1814 N. Bay Ave
Beach Haven, NJ 08008
It’s hard to beat a great Italian restaurant. It’s also very hard to beat a great seafood restaurant. You can imagine how hard it is to beat a restaurant that excels at both. That place is Stefano’s Seafood and Pasta located in Beach Haven, New Jersey. I have been to Stefano’s at least 30 times in my life, but the bulk of my visits occurred before I had found my appreciation for food. As I got older though, I started to realize just how good Stefano’s was. This point is highlighted by the fact that they win the local clam chowder competition each fall, and they even took 2nd in the world at the New England clam chowder competition in Newport Rhode Island in 2009.
On this particular visit I was looking to really enjoy myself, so I ordered a bowl of New England clam chowder, the horseradish and potato crusted salmon with lobster mashed potatoes, and peanut butter pie for dessert. Each entrée was accompanied by a house salad, which you can upgrade to a Caesar or caprese for a small charge. A basket of garlic and other assorted breads is also served at every table. The garlic bread is really worth mentioning. It is unlike any garlic bread I have ever had. It almost seems like it’s a garlic butter/paste that they put on the bread and then toast it, but it is full of flavor and incredibly crispy.
My uncle owns a business in LBI, so he and the owners of Stefano’s get along quite well. They sent our table an antipasto tray, and I loved each and every bite I took from it. There were mounds of prosciutto, capicola, parmigiano reggiano, roasted peppers, fresh provolone, pepperoncinis, olives, and fresh mozzarella balls. Antipasto is one of my favorite things to eat because there is only one thing on the whole plate I don’t like, so I can get as much as I want of all my favorite things.
After the antipasto quickly disappeared, our soups came out, and I was even happier than before. Stefano’s clam chowder is incredible. It is so incredibly flavorful; I really don’t know how they do it. The chowder is the perfect consistency, not too thick, not too thin, and packed with creamy, clammy flavor. There are large chunks of clam and potato in every bite. I used the bread that was left over from earlier to sop up every ounce of soup left in my bowl.
I was super excited to try my entrée as well, so I was very excited to see it brought out 10 minutes after I finished my soup. I love salmon, and I will order almost any dish that offers horseradish, so this was a match made in heaven. It was almost impossible to believe how crispy the crust on the outside of the salmon was. Each time my fork broke into it made a crunch loud enough to be heard by a few people at the table. The crust kept the salmon incredibly moist inside. The bed of lobster mashed potatoes underneath the salmon was just the icing on the cake. Huge chunks of perfectly tender lobster displayed throughout the creamy and fantastic mashed potatoes… I was in heaven eating it.
I was too full to eat dessert, but it was Stefano’s, so I couldn’t say no. The peanut butter pie that I ordered was huge! I couldn’t eat the whole thing because it was too big and too sweet for one person, but the half that I ate was phenomenal. Each bite gave me a taste of chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, and cookie crunch. I’m a sucker for peanut butter anything, so this was the only choice in my opinion, and I definitely made the right one because it was scrum-diddaly-uptious.
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