Harvest Market and Fred's Tavern in Cape

FOOD & DRINK

Fred’s Tavern in Stone Harbor and Harvest Market in Palermo are  pleasing additions to Cape May County’s culinary scene.

By Frank Gabriel 

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Dec. 21, 2011

One of the most pleasant  interludes we can imagine for your holiday time off is a slow, meandering sojourn down southern New Jersey’s peninsula toward Cape May. The county itself — at least south of Ocean City — is rather a living anachronism, with a Victorian appeal reminiscent of the English country and seacoast. 

A pair of new entries to the Cape May County food scene worthy of your time are the Harvest Market of Palermo and Fred’s Tavern in Stone Harbor. The latter, smack dab on main drag/bridge road, 96th Street, has been established as one of that upscale barrier island community’s preferred watering holes and meeting places for many decades. This past summer the owners began providing full lunch and dinner service as well. 

In a comfy, pub-style dining space carved from what was once a storeroom — some of the costliest storage space to be found anywhere, given that town’s real estate values — Fred’s offers a brief menu of classics, plus a trio of creative dinner additions Friday and Saturday nights. 

With these, the kitchen stretches to serve up fare comparable to the quality of many finer places in dining destination Cape May, except at price points about half of what you would expect to pay just a few miles further south. 

From Fred’s regular bill of fare, an absolutely colossal wedge salad would have been enough to work as a dinner entrée for most diners. Bathed in a glorious, floral coat of chunky bleu cheese dressing, it serves to remind you of how good, simple food can still manage to be inspired. 

So did my nightly special — a warm, steaming bowl of butternut squash risotto pitch-perfect on the chilly fall evening we dined. Smooth and porridge-y, the rice and veggie component had clearly been cooked simultaneously, not combined prior to plating. This resulted in a cool, auburn hue and strong, sweet, earthy essences. 

A quick glance online at some recent specials serves to illustrate my earlier comments. Items like bone-in, Cajun-style rib eye, walnut crusted salmon and grilled swordfish with a lemon/wine sauce are hardly what one expects from standard bar cuisine. 

A few miles north, in the sleepy little Upper Township community of Palermo, Harvest Market on Route 9 vends sandwiches, pizzas, grilled items, salads and extraordinary baked goods — specifically, bagels. Big, puffy rounds in about a half dozen varieties, including an absolutely out-of-this-world sunflower seed version that you are unlikely to encounter at many other places. 

But Harvest Market’s line of bakery-fresh goods isn’t limited to the savory. We’ve also sampled excellent cookies, scones, brownies and specialty pastries from the tidy, barn-shaped structure’s ovens. The transition here began shortly after the facility was taken over by current owner, Tara Fickes. A year ago she brought in former local restaurateur Rei Prabhakar as her on-site baker. Previously half of a husband-and-wife team at splendid Karen and Rei’s — a fixture in Avalon and later nearby Swainton for more than a decade, closed in 2010 — the Culinary Academy of America grad says, “One of the things she [Fickes] wanted to do was install a bakery.” 

Walk into the Market any day and you will immediately be greeted by the delectable, enticing scent of that artisanal craft. Prabhakar, who explains that “I was drawn to food as a teen in France,” and that, “my heart beats as a chef,” is particularly fond of his angel cream donuts, apple fritters and chocolate meringue cookies. 

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