I feel like the Knife and Fork Inn is the obvious answer, but still a damn good one.

Right in the middle of town, historic building and restaurant (operating since 1912), upscale menu and vibe— pretty much a bullseye for a business dinner that makes a statement.

Breakfast at Frank’s

Poke into the neat indie shops along Cookman (closer to the Rt 71 side)

Play vintage pinball machines at the Silverball Museum on the boardwalk

Walk the beach and enjoy the surroundings

Lunch at MOGO Korean tacos

Visit the distillery right in town, or take the 8 minute drive to grab some awesome beers at Kane on Ocean Township

Dinner at Talula’s and drinks at Bond Street

Bingo!

I’ve always found humor in the quotation marks, but the first time I had this brand was at the brewery out on Monhegan Island, and damn— these things are so good I’ll just let the grammar slide!

From Morris County, but contribute to two maritime ones:

The Bayshore Center at Bivalve down in Cumberland County, which aims to preserve the history of the area’s oystering industry as well as maintain and sail the AJ Meerwald, a 1928 oyster schooner that is now used for educational excursions as well as recreational ones.

Also members of the American Littoral Society based in Sandy Hook, which is a conservation and advocacy group aimed at preserving marine life along the coast.

Vreeland Store, Upper Macopin (West Milford), woodsy-Passaic County

Bayshore Crab House (colloquially known as “Bull on the Barn”), Newport, Cumberland County

The Bait Box, Greenwich (also Cumberland County)

The Book Barn in Denville.
Lousy hours, TONS of books, wicked cheap prices.

Hamilton Park, Weehawken.

Dude, check out Pacific Coast.

Super high quality, made in America pillow that are well worth their cost.

Slept on them at a posh bed and breakfast in Montgomery, northern Vermont, and had one of the best nights of sleep of my adult life.

Ordered them as soon as we got home and still love them like 5-6 years later. No compression or loss of comfort whatsoever.

Now, I refuse to consider them BIFL just due to their nature and the eventual accumulation of more gross human things than I’ll be comfortable with, but these have been an excellent purchase for my wife and I.

This will always be one of the solid answers alongside Steelcase.

I suggest checking Facebook Marketplace first; there are companies that will buy these from companies who vacate office space or love replacing furniture and sell them for a fraction of new.

I bought a used one several years ago for $350 and it looked new when I picked it up— still does!

This comment, and the others underneath it, are 100% on point.

Sets suck; you’ll invariably end up with at least one blade you never use, and the overall quality of the blades often suffer in favor of the convenience to get ‘em all in one shot.

I also agree that the feel of a particular knife is very personal, so it’s a decent idea to horse around at a Williams Sonoma, Sur La Table, or (preferably) a local quality kitchenware store to help inform your decision. Weight, balance, and handle style are all personal preferences that we on the internet can help guide your consideration but not make the final call for you. A lot of folks love European blades like Wusthof, but I find them too heavy and have opted for a handmade American knife with carbon steel blade for my primary three (Cut Brooklyn chef and paring, Muteki nakiri).

I cook at home 6 nights a week and expect my knives to do their job well and predictably. Suggesting my specific choices is irrelevant (as noted above), but the styles of knives I chose for my quiver are well rounded for a wide gamut of prep needs:
• 210mm chef knife
• 8” burly, inexpensive chef knife (i.e. Henckels or Victorinox) for hammering away at things like nuts, chocolate, or yucca
• 5” utility / paring knife for detail cuts
• Nakiri style blade for quick vegetable dispatching
• A good-ass 9” bread knife (in this instance, I’ll say that Shun makes an exceptional blade)
• Long-blade slicing knife
• Boning / filet knife
• Quality pair of kitchen shears

That’s honestly all you’d likely need for 95% of prep work, and there is probably no set that would include everything without some disappointing inclusions or useless extra blades. Also, a magnetic wall holder is way more hygienic than the block style holder as well.

Shameless plug that my wife and I visited all 80 spots in the lyrics of this song and made a travelogue music video of the adventure— I am obviously way biased, but our video offers agreat way of seeing the varied landscape of some really oddball places in New Jersey.

On an aside, it was also probably the best thing I’ve done in the last decade-plus— the amount I learned about our state, the history, the nature, the food, the curiosities, the food (did I mention that) were priceless. I feel like I am so much better connected with our state, and there are a bunch of far-flung places that we now visit on the regular (deep Pinelands, Delaware Bayshore, all the classic lowbrow eats in the northeast) thanks to this song!

These guys make great sandwiches, have great crass Jersey attitudes, and the handwritten signs in the shop are incredible.

I just honestly wish the sandwiches were smaller. Like, the photo is probably no bullshit what you’d get, as I’ve had stuff with like a pound of prosciutto on it in the past.

It’s impossible to eat without taking half the shit out of the roll, and then you’re left with just a pile of meat and condiments that you need to buy a roll to turn it into a second rate leftover sandwich.

It is probably an unpopular complaint, but I don’t need a Taliercio’s or Harold’s display of gluttony— just knock a few bucks off the cost of the sandwich and give me something a normal person can eat for lunch.

Nope! I cycle a bunch, but these roads are the discovery of just driving all over the state a lot just for the sake of exploring.

Sunrise Mountain Road, Sandyston to Montague

Old Mine Road / River Road, exit 1 off Route 80 all the way to Port Jervis

Seven Bridges Road, Little Egg Harbor

Henry Hudson Drive, Alpine to Edgewater

Any of the Pine Barrens sand roads from Mount Misery to Whitesbog

and mostly, just, Hunterdon County. Like, almost all of it. Drive your way through Lambertville, Frenchtown, Milford, Califon, High Bridge, Asbury— it’s all just so beautiful.

Mythicos Studios in Randolph.

Checking in from New Jersey and this is absolutely the case down here. Been using the local farmstead down the road for years and they’ve always been $4 a dozen.

They are still $4 a dozen, but the grocery stores have definitely cleared that mark.

Reporting in from Morris County that the answer is a solid ”no” from the ones in my vicinity:

• Station 1, Pompton Lakes
• Flipside, Pompton Lakes
• Factory, Dover
• Sweet Vinyl, Denville
• PREX, Princeton
• Scotti’s, Summit
• Sound Exchange, Wayne
• Wayne PAL Second Saturday Record Show

All of these have small electronic offerings that focus on relatively common and pedestrian titles.

For in store browsing, head into NYC and check out Academy Records or Rough Trade. Both have really well curated and deep sections. To be honest, most of what’s in my library in the electronic/dance/downtempo/—wave genres came from the internet, just by virtue of me liking specific things and it being unlikely I find them in person.

Whetstone sharpening is one of the most cathartic activities to me… so repetitive but I’ll put on some good music and just completely chill out during the process. Helps me slow down and relax, and leaves me with wicked sharp edges.

Will never sharpen any other way.

You need involvement; you need to get involved in some real Christmas project.

How’d you like to be the director of our Christmas play?

Hmm, I thought they stopped all operations in the ‘80s?

Always been especially fond of The Chubby Pickle in Highlands, but my hands down favorites have got to be at Humpty Junior’s in Columbia— done spear style with a well seasoned batter and served with a sort of bang-bang style mayo sauce.

Pretty much matching all your requirements, and quite literally the only pants I own (albeit a handful of pairs in different colors) is the Mountain Hardwear AP Pant. I even cycle to work and the crotch holds up well.

And look, they’re on 50% off sale right now!

Congrats! Go drive yourself to a diner for some celebratory disco fries!

I don’t really agree with this, and your ‘thinning’ response wasn’t really in the context of Sound Exchange.

First, every one of the above shops, as well as the ‘King of NJ’ PREX, have more used titles than new. Princeton is probably the closest of balanced old vs sealed titles, but there are/were only a couple stores that are mostly new, sealed albums (Vintage Vinyl in Fords [RIP] was more on the new side, and small shops like Sweet Vinyl in Denville is more new-leaning).

For as much as corporations like Walmart and Target want to stick their fingers in the icing with 100% sealed records, the indie shops survive on having both used and new— both of which sell. Now, all of the above shops and most others from around the state will outright reject ‘thrift store’ titles (your Boz Scaggs, Perry Como, Humperdinck, etc.), but it’s all a crap shoot on what walks in the door for you to buy.

Having been to a lot of the stores in state, somehow PREX and Station 1 are magnets for kickass collections. It’s pretty incredible to see a tiny shop in Pompton Lakes within a month offer up collections of 60s Blue Note jazz, early 80s punk originals, and ‘dark ages’ 90s alternative originals. Places like Factory are less discerning, and generally accumulate common used stuff— but it obviously sells, to support that size space.

As far as Sound Exchange’s thinning, even in their worst days you would never see Boz Scaggs or Herman’s Hermits in there. It was just that the owner had no patience to throttle inventory– anything that came in, new or used, would hit the floor, and he was apparently ravenous about buying tons of new titles. The place was packed with quality stuff, but was so overfilled that you couldn’t even get to some of it. The thinning has likely been a combo of pulling stuff into storage, and giving less square footage to CDs so that the vinyl had a place to exist besides the floor. The type of albums hasn’t changed, just the ability to edit to improve the experience.

Oh, and it goes without saying to OP that a drive down to Princeton Record Exchange is a guaranteed win.