La Cucina Nouveau - Marlboro NJ

We had an excellent but uncomfortable dinner at La Cucina Nouveau. The food was excellent, the servers were friendly and masked, but the hostess/owner was NOT masked, and was walking around kissing and hugging all of the regular customers. Also the restaurant was jam packed at 100%, not 50%. Everyone was on top of each other. There was no social distancing. There were several 10 and 12 tops, when max at one table is supposed to be 6 or 8. I felt like I went back in time pre Covid.
The funny thing was that we got there at 5 for our reservation, and the owner comes out asking us to come back in 15 minutes, because they just had a large party, and had to sanitize the place for our safety :smiley: Fortunately, we had a small 2 top that was separated from the main dining room by a half wall, and the table set for 6 on the other side of the wall was empty while we were there (one of maybe 2 empty tables). At least we had a little breathing room. When we left, there was a crowd of people waiting in the vestibule for their tables. I think we will stick with Il Nido across the highway.
Anyway, we enjoyed an excellent NY Strip steak; whole branzino; awesome fried crispy eggplant, burrata, and tomato tower; crispy fried soft shell crab with aioli, and clams oreganata. It all went great with an excellent Amarone. Please note that the wine picture was taken about 45 minutes before that main dining room fully filled up.










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