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News 12 Staff

MainSt5a0929NJLE_2023-09-29-05-31-53

It's Friday and our Lauren de is in Linden for main street, New Jersey. Yeah, she's kicking it off with breakfast at a classic diner. I mean, we do have to start with a cup of coffee too. Right. Lauren? Yeah, you got it. So here it is, coffee is poured and it's absolutely pouring outside. So, very fitting, you know, poured my cup of coffee. Rich Day. Good morning. Rich. Thanks for waking up early but not really too early. Right? You're usually too early. We're up every, every morning, early five am we open here at the White Rose diner in London. Very good. That's where we got the White Rose diner. And that, let me tell you, your, your, uh, phone was already ringing five o'clock off the hook because people know. So this is interesting. I've never seen this before for fish and grits, fish and grits. It's one of our specialties. Yeah. So you've been around, I mean, the White Rose has been around for like 50 years. You were saying 50 years, right? We, I've owned the diner for 32 years now. Well, why do you think people keep coming back here? The food is good. The company is good. And we're, we're always here at 5 a.m. every morning. All right. So I'm gonna try this because I've never had fish and grits. Like shrimp and grits. Right. But like good fish and grits and enjoy what we got customers coming in already. We're waiting for you. Then you already got the grill going. Right. And you made a couple of those bacon's ready. Home fries are ready. We're ready to go for the day. Awesome. And you've been on lots of TV, right? Lots of TV. We've been on, we've been on TV with Bobby Flay. We've been on the travel channel. A lot of TV exposure. That's great. Good for you. Yeah. Thank you. And Bobby Flay, didn't he make a sandwich or Bobby? We, we did a show on sliders. Sliders were the hot thing. And nowadays, so Bobby Flay was here and we taught him a little bit about making sliders. I love this. Thank you so much for opening up early, kind of for us. Right. Right. Well, I'm gonna keep digging in and uh, thanks for uh getting our main street started right here in London. Thanks for coming. Great to have you. All right. Well, here we go. We're gonna make this the most out of this rainy day. We're in Linda Lauren de New Jersey. I was just asking Nick if he ever had grits and she's eating fish and grits. I've never had that. Uh, yes, I, I don't have it as often but, uh, fish, fish and would be, that would be new for me too, but it looked good.

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MainSt530a0929NJLE_2023-09-29-05-50-47

It's main street, New Jersey this morning. We're in London. Lauren de has a full morning to check out some of the great local businesses there. And Lauren, we know you love to hit up coffee spots. We can't get enough of coffee. Where did you go for this cup? Ok. So this is called Aura Coffee. And let me tell you, it is totally a vibe here. This is exactly where you want to spend a rainy morning. The owner here agent. Now tell me a coffee. How did you come up with that name? Aa is atmosphere. So I wanted to create a good atmosphere for people to come in, enjoy themselves. And this is eating right? Like what you see is what you get. You want it to be moody in here. Yes, absolutely. And so you were saying a lot of hard surfaces, you got tables here, which you got some food, right? Yes, absolutely. We have 24 seats here. There's definitely room for everyone plus outside seating. So yeah, when it's not raining, right? What kind of food do we have here? Because this smells amazing. I could definitely smell those fresh strawberries there. Oh, yeah, definitely. Well, that's waffles, which is made in the house, croissants made in the house. Um, so everything you see here is baked in the house, so it's fresh at all times. Um, so just, just how we pay attention to a lot of the freshness in espresso coffee. We always make enough, uh, just what we need so we can always serve, uh, fresh pastries, uh, fresh waffles, everything fresh and Argen. You just opened up this coffee shop about two months ago and this is your dream, do this. Right. Absolutely. I've been thinking of this for about eight years and finally this is it. Well, thanks for opening up and letting us in this morning. Everyone come down and support them. We're in London this morning, Lauren de 12 New Jersey.

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MainSt6a0929NJLE_2023-09-29-06-23-49

Main street. New Jersey takes us to London this morning. Our news, New Jersey's Lauren de is at a popular Polish market this morning. Lauren. You love this spot, don't you? I love this spot because I'm a long time consumer. But guess what? First time here I'm half Polish. These guys are a little bit polish. Obviously, I didn't get the tall jeans though from the uh, from the Polish. Ok. So tell me about this place. Why is it so popular? Uh We've been here for almost 60 years and family generation, 3rd, 3rd generation and my grandfather started it and we make really good stuff. Pulaski meat market. And what kind of meats do we have over here? These are smoked ribs and then we have, what's the Polish version of? How do you say it? Here you go. And with the, of course, we got it, we make over 20 different types of kabai. Wow. About 15 different types of hams and then your cold cuts. I didn't even know there were that many types, to be honest. And then this over here I know this is my, my dad loves the Poppy the cheese. I've had the prune, the walnut. Oh, my gosh. All them, all right. So, yeah, let's continue this to. What else have we got going on? We all, we make everything here in house. Um, right back here behind the store. Yeah, this place is huge. I mean, you're basically taking up, like, half a block. Right. Like, it's really big. All this, anything Polish. We've got it, some other nationalities. Ukrainian, Russian Slovakian got it all. And so what's it like working with family? It's, it's got its ups and downs but we get along and you know, it's good because we can help each other out when we need it. Do you eat all this food here too? Yeah. You like it all? Ok. Well, I've, I made you guys purposely walk this way because I want to show you my favorite. I literally, I make my grandma pick this up all the time. These chocolate covered prunes. If you come down here for anything, you got to get these. Oh, and also wait one more thing too. This is such a huge, I'm gonna hold this because I don't know how to put it back. This, you gotta get these eggs and you were saying that you put these out all year round now, all year round, all year round and everyone loves to take them for Easter and just give gifts for the kids. I know, I think every year for Easter, I have them. So I might have every single one of those. All right. Well, thanks for having us this morning. And what time do you open? We open at nine o'clock, they open up nice and early for us. Appreciate it. Poki Meets Market. It's in Linden Lauren, New Jersey.

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MainSt630a0929NJLE_2023-09-29-06-53-03

Main street. New Jersey takes us to Linden this morning. Yeah, our Lauren de has a full morning of checking out some great local businesses. So let's check in with her right now to find out where she is now. Lauren. Ok. So this is a really cool spot. I got Rafael, I got Ramon, father, son combo here this place. I know. So good morning, New Jersey. OK. So Scana but with the Dominican flag in the background. So what's what's going on here? So the concept for Tosca, it's pretty much what we're Dominican, right? Yeah. So we have the Dominican flag behind it. So the purpose was we like to eat a lot of pasta. We like to mix pasta with everything. We eat rice, meat, beans, whatever you, whatever you could think pasta with rice. Yes, it's amazing. Well, you should try it. As you can see back there. We have some pasta, which is uh a Dominican style lasagna, lasagna, a Dominican me style lasagna, right? So we're gonna mix that with rice. Maybe it could be the yellow rice, it could be the white rice. Uh and you have a lot of variety of food here, which is the steak. This is cool right here. This is my favorite thing to eat. This is the fish with coconut is amazing. Is the red sauce. People should try it. Uh We have the oxtail. What people like a lot? The ox that a lot. When they come here, Saturday, Friday, Sunday, we have it. Uh, we have the, uh rotisserie chicken. We have the, we have that's pork down there. That's tripe and has a little bit of pig feet in it, which is amazing. And then we have chicken soup for today. This is perfect soup eating mother. I know. And Ramon, you just opened this a couple of weeks ago, right? Yes, like five weeks ago we opened here. But we have to say thank you to the community for the support to give it to us. Yes, that's awesome. And I wanna say thank you for opening up early and I wanna try this uh Dominican pasta situation we got going on here, right. Let's do it. All right to it. Back to you guys. We're in Lyon this morning, Lauren de New Jersey.

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MainSt7a0929NJLE_2023-09-29-07-20-10

It's Friday and our Lauren de is in London this morning for main street, New Jersey. Listen, we know Lauren likes to shop so I hear she might be doing some shopping over right now. Lauren, what are you looking for? I am ok. There's a whole lot of name brands here. So we got to get right to it. We're talking to Carissa from Julian's Army and Navy huge staple on this street. Right. You've been around for a very long time, 42 years, 42 years. And what do you got here? I mean, these name brands are pretty impressive. Um, we got a lot of New Fall stuff in. So we have Patagonia. We have Pendleton, we have North Face. Um, you got Levi's over Levi cookies for the kids for the cookie. I don't know, in her boys club we got military stuff. Um, Nike shoes, we got a, a lot, a lot of, a lot of brands so busy yesterday. Right. We were actually really busy. I think everybody is getting tired of this rain and wants to just come out and shop and so this is your, your dad started this? Yeah. How did this all. Yeah. Come back and then you did this whole renovation. This is pretty cool. Yeah, we did a renovation about five years ago. Um, and yeah, we sell Clarks, Timberland boots, work boots. We kind of got a little bit of everything. So, yeah, military stuff like army pants, car, heart work pants. We even have like kids jacket. That's perfect. So that stuff just came in for fall. Yeah. And so what do you carry like a little bit of, of like women's stuff or is it mainly men? What, what do you have? So usually in the fall we carry women's and kids like outerwear. We always carry women's and kids footwear. So, yeah, and if you see it, you gotta buy it right? Because this stuff once it comes in and it's gone and we don't restock, we wanna move on to the next thing and you do not have a website. So if you see something posted on your Instagram, give you a call on the website. Ok, we don't have a car. So you have to call us. If you see something on the website, call us, ask us if we still have it in stock because we do have a very quick turnover product. All right, cool. Well, I'm gonna do a little shopping here. I learned all these name brands, which is really cool and this is the style these days. So Chrissa, thanks for having us out here. Thank you so much for coming. We're in Linda and Lauren do to have New Jersey.

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MainSt0730a0929NJLE_2023-09-29-07-56-40

For main street, New Jersey. We are in London this morning. Yeah, our own Lauren do. She's been checking out so many local businesses and now you're checking out a spot to eat. What's good there, Lauren. We are everything. Sima. Look at all of this. OK. So I have Michelle Baldi here, her parents, Maria, thank you so much for making all this food for us so early this morning. And Michelle, you've always wanted to be on TV. So this is your moment to shive my moment. Welcome to the Michelle Show. Let's go. So tell us about our cafe. So Baldi Cafe is a family business. We've been here in London for five years. We've been open and we've been slowly growing with a lot of support of the Latin community. We are a Costa Rican based restaurant, but we do a little bit of everything because we welcome a very big community of Latinos Americans and a little bit of everything. So we mixed up, we did set up uh two tables with a lot of delicious things and I can tell you a little bit about it. Let's see. So we have tortilla with cheese very traditional. I would say it's one of our best dishes. Um This is called, which is basically a corn based pancake. Delicious. We have beef stew. I mean beef. So perfect for today. For the weather. It's perfect. This is a, that it's a plate with a little bit of everything as well. Uh This is basically a fried rice. You know, it has chicken, it has pork, it has ham and our tacos that has the cabbage on top, there's fried beef. And then this table here, it's basically our breakfast section because we do breakfast, we do lunch, we do dinners. We have of our omelet. Very good traditional American. We have sandwiches and that, those are the Costa Rican style and I know that everybody's gonna love it. And this from right here, that big plate, it's our. So it's one of the traditional dishes. And yes, we do eat rice and beans for breakfast in Costa Rica. Don't be afraid we work a lot early in the morning. We need all that for energy. So that's a lot of, you know, of what we do, you can eat it with everything and even sour cream. So it's very delicious. Well, what do you think? We need to eat these rice and beans? What do you say? Well, I think that if you want to try something different and if you have to go to work or, you know, just stop by, we do it quick we have a lot of the things ready for you here. So stop by, get a coffee, get a dish and go to work happy. And I just want to have a conversation with you all day. We could chitchat all day. Yes. Yes and well, no, they, we do have a patio. If you feel like bringing your family, we're very family friendly and we welcome a lot of, you know, Latin community. We do have some Costa Rican products here as you can see. So how's going on here if you ever wanna go to Costa Rica and you don't know how come here, we'll give you indications and this is a good start for us, right? We're actually in London this morning. Thank you so much for having us this morning and uh good morning everyone. We're in Lyon, Laura, New Jersey.

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MainSt830a0929NJLE_2023-09-29-08-37-22

Back to this morning for main street, New Jersey. Our Lauren de has been checking out so many local businesses there. So, Lauren, where are you now? Ok. This last stop really cool spot. We're at Humble Brick Oven by Johnny Tequila. Here's Johnny Fernandez here. All right. So Humble. Tell me about this. I love this. Yeah. Humble is 10 months old. I have a concept close by called Johnny Tequila. So naturally when I was thinking about doing another concept, pizza tacos, I said, I mean genius, right? And I love all the uh the uh you know, the pixels and it's very nineties. Yeah, throughout the restaurant. I infuse a lot of uh New York accents me growing up with pizza in the nineties. Uh So you see a lot of pixelated art graffiti. Um And of course references to uh nineties hip hop. We have the wu-tang logo there. Oh, wait and also you, you got this too. Hey, is this uh producer Victoria calling me? Hey, Victoria. OK, I got it. Got it. Ok. Thanks. Bye. Doesn't really work. No, I love it. Just kidding. And you're telling me this place is pretty packed, right? Yeah, we get great, we get great feedback on the weekends, uh 10 months old and we're still pushing and, and, and getting the community involved. Everyone's been uh big supportive. So uh continue, we're working on continuing growing it. Of course, everyone what you make, right, because you made the, the, the pizza for us. And what do you, what do you have over here? Yes. Yes. Right here. We have the classic margarita Looks great. And then right next to that, we have our Chicago inspired pizza where we took the slow roasted beef from Johnny Tequila from the tacos that we use. We brought it over, we made this uh deep dish pizza personal pie and uh you take this, you dip it in the broth and you have our Johnny's pizza. Yeah. Wow. That is exactly what you want to eat on a rainy day like this. Right? Because it is coming down in Lyon this, this morning. It's ready for you when you're ready. I'm ready. Are you guys ready? Thanks, Johnny for having us out here this morning. We are in Lyon this morning. Lauren De. He's 12 New Jersey.

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News 12’s Lauren Due visited Linden for this week’s Main Street New Jersey.

More Stories

White Rose Diner

Aura Coffee

Pulaski Meat Products

Toscana Restaurant

Julien's Army & Navy Store

Baldi Cafe

Humble Brick Oven Bar + Cocina

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