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It has been a loud summer for restaurant openings in Morris County. Not a huge number of them, but the ones that landed are not small: a 12,000 square foot restaurant next to the Morristown train station, a national hot chicken chain on Route 46, and a chef-driven Italian kitchen in one of the quietest corners of the county.
Here is everything that opened between June and the end of August, with what each one is actually serving and where to find it.
The Morris Proper, Morristown
M Station West, Morristown. Opened July 9.
This is the biggest opening of the summer by a wide margin. The Morris Proper takes up roughly 12,000 square feet in M Station West, the development that sits between the Morristown Green and the train station, and it opened on July 9.
The name attached to it is the reason people paid attention. David Felton, the founding executive chef of Ninety Acres at Natirar, runs the kitchen. The menu is built around elevated comfort food rather than anything fussy, which is a deliberate choice for a room that size in a town with as many restaurants as Morristown already has.
Its location is doing real work too. Walkable from the Green, walkable from the platform, which puts it in a category almost nothing else in Morris County occupies. If you are already working through the Morristown restaurant list, this is the newest entry on it.
Dave’s Hot Chicken, Parsippany
1157 U.S. Route 46, Parsippany. Opened Thursday, July 30.
Dave’s Hot Chicken opened its Parsippany location on July 30, bringing Nashville-style hot chicken to the Route 46 corridor.
The format is simple and the appeal is obvious: sliders and tenders, seven heat levels running from no spice to a waiver-adjacent top tier, plus crinkle-cut fries, mac and cheese, kale slaw and shakes. It started as a late-night parking lot pop-up in Los Angeles in 2017 and has grown into a chain with locations across the country.
Dine-in, takeout and late-night service, which matters on a stretch of Route 46 where the options after 10 p.m. thin out fast.
FIG Rustic Italian Kitchen, Long Valley
71 East Mill Road, Long Valley. Opened August.
Long Valley does not get many restaurant openings, and it almost never gets one like this. FIG Rustic Italian Kitchen opened in August with a Northern Italian menu built around old-world technique: housemade focaccia, artisanal pizzas, seasonal pastas and slow-braised meats, with a lot of the produce sourced from farms in the surrounding area.
There is a craft cocktail program and a curated wine list to go with it. The room is intentionally intimate rather than large, which is the right read for western Morris County. Worth knowing if you are already heading out that way for apple picking or the Chester antique shops.
Ori’s Cheesesteaks, Chatham
231 Main Street, Chatham. Opened August.
A handcrafted cheesesteak shop from the Namkeen family opened on Main Street in downtown Chatham in August. Small footprint, narrow focus, exactly the kind of independent opening that a walkable downtown needs more of.
We covered it in full when it opened: Ori’s Cheesesteaks is now open in Chatham.
And one from earlier this year worth catching up on
honeygrow, 178 East Hanover Avenue, Cedar Knolls. The Philadelphia-founded fast casual chain opened its first Morris County location in Cedar Knolls in April, its fourteenth in New Jersey. Made-to-order stir-fry, salads and honey-based desserts, with paleo, keto and high-protein options built into the menu.
What this summer says about the county
Four openings is not a flood, but the mix is telling. One large-format independent from a serious chef, one national chain taking a Route 46 pad site, one small chef-driven room in a rural township, and one neighborhood sandwich shop on a Main Street. That is a healthy spread, and it is happening in the same season that several long-running Morris County institutions announced their last days.
Both things are true at once. Restaurants that opened in the 1970s are closing, and the spaces and corridors they leave behind are filling in with something else.
We update this list as new places open. Contact Us and let us know what we missed!
More Recent Openings
The list keeps growing. Also worth knowing about: Burtons Grill and Bar in Parsippany, Ugly Dumpling’s first Morris County location in Morris Plains, Lazy Caffe in Lake Hiawatha, NEER on Madison’s Main Street, The Rosecourt Brewery in downtown Madison, and the Parsippany pizzeria Dave Portnoy put on the map.
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