2022_09_New_Jersey_Monthly

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EAT + DRINK PRESENTATION Clockwise from above left: Sunflowers adorn the dining room; from above right; shrimp risotto; strawberry shortcake. STAGING THE FEAST Hamilton prepares platters in the bustling open kitchen with counter seats. blini with buttery smoked salmon and coral-colored salmon roe. A heaping bowl of tender Maine mussels in a fennel, white wine and cream broth was so delicious, I scooped up the broth with the mussel shells. Among entrées, crisp-skinned duck confit came with delicious cassoulet-style white beans and roasted endive. Pan-fried pork-loin schnitzel, though pounded thin and coated with bread crumbs, remained moist and tender. The crispy cod, coated in rice flour and deep fried, needed a tad more time in the fryer. Both the pork and the cod were topped with a colorful assortment of lettuces in a light vinaigrette. Sunday dinner started with a bagna cauda, a splay of raw baby turnips, radishes and asparagus from Roots to River Farm in Solebury, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the raw vegetables could not absorb the luscious anchovy-garlic butter. (I asked for bread to soak it up, but was told there was none.) The next course was a saffron-tinged timbale of shrimpstudded risotto topped with two perfectly cooked jumbo shrimp. The star of the day was gently poached salmon fillet, full of flavor aided by a foaming lemon hollandaise and a mound of spring peas, shelled and in the pod. The same dessert was served at both meals: strawberry shortcake with tender, buttery biscuits topped with juicy, sugared, local strawberries and softly whipped cream. Other desserts in the rotation include a dense chocolate cake and fresh fruit tarts, the recipes for which are including in the Canal House Cook Something cookbook. Besides the delicious food and the leisurely pacing of that Sunday dinner, I had another reason to be thankful to Canal House Station. This was the last restaurant meal I’d be sharing with my frequent review companion and best friend of the last 30 years, who was moving back home to England. I am grateful to Canal House for making the meal worthy of the occasion. HOW WE REVIEW Restaurants are chosen for review at the sole discretion of the dining editor, based on input from our food writers and critics around the state. Our reviewers visit a restaurant at least twice, always maintaining anonymity to avoid preferential treatment. The reviewer brings up to three guests per visit and tastes everything that is ordered. NJM reimburses the reviewer for all food and beverage expenses. After the final visit, the reviewer conducts a phone interview with the chef, owner or other key members of the team. The review is then submitted to NJM and edited for clarity and fairness. Stars are assigned by the editor in consultation with the reviewer. As a final step, an NJM staffer checks the review for accuracy, always calling the restaurant to confirm all facts. Extraordinary Excellent Very Good Good Fair 122 SEPTEMBER 2022 NJMONTHLY.COM
PHOTOGRAPH: JOHN EMERSON CAPTION HED Caption here more here tk caption here tk more here tk more about the topic here. More caption here tk caption here. Filmmaker Anthony Scalia says he spent his whole life driving past the venerable Bendix Diner—an oldfashioned, stainless steel fixture on the median between Route 17 North and South in Hasbrouck Heights—and never pulled over. “It was just something you kind of pass because it looks a little rundown,” the Lodi native, 29, admits. But late one night in 2016, Scalia was hungry. It was 3 am, and nothing else was open. The Bendix, fluorescent lights glowing, beckoned. From his table, Scalia watched his waiter deftly work, noticing that the man was not making the usual COUNTER POINTS “Some people come here as lovebirds, some to forget a loved one,” says Bendix Diner manager John Diakakis. It’s ‘Cheers With Food’ John Diakakis, who is legally blind, manages the homey—and lovably homely—Bendix Diner, turning 75 this year. By Jennifer Finn eye contact. Scalia wondered: Could he be blind? “As soon as [my] straw hit the bottom of the cup, he came over and refilled it,” Scalia recalls, sitting at a corner booth at the Bendix. “I’d never had that happen before…. And then I just found the most incredible story hiding in plain sight.” Scalia had stumbled upon what he realized would make a riveting documentary: John Diakakis, a blind, single father of three boys, had been working here at his family’s diner for decades. Oh, my God, Scalia remembers thinking. How has nobody tapped into this yet? Scalia would spend three years filming Diakakis and his sons— EAT + DRINK Tony, Dimitri and Michael—for what would become Bendix: Site Unseen. It’s one of two documentaries on Diakakis that premiered at the New Jersey International Film Festival in June, coinciding with the diner’s 75th anniversary this year. (The other film, Stephen Michael Simon’s Bacon ’n’ Laces, named for the extensive sneaker collection Diakakis amassed with his eldest son, Tony, was featured on the New Yorker’s website, too.) “You have a chip on your shoulder,” says Diakakis, who was born legally blind. “You want to prove something.” From his earliest days in the diner, “even my mom would say, ‘Oh, you can’t do this.’” Now 55, Diakakis began working at the Bendix—which his father, Tony, purchased in 1985—in the ’90s. He’d graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in psychology and was pursuing stand-up comedy, centering routines on his blindness. Tony suggested he work the register to earn extra cash. Relying on his heightened nonvisual senses, Diakakis started teaching himself server duties— listening, for example, to the symphony of sounds a mug makes as it fills with coffee. (He’s burned himself once or twice, but to this day has never, he boasts, spilled on a customer.) “The cooks would turn around and say, even to my parents… ‘Wow, John is better and more attentive [than the other waitstaff ],’” he says. Not everyone was immediately accepting. “People would come in trashed in the overnight [shifts] and be like, ‘What are you, stupid?’” he recalls. But as a former college wrestler with a lifelong competitive streak— and a mouth that could rival Tony Soprano’s—Diakakis never cowered. “So, I’m like, ‘What, you have a problem with me being f ’ing blind?’...And the reality sinks in. Then,” he muses, “I go from being the stupidest guy to being the most amazing human being.” Despite his blindness, Diakakis managed to obtain residential cus- SEPTEMBER 2022 NEW JERSEY MONTHLY 123
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2022_09_New_Jersey_Monthly

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