Normally I wouldn't post anything that was asked of me from a restauratuer or anyone associated with--or not associated with for that matter--the restaurant/wine business.  I'm making an exception here because I think Christine Nunn, of Picnic Caterers in Emerson, operates above board, and this event seems to be a way to "make a difference" on a local level.  Not to mention that I've had Christine's food and it's quite good.

The info is below:

If you live in a house built before, oh, the late 1990's, like we do, this probably sounds familiar: 

You have a "formal dining room", which is small and gets no use until the holidays, at which time you try to cram way too many people into way too small a space at way too tiny a table. 

And you have a formal living room, which gets ignored because you likely have a family room or TV room where you spend most of your time when you're actually home and not working or running around, and that's where you eat dinner...sitting on the floor in front of the TV (OK, maybe you're not like us and you don't eat while sitting on the floor.  That's not important though).

Solution?  A several-hundred-thousand-dollar addition on the house.  Or, for a bit less, you flip the dining room and the living room...for good.

I noticed a few changes around Ridgewood recently, and I bet you're on the edge of your seat...   

The Houston's burger can be seen here not sucking.

So I found myself poking around the internet, looking for places that serve a good burger (go figure), and an oddity kept popping up here and there (most significantly on A Hamburger Today):  people have been claiming that Houston's, a chain restaurant, has a good burger.   

Let me make something clear:  I don't think people have very good taste, generally speaking.  So normally, I'd just ignore these claims.  But for some reason I thought they might be onto something.  And A Hamburger Today people seem to put a lot of thought into this stuff.  So, off we went to Houston's in Riverside Square mall, in Hackensack, NJ.  After my experience with Applebee's "Triple Prime Burger", I wasn't expecting much.  Of this you are assured.

Restaurant L opened less than two weeks ago (it's 11/1/06, as I type this) in the old "Turnpike" space on Franklin Turnpike in Allendale.

Driving by the long-abandoned Turnpike building for the past 5 or so years, I've had visions of buying it and opening a BBQ restaurant.  It was a real shack.  It looked like a shack.  It looked old.  It looked like it should have BBQ.

Well some other people had different ideas, and weren't as gun-shy:  they moved in, and totally redid the whole building.  Probably down to the foundation, where none even existed apparently, according to a brief conversation with one of the principals.  Suffice it to say, they did a lot of work on the place.  The result is a sharp-looking "New American" restaurant.  Our recent visit suggested that we were not the first ones to notice that the sharp-looking place opened.