Jersey City calls itself the sixth borough.
There are five. That has been settled since 1898, nobody is taking applications, and the file closed before the PATH train was dug. Yet the phrase keeps turning up in leasing brochures and broker emails, usually next to a photograph of the Manhattan skyline, which is a strange thing to put on your own advertisement. That is the whole Jersey City move. Its most-marketed feature is a clear view of somewhere else.
The downtown restaurant scene follows the same logic. Ground floor of a tower, big windows onto a plaza nobody sits in, a menu of small plates, and a room that fills with people who arrived eighteen months ago. Pleasant. Also available in Charlotte, Nashville, and the bottom of any building in Long Island City.
THE CRITIC WHO CROSSED THE RIVER FOUND THE BEST THING IN JERSEY CITY
Here is where the joke turns on us.
Jersey City has food that this side of the river cannot match, and it barely mentions it. As of the 2010 census, more than 27,000 Asian Indian residents made up 10.9 percent of the city, the highest proportion of any major American city. In May 2015, Saveur sent Marian Bull on a dosa tour of Newark Avenue, and the guide she picked was Robert Sietsema, who had spent twenty years as the Village Voice critic before moving to Eater. Eleven years ago a New York writer and a New York critic were both pointing at the best thing in Jersey City while Jersey City was photographing brunch.
FOUR ADDRESSES INLAND, AND NOT ONE OF THEM ON THE WATERFRONT BROCHURE
So skip the waterfront. Take the PATH to Journal Square and walk.
Sri Ganesh Dosa House, 809 Newark Avenue. Dosas since the nineties. Order the paper dosa, get the idly and the vada too, and understand that the pricing has not caught up to the reputation. This is the anchor of India Square, the stretch of Newark Avenue between Tonnele and Kennedy Boulevard that goes so dense on a Saturday night it stops traffic. Sietsema has called it the best restaurant in the world, and he was not being cute.
Korai Kitchen, 576 Summit Avenue. Bangladeshi, run by a mother and daughter, and the meal runs long on purpose. Book ahead, because there is no walking in without a reservation. Clear the evening. Do not schedule anything after it.
Philippine Bread House, 530 Newark Avenue. Pandesal from seven in the morning, then adobo and lumpia cafeteria-style in the same building. This sits in what people here have called Little Manila for decades.
Bahay Kubo, 444 West Side Avenue. Twelve dollars gets two dishes, rice, and a drink. West Side is not on any tourism map, which is precisely the recommendation.
Four addresses. Not one of them downtown. Not one of them in a lobby. Every one of them older than the building the city puts on its own brochure.
Jersey City, you are standing on it. India Square on a Saturday is a genuine food destination and you keep leading with a picture of our skyline. Turn around and face inland. The best thing you have is eight minutes from the PATH, it has been open since the nineties, and it does not need a leasing agent.
Keep the nickname. We are keeping the five boroughs.
SOURCING
Marian Bull, Saveur, May 20, 2015, on the Newark Avenue dosa tour led by Robert Sietsema. saveur.com
Robert Sietsema, on Sri Ganesh Dosa House at 809 Newark Avenue in India Square. robertsietsema.substack.com
Sietsema's tenure as Village Voice restaurant critic from 1993 to 2013 and his subsequent move to Eater. wikipedia.org
2010 census figures for Asian Indian residents as a share of Jersey City's population, and the boundaries of India Square along Newark Avenue. wikipedia.org
Operator addresses, hours, and current operating status confirmed August 17, 2026.
