
Upscale restaurant delivering French haute cuisine in an intimate, bistrolike setting.
Address and Contact Information
Address: 160 Maplewood Ave, Maplewood, NJ 07040
Phone: (973) 763-4460
Website: https://restaurantlorena.com/
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Restaurant Lorenas
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Reviews
Brussels sprouts and butternut (?) soup were excellent. We ordered the chicken dish and the burger (not pictured) both of which were outstanding – was incredibly impressed at how delicious they were. We ordered the Madeline’s for dessert as nothing really stood out. We’ll only order dessert if it’s made in-house and to my recollection the only dish that was made in house were those.
Highly recommended!
Atmosphere 5/5: The restaurant is beautiful and clean. With bonus points for the good quality cutlery, steak knife especially.
Service 4/5: The service was ok overall. Everything came out quickly and the staff was mostly pleasant. We did notice the waiter practically scoffed at us when we decided not to order drinks, but I doubt they meant any harm by it, they were probably just upset because lack of drinks usually results in lower tips.
Food 2/5: For food, pretty much everything we ordered was below average, with the exception of the escargot which was good.
We got started with some complimentary bread, of good quality, with the most flavourless butter (or margarine) I’ve ever had. We ate next to none of it because of that, which is fortunate because the bread ended up being great dipped in escargot sauce.
For appetizers we ordered salmon tartare and escargot. The tartare tasted like blended salmon with cream on top. I wonder if the chef forgot to add lemon, because there was nothing sweet or sour to balance the fattiness of the salmon and the cream topping just made it worse. The onions on top of the tartare were also wilted and not crisp. The chips that came with the tartare tasted like they were deep fried 3 times and then left in the oil and were pretty much inedible. Even the cucumbers were soggy, not crunchy.
The escargot was great, I found it a tad too salty but my boyfriend thought it was just right. The butter and herb sauce it sat in was great for dipping the bread from earlier too.
For mains I had a duck dish and my boyfriend had chicken.
The duck itself was cooked to just the right temperature (I prefer medium) and the skin was wonderfully crispy and covered with a thin but flavourful crust of some sort. However, the dish as a whole was horrible. The duck sat in a sweet brown sauce and a sweet cream sauce which were both as sweet as honey! The onion and cabbage were burnt (not lightly seared or charred as probably intended) and bitter while also being sickly sweet due to being drenched in the two sauces. I tried my best to cut the duck on the side of the plate so that it wouldn’t get too much sweet sauce on it, but I didn’t have much luck.
My boyfriend’s chicken dish was overcooked and dry and the chicken sat on top of a bed of very oily vegetables, mostly corn. I don’t mean olive oil or vegetable oil either, the vegetables were interspersed with bacon pieces and everything was covered in a coating of bacon fat. This was especially noticeable once the dish cooled down a bit and the fat took on a more solid mouth-feel.
We decided to order dessert despite not enjoying the rest of our meal. And while I wouldn’t say I regretted the decision, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the panna cotta.
Ps. The tea was pretty good, for bagged tea.
The chicken pâté was good, but it was served without any jelly or fruit sauce on the side. After asking, we were given a berry sauce, which helped. The salmon tartare was also good—nice as an appetizer—but the chips that came with it were overly crispy.
The main course duck was tender and flavorful on its own, but the overall dish was far too sweet. It featured honey-glazed duck, sweet cooked onions, a sweet sauce, and sweet cream—making it overwhelming and hard to enjoy. The chicken breast on the vegetable looked messy on the plate and wasn’t presented in a very appealing way. Could not order dessert unfortunately, coz
The main course was disappointment with flavors. I liked cappuccino with whipped cream on a side.
The service was very good—truly kind and attentive staff. However, the menu needs some serious refinement. Overall, the prices felt high compared to the quality and execution of the food
Humberto is the wonderful owner and Executive Chef, who graciously made it possible for us to be served their famed Steak Tartare, which I had come from Arizona looking so forward to trying. It was sumptuous, as were the voluminous amount of oysters, shrimp and tuna tartare we consumed.
There was no aspect of experience that lacked in any way and I can honestly attest without hesitation that Lorena’s provided us a truly world class culinary experience.