In Newark's Ironbound, Iberian food is a moveable feast

The upscale Adega Grill on Ferry Street in Newark offers seafood and wine.

 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Thursday, I took a walk on the mild side up and down Ferry Street, the commercial heart of Newark's Ironbound section.

I stopped for coffee at one of the Portuguese bakeries, revisited a popular fish market and watched in fascination as passenger jets passed low over the neighborhood as they approached Newark Liberty International Airport.

The Ironbound is filled mostly with Portuguese, Brazilian and Spanish residents, and the selection of ethnic restaurants and bakeries is one of the best in the state.

Driving under Newark Penn Station onto Ferry Street, Fornos of Spain is the first major restaurant you encounter, but after that, you'll find many Portuguese and Brazilian places, including Iberia Peninsula, Adega Grill and Casa Nova.

The best Portuguese restaurant, Tony Da Caneca, is far from Ferry Street, in what is called Five Corners.

The small, white-tablecloth restaurant offers Old World service and some of the best seafood in Newark, including enormous prawns from Africa. 

Tony Da Caneca Restaurant, 72 Elm Road, Newark; 973-589-6882.

Cafes and restaurants have plenty of outdoor seating.
 

A $1 cup of coffee at the cash-only Teixeira's Bakery on Ferry Street.
 

At the Popular Fish Market, dried, salted cod is a staple of the Iberian diet.

Red snapper swim in plenty of ice.

Squid.

Whole, farmed Atlantic salmon.

Portuguese lesson: Shrimp are called camarao.

Seabra Foods, a small market on Ferry Street, offers salted pork and Portuguese blood sausage. Fresh leeks keep their cool in the produce section, above.

A tough place to park

Parking is tough in the Ironbound.

Iberia Peninsula validates parking in a lot on the other side of Ferry Street, and many blocks away, Sol-Mar has free spaces in a shopping center parking lot opposite the restaurant. 

There is metered parking on Ferry, and alternate-side parking on the side streets on Wednesdays and Thursdays, halving free spaces on those days.

Where seafood lovers gather

Image by wallyg via Flickr

The Seabras are an enterprising Portuguese family in Newark with a supermarket and restaurants in the Ironbound section, including Seabra's Marisquiera, where seafood is king. With the word "sea" in their name, how could they miss?

To avoid the Mother's Day rush today, I took my wife and son there Saturday night for a bountiful meal of lobster, shrimp and cod. We watched other families digging into platters of octopus salad, fried squid and whole fish.

 My wife and son started with a briny, pureed seafood soup that had shrimp, pieces of lobster in the shell and some elbow macaroni floating in it. One portion ($8.50) yielded two bowls of soup. I was very happy with a crisp watercress, tomato and onion salad ($4.50) that came on a large metal platter and was perfectly dressed in just enough oil and vinegar, good for sopping up with soft Portuguese bread.

My wife and son shared an entree -- twin lobsters stuffed with crab and accompanied by those addictive, homemade potato chips ($34). The waiter grabbed two live lobsters from a tank and brought them over. Did we want a single big one or two small ones? When I said two small, the eye of the junior crustacean seemed to swivel in my direction.

The lobster meat was tender, but I ended up eating must of the chips after my wife and son asked for some rice.

The waiter tried to talk me out of my selection -- salted cod boiled with potato and onion  ($21) -- and steer me to grilled fish. But I wanted to try the cod. A long, thick fillet of the snowy fish came on a platter with crisp broccoli and carrot, black olives, potato and onion -- a classic boiled dinner. This was the tenderest salted cod I had ever tasted, but it could have used a simple sauce. It wasn't salty at all, so I sprinkled on fresh lemon juice. It also was a big portion; I took a lot home.

A small bottle of Portuguese green wine (two to two and a half glasses) was $10. I finished with an espresso.

Seating is in a front room and bar and a rear dining room, where tables are lined up family style, so another group might be seated next to you. The two rooms are split by an open kitchen and a display of beautifully iced whole red snapper, sections of larger fish such as grouper and hake, enormous shrimp that looked to be five to six inches long and tanks of live lobsters.

The menu is extensive and offers cold and hot seafood combinations for four ($45). When we left, waiting customers were lined up in the corridor connecting the two seating areas.

The cod dish had a happy ending this morning, when my wife incorporated the leftover fish and potato into her Jamaican ackee and saltfish breakfast. Delicious.

Seabra's Marisquiera, 87 Madison St., Newark; 

973-491-6634. Open seven days. Off-street parking. 

rdison ax: (973) 491-633087 Madison Street, Newark, N
5-1250
Fax: (973) 491-6330