A weekend at the Jersey Shore 🏖️
You can take the girl out of Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the girl.
Hello and welcome back to Five Things I Ate! This week, we soak up the sun and blast some music with the windows rolled down, drive down Ocean Avenue, and get ice cream at 7-11. Read past posts here, and please follow my Instagram, @fivethingsiate.
Good Humor Oreo bar at 7-11
Unspecified secret 7-11.
You can take the girl out of New Jersey, but you can’t take the Jersey out of the girl. I’ve had the good fortune (and the desire) to experience some truly fancy desserts in my life, but I swear to God nothing makes me more excited than stopping by the 7-11 for an ice cream bar. Nothing hits harder than a suburban 7-11, except maybe a suburban Home Depot, or a really big grocery store, or my other favorite thing, a reealll decked out rest stop in Delaware or New Hampshire with a Dunkin’ Donuts, Auntie Anne’s, and a gas station store with those DIY milkshakes. You would think that the freezer displays of Good Humor bars were diamonds, except I’m not going to let anyone know that, minus all of you, so that I will continue to get invited to Very Fancy Dessert if the occasion arises. I have very specific demands for my 7-11 dessert treats. It has to be ice cream, or more accurately, ice cream product, and it must be rectangular, for that is the best shape of frozen treat. While I almost never eat Oreos on their own, even with milk (more on that below), I love Oreo flavored things, and the Good Humor bar fulfills all my specs: Rectangular, frozen, ice-cream like product, Oreo crumbs, on a stick, I’m a happy gal.
Fried Oreos at Jenkinson’s Boardwalk
300 Ocean Ave N, Point Pleasant Beach, NJ 08742
My idea of a perfect date is totally and unironically spending a day at the boardwalk at the Jersey Shore. You can do everything there: Go on dinky little rides where seven year olds mock you for screaming, buy a quarter pound of fudge at the candy store, lay on the beach and roast, and most importantly, have the person taking you out win you a lot of plushies from the boardwalk. (Btw, the boardwalk plushie game has really improved since I last went, as a child! There are now a lot of cute Squishables.) Also, eat fried Oreos, which is a thing I have actually never done before, being more of a Zeppole gal myself. (Every year, my home town in New Jersey holds a big Italian festival at the local Catholic church on Labor Day weekend, so I’ve had plenty of my share.) I rate fried Oreos merely Okay. I do like that the Oreo gets mostly soft and gooey inside the fried dough casing, which is not a texture I expected. However, I feel like I mostly preferred the batter over the filling, as in my opinion Oreos are best in a frozen dessert form (see above).
Steamed lobster with corn on the cob and coleslaw at Klein’s Fish Market
708 River Rd, Belmar, NJ 07719
I’ve never been to the Hamptons, because no one has ever invited me, and I don’t know anyone who has a house there. But, I have binged 20 hours of Succession which is basically the same thing. I imagine it’d be similar to driving down Ocean Avenue at the Jersey Shore. If you like mansion-watching, I highly recommend doing this little trip (make sure to have all the windows down and blast some smooth tunes) on a perfectly sunny day. You’ll see the ocean on one side, and insane gated abodes on the other, what’s not to like? Sure, we can yeet the rich, but since they’re here, they might as well visually entertain me. Anyways, drive down Ocean Avenue then stop at Klein’s Fish Market at sunset, where you can get a view of the harbor and fresh seafood. Be warned, this is a super super popular place, so when we went, there was a supposed wait time of 1h 45. That being said, the number of tables ahead of us dropped like flies, so maybe that counter was a lie? However, if you’re impatient, you can get food at some of the bars, and there’s a pretty extensive menu. They even have lobster, which I was craving. I feel like it’s hard to critique a lobster dinner, especially when you have a view. Is the food a little pricey, is the place a little crowded, and was there a dad urgently asking for a takeout container so his kid could vomit in it? Maybe. But I fully enjoyed the ambiance.
Cinnamon vanilla cold brew at Rook Coffee
Apparently Rook Coffee is all the hype in South Jersey these days, but I didn’t know because I’m mostly up North. Now, as we all know, I am not usually a cold brew girl, because I live and die by the iced Americano, two shots of espresso over ice, as black as my soul and then a little half-and half or fancy cold foam, please. However, recently even I have gotten tired of drinking the same thing every day. I have to admit I really enjoy the elite combo of vanilla and cinnamon, which I augmented by adding honey as the sweetener to it, along with half-and-half. A sweet, cold, caffeinated drink? Yes, please.
Cherry and pistachio ice at Strollo’s Lighthouse
Several locations, all down the Shore.
When I was a child, my parents gave me an allowance for the summer of a dollar every week. And, in a very on-brand fashion, I would hoard that allowance until my little purse bag was filled with crumpled, sweaty, child-fisted dollar bills, and then I would spend it all on the Penguin Italian Ice Truck by buying ices for all of my friends. My parents had to pull me aside and explain to me that that money was for myself, and should not be spent on other children, who had their own parents, and probably larger allowances than mine. I like that story because it’s a nicer fable about me than the other claim to fame I have, which is being obsessed with kicking all the other children in my evangelical daycare with my shiny patent-leather Mary Jane shoes. Anyways, as you can tell, Italian Ice has a super soft spot in my heart and until last weekend I’d never tried Strollos, which has a line at all of its locations both night and day. This is not like any Italian Ice i’ve ever tried – it’s so soft and fluffy, it almost tastes Not Too Sweet, despite being literally sugar water. The best flavors are cherry and pistachio, and I will not elaborate more, although lemon is also good.
Stay cool,
Soph