This was originally posted in June of 2011. I’ve added some new photos and raised it to the top given the restaurant’s recent review by Elisa Ung in the Bergen Record.
Amici Family Restaurant
127 S. Washington Ave. (Entrance and Parking on East Clinton Ave.)
Bergenfield, NJ 07621
(201) 374-1996
Those who are familiar with this blog understand that I have a love/hate relationship with Italian-American cuisine.
As I have said on previous posts, while this is an area of culinary specialization that Northern New Jersey is particularly known for, that doesn’t mean that we do it particularly well.
When people ask me “What Italian restaurant or what Pizza do you like to eat at in Bergen County” I usually say “None, I go to the Bronx and eat on Arthur Avenue.“
The reasons for this are numerous, but it comes down to the fact that the Italian-American restaurant and pizzeria as it is represented in this part of Jersey is usually pretty awful. SYSCO tomato sauce, cheap commercial mozzarella and tired owners that no longer care about the food they are making anymore. That about sums it up.
Forget about what you’ve seen on the Sopranos, Italian-American food in Northeast Bergen County is uniformly mediocre.
And thus explains why it is difficult for a restaurant that serves this kind of food to distinguish itself. You rarely see these neighborhood places written up in the Bergen Record or the New York Times because Pizza places and red sauce joints are a dime a dozen.
Sure, you might get the occasional gem like Di Palma Brothers (which is actually in Hudson County in North Bergen) or a solid pizzeria like Lodi Pizza, Trattoria Sorrentina (again, North Bergen) or Bartolomeo in Englewood but these are rarities.
It’s nearly impossible to get me into a new Italian-American restaurant or a pizzeria, because I’m expecting right from the start that it’s going to suck.
So when I saw that the aging, failing Terrana in Bergenfield — which never produced more than just serviceable Italian-American food and was a restaurant we avoided eating at for the 10 years we’ve been residents of nearby Tenafly — was being taken over by new owners and being re-launched as Amici Family Restaurant, my interest was piqued.
I’m willing to try a new Italian place at least once, especially if it’s just five minutes from my house. If it was bad, I just wouldn’t go back, just as I have done with 90 percent of the ones I’ve been to in the immediate area.
Amici Family Restaurant looks like a typical red sauce joint that serves average pizza from the outside. Don’t make the mistake of passing it by. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.
Posted by offthebroiler 
