March 18th, 2016 (and January 7, 2017)
West Orange, NJ
We were so excited to see one pizza place on the list that is next to our hometown! Star Tavern is located in West Orange, NJ, which is only 5 miles from our house (we could run there!) Our neighbors all rave about it. After going there a couple of times now, we can see why.
Our first trip to Star Tavern was last March, on a Friday night. It was packed with families. We figured out eventually that you had to go to the back of the restaurant to join the line to be seated. This is NOT clear when you walk in. We didn’t have too long of a wait for a seat though, and ordered the Red Spinach and the White Spinach pizzas to split between the two of us, because we couldn’t decide between them.
Our second trip back to Star Tavern was last weekend, in the snow. We almost didn’t go because the snow was coming down pretty hard, but we had such a pizza craving and had been looking forward to it all day. I started out driving, but Eric made me get out of the car halfway up the street so that he could drive in the snow. Apparently, I am a nervous snow driver in my Prius. It would have taken me over half an hour to go the five miles, so it was probably a good life choice to have Eric drive us there in half the time.
Obviously, the Red Spinach pizza is our favorite here so far because we ordered it twice. The second time we also ordered one of the Veggie pizzas. Although we tend to go for the veggie pizzas, it does look like they have a lot of great meat combinations, too. They also serve a good selection of regular entrées and starters. We also saw that they have a dessert Apple Pie pizza on the menu! We are always too full for dessert pizza, but maybe one day we will order it for take-out.
These pizzas are super thin crust. Almost like a bar pie, but without the cheesy crisp around the edge. The veggie pie almost reminded us of Pepe’s veggie special pie in New Haven, but normal pizza-shaped and without the char on the crust. These also had a little more cheese than a New Haven pie and so were maybe a little greasier.
We had no problem finishing two pies between the two of us either time we went (but to note: these are not very large pies). The spinach isn’t fresh spinach, which usually would put us off, but it didn’t seem to bother us on these. The veggie pie was very good and full of veggies, even though we got it without olives.
In our opinion, olives should be optional on all pizzas. We’d be interested to see how many people ACTUALLY like the olives on veggie pizzas. We usually feel bad asking for the pizzas with no olives because we hate being those picky people, so we end up picking them off instead. We need to find someone to come with us who will eat all of our olives.
Star Tavern is ranked higher on the 2016 list – at #51. We’d agree with that since it definitely deserves to be higher than #82. We can see ourselves going here many times over the next few years, especially because they do take-out as well. And if anyone wants to come visit us in NJ, we will be happy to take you here for dinner!
To visit:
Star Tavern
400 High Street
West Orange, NJ 07050