At the Grain House Restaurant in Basking Ridge, waitress Jordan Nash reads a table as she introduces herself and offers to get them started with drinks.

“That’s a very simple way to gauge how that table is feeling,” she said. “When they respond, I read their tone, body language, and eye contact, and act accordingly.”

When Nash is serving a business lunch, she stays as unobtrusive as possible.

“But if it’s an older couple in for their anniversary, I’m talking it up,” said Nash, 24. “I’m saying, ‘I’m engaged.’ ‘How many years has it been for you?’ ”

“You first notice the women’s jewelry. You also look at the men’s ties,” Maksik said. “If you can get a glance, you look at the men’s shoes. Sometimes they’ll wear jeans but they’re wearing $500 shoes. Right away you say, ‘May I show you our wine list? The Cristal is only $200 a bottle.’”

For diners on a budget, Maksik advises servers to immediately suggest “a lovely appetizer to share.”

“You never embarrass anyone, because someday the person who is poor will be wealthy, remember you, and come back.”

The savvy server, said Maksik, upsells lingerers by suggesting desserts and after-dinner drinks.

Consequently, restaurants are bound to start experimenting with touchscreen technology that allows people to order and pay at their tables without a server, according to Saltsman.

In some places the iPad already has replaced paper menus, and Blue Touch, a software company, has released a uTouchMenu app.

Whether technology will deliver the satisfaction of a human server remains to be seen.

Juan Marcos, manager at Eccola Italian Bistro, said the cornerstone of the hospitality business is happy people.

Others describe human attributes as part of the formula for successful dining. Maksik calls “a friendly, kind, caring attitude” essential.

The space features a wood burning oven, a cocktail bar, a charcuterie counter, and plenty of nice, comfy red leather booths. Stulman notes that a few more details will be added to the space over the next few days, and that this is his very first restaurant with tables that seat six.

The DePiero family plans to close their iconic produce market — one of the last of its kind in North Jersey — so that Wegmans can build a store on 27 of the 55 acres. This follows the demise of the nearby Van Riper and Tice farms as the county’s dwindling number of open spaces are acquired for development.

The borough and the county made a strong effort to buy the DePiero land to preserve it.

Owner Glen DePiero declined to give details of the deal Tuesday, but Wegmans has acknowledged that it is interested in a Montvale location, and the company’s website lists the farm address as one of 10 locations along the East Coast for future stores.

DePiero would say only that “we will still be farming, and still be farming in Montvale,” adding that the full plan will be revealed at a meeting of the borough zoning board on May 29. Wegmans plans would need local approvals.

Squeezed by declining revenues, competition from supermarkets and rising costs, the few remaining family farms have found it tough to remain profitable, and difficult to resist lucrative offers to sell.

The silky potato leek soup, dotted with smoked trout roe that popped salty in the mouth, and a pulled pork taco on an avocado mouse, slid down the gullet very easily. This was the amuse bouche. For appetizers, Chef Bellanco sent out a fluke tartare. It had a fresh, citrusy taste – and I really didn’t like it. Top marks for risk-taking, but a no-go here. Fluke, Jersey’s “summer flounder,” is a common and cheap flat fish attractive to chefs for its profit margin potential, but has, for my palate, a deeply unattractive and mushy texture when served as a ceviche.

But Bellanco redeemed himself nicely with the seared diver scallop in a coconut curry saucy, which two of us could easily have made a meal out of, and a scrumptious, smoky-tasting octopus salad. My wife, never a big fish eater, fell for the poached egg sitting atop Jerusalem artichokes, bacon crumbles and an ooze of black truffle sauce.

Vitae’s sommelier clearly shares my passion for Spanish wines and paired each dish with a surprising and distinctive libation – an Alberino, a white grape from Galicia, in the form of an Eidos de Padrińán, and Abando, a white Rioja. But the white wine that blew me away, for its perfect blend of pucker-tart and mild-sweet, was Nappa Valley’s ZD Chardonnay. I usually detest American chardonnay, often too over-oaked for my taste, but that crisp and clean ZD tipple is now on my acquisition’s list.

No rest for the weary. A platter of three different starches, paired with a dry rosé from Austria, arrived at our table. In the clear light of day it is rather hard to read, at that point of the evening, the sybarite’s scrawl. (Was it a “Schilcher,” perhaps? Almost looks like I was enjoying an Austrian “shoulder.”)

Seafood risotto is very difficult to cook well; so often the rice (which takes a long time to cook) and the seafood (which cooks almost instantly) are like ships passing in the night. Piscine risotto is a real test of a kitchen, and Chef Bellanco created a seamless wave of seafood out of the dish’s opposing forces. The risotto was my favorite dish of the night. The parmesan-dusted ricotta gnudi, a small green gnocchi, was nicely goosed with chorizo and walnut pesto. My wife raved about my least favorite of the pastas: a tagliatelle so undercooked it went way beyond al dente, paired with chicken meatballs and fava beans (now popping up on every menu because they are in season.)

The duck breast confit was executed perfectly well, but had no distinguishing feature to make it unique, while the lamb loin served bloody rare with Swiss chard was superb, largely because we are in spring lamb season and Chef Bellanco wisely let the meat speak for itself. The red meat dishes were also enhanced with one of my personal favorite wines: Marqués de Cáceres, Reserve 2005, which is excellent value for money at around $21 retail. Get some for your table.

Nicholas Gatti – Alpine Country Club

Sweet Buttered 6.5 ounce Beef Patty made from bench trimmings with the addition of Prime Chuck and Prime Dry Aged Loin Tails & 2 ounces of Prime Dry-Aged Loin per Patty
1/8 inch thick Leidy’s Slab Bacon
Crumbled Stilton Cheese
Red Onion
Heirloom Tomato
Lightly Buttered Martin’s Potato Roll
Sauces made with dots of straight Heinz catsup, dots of Maille Pommery mustard and dots of our own sauce consisting of Hellman’s mayo, squeezed out Gold’s Horseradish and a small amount of Sriracha sauce.

Every restaurant in Frenchtown will be preparing a recipe from “At Home on the Range” that weekend — and all the local gift shops, too! Two Buttons will be selling copies of the cookbook, which Liz will be signing at our shop on Saturday and Sunday, May 19th and 20th between 1 and 3pm.

Please save the date! Come join us for this terrific celebration of food, family history, small town solidarity, and all for a wonderful cause!

Mr. Grilenzoni and Nicola Sikic, who makes the desserts and runs the dining room, worked at the glamorous Nice restaurant La Reserve when the Finnish chef Jouni Tormanen was heading its kitchen. But though Mr. Grilenzoni may be cooking on the Côte d’Azur, he is decidedly proud of his Italian roots, as evidenced by my menu that day: a terrific starter of foie gras with a sauté of black cherries, followed by a superb risotto flecked with tiny sweet peas and topped with an octopus-studded Bolognese sauce, two plump grilled gambas and a scattering of wild arugula.

“The French don’t understand you shouldn’t add crčme fraîche to risotto — the creaminess comes from the starch in the rice,” he said with incredulity, as I was finishing up my meal with some mascarpone-enriched tiramisů. “But, as you say, I let them off the hook because of their incredible cheeses.”

Take, for instance, a delicate but lively first course of salmon with avocado-and-Granny-Smith salsa, a gelée of kaffir lime, and rougail, a ginger-spiked Creole tomato sauce. Sliced Angus beef sirloin followed, served with mushrooms, watercress and an onion consommé, boosted by a dollop of satay, the Asian peanut sauce; then cod cooked in miso, served with citrus fruits; and finally a superb coconut cheesecake, accompanied by frozen pineapple sprinkled with lime zest.

In 2010, he reopened Le Bistrot de la Marine, which occupies an 1869 seafront fisherman’s house painted a jaunty saffron yellow. “I wanted to make a restaurant everyone could come to,” Mr. Maximin said. Indeed, the 25-euro two-course prix-fixe menu he serves daily at lunch and dinner is one of the best deals on the Riviera (ŕ la carte options are also available). (snip)

We then tucked into a dish that proved why Mr. Maximin is one of the best fish cooks in France: a whole John Dory ŕ la Niçoise cooked in a copper casserole in a sauce “quatre quarts” — a Maximin classic of equal proportions of olive oil, water, butter and lemon juice — with tomatoes, baby potatoes, Niçoise olives, fennel and thyme. “Good fish cooking always makes the fish taste more like the fish,” Mr. Maximin said with a bashful shrug when I complimented his recipe.

Mr. Parrinello changes his menu — two starters, entrees and desserts — weekly, according to what he finds in the nearby market. Our starter of asparagus risotto, with a green coulis of herbs, was soothing and lushly vegetal. Main courses were excellent, too: veal mignon with baby carrots, grapefruit and a nicely beasty jus de viande; and sea bass with piquillo peppers and shaved fennel. Over dessert, we ended up falling into conversation with a beautiful blond Norwegian singer and drinking Champagne well into the night — a classic Riviera coda to the storied coastline’s terrific new cooking.