The Princeton-Trenton Area (Eats and Etc.)

I've lived in the same area for 18 years now, because my work used to involve daily commutes to New York and weekly visits to family in Philadelphia. The real estate value tanked after we bought in, but has recovered nicely since, because the direct little secret of Central New Jersey is that We Won The Pandemic. Here's why:

1) Most of the folks in this area who used to commute routinely to New York... don't have to any more. Remote work means that several days of the week spending is now here, not there.

2) When you live here, you are within 100 miles of 1 out of every 10 people who live in the United States. Which means that Amazon, Wayfair, UPS, FedEx and more employ a ton of people, and it's good for an area when there's a lot of employment. 

3) Many of the world's pharmaceutical companies have a strong presence in the area. Something about New Jersey being a much better place to do your business than, say, Europe about 100 years ago. And the pandemic didn't exactly harm Big Pharma.

What all of that has done has just poured rocket fuel on local bars and restaurants, and the fun part about New Jersey is that we've always been among the country's most diverse states. Regardless of your political views, I can attest to this fact: when you want to go out and get a meal, monocultures suck. Not a problem here.

So with all of that as prologue, here are the places I tell people to go to eat surprisingly well (currently as of September 2024), with many options, when they get in the car and ask. Rather than make them all take notes while riding. 

By town:

Princeton -- Cross Culture in the Princeton Shopping Center for Indian is great. So is Mi Espana for Spanish in the same complex, and Lan Ramen on Witherspon and Hulfish in the downtown area. Agricola (farm to table mix) and Mistral (great drinks and deserts) are also solid options downtown, along with Katharine's (French) and the Witherspoon Grill (steak). For something more local, try Contee's on Witherspoon and Guyot for tomato pie. I'm also a big fan of Eno Terro on Route 27, just north of the area. Princeton has some of our best restaurants, but parking and costs are higher here as well. 

Ewing -- Dramatically cheaper and with easier parking, but still collegiate due to the presence of TCNJ. Favorites here include Cafe 72 on Upper Ferry and Bear Tavern for breakfast and lunch, Meatheadz on Business Route 1 for tri-tip cheesesteaks, Mikonos on Scotch Road for Greek, Firkin Tavern and Ajika Ramen for bar food and ramen on Parkway Avenue.

Hamilton -- Jojo's on Quakerbridge for trash pie pizza (it's huge), or Papa's near Route 130 for wildly old school tomato pies, some with brown mustard in the crust. I also love Le Dish on Route 33 for good poke bowls, and El Guajillo, also on Route 33, for authentic Mexican. Killarney's gets crowded, but it's good bar grub. Your dollar goes farther in Hamilton.

Trenton -- Cheapest place in the area, but can be a bit off-putting for the potholes and extra-curricular activities.  Broad Street Diner is reliable, the Rat at Grounds for Sculpture is overpriced but the decor is memorable, and the Smokehouse BBQ place downtown is legit. Try Tir na Nog for traditional Irish, and La Casona on Klockner for Central and South American food.

Bordentown -- I haven't tried enough of these places just yet, because parking is rough and the cops have a very troublesome history, but the Under the Moon Cafe, Old Town Pub and HOB Tavern are all worthwhile. This town is a bit more expensive.

Odds and ends: La Unica in Pennington is basic and adorable Mexican food. Sahara in Skillman is fantastic Middle Eastern food. Roots on Route 1 is fun Chinese, and Seasons 24 is also fine and easy to find, about a mile up the road, also on 1. 

Advice: Don't eat franchised food. Try places in ordinary shopping centers and strip malls. Get away from Princeton, especially Monday through Thursday, when the pharma crowds are in town and tables are hard to find. And if you have others you like, add in the comments. I try to find a new place every week, and haven't exhausted the area in two years of trying.

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Playing the part

This week is a lot, because one of the platforms is offering a bonus for too many rides. I have Wednesday off for the federal holiday, and Friday off becuase I'm starting to get into use or lose mode with "vacation" (i.e., full-time rideshare) days.

So I set the course for local and short and densely populated, which means Trenton. 

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

About two hours into my shift, I get a ping for a guy in a not great part of town, going to a high rise that I've dropped people off at before. The high rise is also in a not great part of town. 

He gets in after a couple of minutes with two young boys, and it's obvious from their conversation that (a) they both want to stay with him, and (b) only one of them is going to, because there's a shared custody situation. He's attentive to the kids and the kids aren't unruly, so it's all fine. We roll the required ten minutes without incident.

I get to the high rise, and my adult fare asks me to do the thing I was going to do anyway, which is go to the back entrance where the drop is safer, and historically where most people want to get out. It's the first of two stops. He's dropping one boy off and taking the other back to his original pick up point.

 As I get close, I have to pull around a parked police car with lights flashing. Both my passenger and me check out the cops with dull surprise. He starts shepherding the kids to the entrance and elevator, then stops to talk to me. 

"Normally I just get him to the elevator and he knows where to go, but with the cops here..."

I wave him on. "Go ahead, I'll be right here."

And he walks on, guiding the kids... which is when another three cop cars with full lights join the first one, and now we've got the evening's entertainment. A forceful arrest in the lobby my guy needs to go in, with resistance and swings from a guy in a white tank top, swinging without a whole lot of effect or conviction as the cops overwhelm him with tonnage. 

We get a second act of entertainment as a woman who seems connected to Offender #1 decides that similar physical activities are a good idea, only with more protestions and screaming.

I could, at this moment, end the ride. There's no personal effects in the car from the passenger, rideshare does not pay nearly enough to risk much of anything for, and I might be making the cops nervous with my presence. It rarely goes well for anyone when cops are nervous.

First rule of rideshare; get home safe. 

This could break that, no?

Only the whole thing seems, well, like everyone's just playing the part. No one has pulled out a serious weapon, the wild swings aren't landing, and the cops aren't going for full beatdown. 

I don't feel in any way unsafe. 

I feel unseen. 

And, well, I'm not supposed to end a multi-stop ride unless the passenger requests it, or disappears for over five minutes. 

So I look at the clock, and with two minutes left to go he texts me to say he's in the elevator again, just in time for the summer squall of cops and Jerry Springer Show guests to lose their cardio and start talking to each other like there's nothing all that special going on, 

Because, well, there wasn't. It's Trenton.

My man comes back with a minute to spare. We chat a bit about his adventure, and how fortunate he was to get his charges into the elevator before the perforrmance. 

For the next ten minutes on the ride back, he and I both play the role of ordinary guy with nothing to see here, both of us doing that for, I really think, the child more than each other. This boy has got enough to deal with in the world without us putting jet fuel into his reality of Childhood Trauma, so we both pretend there was nothing extraordinary going on here, or that this kind of life imitating art is, well, neither. 

My passenger is grateful that I stayed, knows that I didn't have to, and... does not tip. 

And I'm somehow OK with it, because not everyone can or will tip, and I suspect he's got no history of ever tipping a rideshare driver.

I drop them off and work another four hours, and speculate about long-term memories of this for the kid. 

Then I come home and write this, so I don't forget.

And kind of wish I could.

Single moms have things to get done

 The ping comes from the Wal-Mart, a five minute ride on a weekend when I'm trying to rack up a bunch of short rides for a bonus, so nothing out of the ordinary. It's a bright Sunday afternoon, and a text message comes in to note that my pick up will be at the main door. She's waiting with a child, impressed by the professionalism, and in the next five minutes I learn:

> She's widowed with five kids

> She's prone to racial profiling of Lyft drivers, not Uber, and can't believe the idea that it's the same labor pool

> She's a fortune teller with business cards for that (wonder if she saw the widowing coming)

> She wants me to be her on-call gypsy cab because Uber is too expensive

> She's prone to labeling things as ghetto, so, um, point two is starting to seem problematic

> She's disgusted with the Wal-Mart's selection and price of paint, which is the only thing she needed in there due to a crisis with a guy who is painting her house for here (and, third time's the charm, doesn't speak English, to her considerable annoyance), and

> She wants to know if I'm married because she's "in the market." On hearing of the length of my marriage, she wails, "All the good ones are taken!"

All in five minutes. I would have three-starred her, butI think I was too in awe of the hustle...

Last ride of the night

Working late is very high risk / high reward. Drunk people don't notice surge price and you often get cool waitstaff, but there's also a strong chance of dead on their feet warehouse workers or people having, well, Adventures. I tend to be out late because the traffic is light, I don't sleep well, and I'm just more alert late at night. It's not healthy but it is what it is, and we need the money.

The ping comes in as I'm finishing the shift, having not made enough to knock off earlier. It's some distance away and going further in that distance, so I can't say I'm real enthused about it, but it's not as if my metrics are so strong that I can ignore it, so on we go. En route, the person who ordered the ride texts me to say I'm picking up a woman that isn't them, that they will have extra bags, and yeah, complications late at night are a good sign of Adventures. Away we go to one of the cheaper motels in the region.

She's waiting when I get there, which is nice, and proceeds to fill up my car as advertised, but she's reasonably quick and apologetic about it. I don't tend to make eye contact for reasons, but her shock of bright orange hair isn't going to be ignored. I check my email and fantasy basketball league while she loads, and after checking to see if it would be OK if she sat up front due to all the bags (fine), we're on our way. I offer her the usual hand sanitizer and water, she compliments me on my professionalism, and small talk ensues. 20 minute ride late at night, I don't mind a conversation; it's better than fighting back yawns and hoping that I won't have to wake the passenger at the drop off.

After a few minutes of answering questions about me, I pivot the conversation to ask what she does, and the answer is... nothing. She's homeless, which I probably should have guessed given the load out and hour, but it's said without hesitancy or defiance, as if she's said it a lot. She was staying at the hotel with a friend when that friend got violent and suicidal, and the cops were called and she had to go. She's on her way to where the person who ordered the ride is, which is to say, at another low price motel.

She's been this way for a year or so. Her guy hit her, she says just the one time and she didn't press charges, and then he hung himself, and she's been self-medicating ever since, it seems. She used to wait tables, bartend and work as a home aid to the elderly, and she knows she has to change her life and get back to that, but just can't. I offer up the gentlest advice that I can, because I'm wired to be helpful but really don't want to step too hard, and tell her she does not present as homeless, which comes as a surprise and a compliment to her. It doesn't cost anything to be kind.

And as we get close to the drop off, it's clear that the address is wrong, because it's in the middle of a wooded area, and yeah. Adventures for all.

I go a half mile further and find another cheap motel as she calls the benefactor, and he tells her the name of the motel; it's another mile away and he had the wrong address. As Uber asks me if everything is OK because I'm going off plan, I ask Google for the address of the new motel and complete the ride. We pull up to the door and her friend comes out to help her unload, apologizes for the mix up, and promises to add to my tip, which given all that I've learned in the last 20 minutes, I'm not expecting. 

It shows up later as promised, though. Biggest tip of the night. 

I shut off the apps, drive home in silence, and write this before going to bed. 

I wrote this to remember the ride, but I don't think I had to. This one will stay with me. Sometimes, the job is like is that.

There are, in fact, people having worse days than you

In the men's room at a Wawa off 295, and the room is a little crowded. In busts the pump attendent (that happens in New Jersey), asking if anyone has a Mazda so and so. Dude in the stall says yes, and is told that he left his car in neutral, and it's rolled into someone else's vehicle, so, um, hope he's got insurance.

Suddenly, doing a long shift of ride share for not great money fills me with gratitude...