when restaurants are too dark. Sadly this restaurant falls into this category. I understand setting the ambiance but sometimes restaurants go too dark. It felt like it was night-time at 11am. The service was superb, despite the volume of people they had coming and going. Our waiter joked around that walking in the restaurant was like driving through NY.

For starters, I ordered a Sunshine Splash which consisted of freshly squeezed orange and mango juice. It was a little to tart-y for me but it is also the end of winter. For my main course, I decided to stray away from my usual Ron Swanson-esque breakfast and ordered Fried Chicken and Waffles.

Let me just say that if you ever find yourself eating here, do yourself a favor and order this dish. The crispy crust on the chicken is fried to perfection, it even had a nice snap to it. The flavor of the crust and the honey transported me to sweet and savory heaven. The waffle was nice and crispy on the outside but fluffy enough to soak up the honey drips. The flavor combinations where delectable. My only critique of the dish is that the chicken was a little overdone and therefore tough to cut part which made getting a bite of all the components together difficult. But if the reason behind it is to get that crispy crust, please do not change a thing.

I would give this place also a 4 out 5. Check it out if you can!

-themoodiecutie