Route 6 Is Summer Dining by the Ocean

Adam Erace is reminded of summer in New Jersey during his meals at Stephen Starr’s Route 6 on North Broad Street. Us, we want the chicken-fried lobster, bad.

Summer, I want you bad. But a fresh seafood dinner at Route 6 will tide me over for now. The sprawling restaurant, named for the highway that runs through Cape Cod, pulls inspiration from all up and down the Eastern seaboard. “Maine to Maryland,” as Chicago-born chef Anthony DiRienzo, a vet of Michael Mina’s restaurants, puts it. But my biased eyes saw only good old Jersey, a raw bar as lively as the one tucked in the back of Steve & Cookie’s in Margate, shuckers with the studied precision of the crones at Dock’s in Atlantic City, chowders like Smitty’s in Somers Point. Massive loft windows lining the outer dining room look out on Broad Street, not the ocean, but the interiors are so exquisitely boho-by-the-sea (wide-plank floors, subway tile, lobster traps) it’s hard to even notice.

Deep 6 [City Paper]
Route 6 [Official Site]