'Restaurants on the Edge' Nick Liberato is back home with plans for new restaurant

Fans of culinary shows will be pleased to know Chef Nick Liberato from Bravo's "Top Chef Masters," and more recently, Netflix's "Restaurants on the Edge," is back home after establishing himself as a culinary force in California.

After traveling the world for his show, the celebrity restaurateur, TV personality and producer moved back to Bucks County to settle down in Newtown with his wife and three daughters.

Next he will open Borscht Belt, a Jewish-style deli restaurant, now under construction in the Stockton Market in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.

Borscht Belt is scheduled to open this spring in the small Delaware River river town of Stockton. It will join the list of restaurants with the Liberato seal — including his California businesses Calidephia, The Venice Whaler and The Pier House. 

After wrapping up season two of Netflix’s “Restaurants on the Edge,” Liberato moved with his family back to Newtown. He's begun construction of his new restaurant, in partnership with entrepreneur Mike Dalewitz of New Hope — while searching for a house in the area. 

As its name more than suggests, the restaurant is inspired by the Borscht Belt, the legendary Catskills mountains area popular with Jewish families and which Dalewitz often visited as a child.

Building from their travels and experiences, Liberato and Dalewitz envision the restaurant to be a true deli with pastrami on rye and breakfast sandwiches with a New York vibe. 

The two have also launched 618 Hospitality, a consulting business that helps restaurants in need during these uncertain times: a "silver lining playbook" for the pandemic, they say.

Borscht Belt will be "like the anchor of the market," a restaurant joining the other 15 vendors, said Steve Lau, owner of Stockton Market and The Salt House in New Hope. 

The restaurant will sit where the Farm Cafe used to be. The space has been used to serve coffee since the cafe closed at the beginning of the pandemic.

Lau, who is also a the third partner in the restaurant, is excited about Borscht Belt opening up at the market. 

"It's something that I've wanted to do for a very long time, and it was my plan to put some type of Jewish deli in there," Lau said. "And then when I met Nick and met Mike, and they were talking about doing the same thing, somewhere in the area. I mean it was a no-brainer for us."

I spoke to Liberato about his move back home, his time in California, the big screen and what he thinks the future of the restaurant industry will look like: 

Q: Tell me about your culinary beginnings. What did food mean to you growing up in Bucks County? 

A: I was born in Doylestown, raised in Bucks County in Yardley, and my grandparents had food stands down in the Italian Market. So we were spending hard summers down there and weekends throughout the winter. The winters were tough down there standing around fire cans, selling fruits and vegetables.

But with that, growing up in an Italian family I had a very heavy influence of Italian cuisine. With my family being both from Sicily and mainland Italy, there were so many different variations of Italian cuisine that I was exposed to. But my parents were always bringing me all around the city, and ... to New York to see plays and go out to dinner.

So we are constantly diving into a lot of different cultures and different cuisines, which I got inspired by at a very young age, always cooking with my parents and grandparents. It was something that came just really easy to me, much easier than a lot of other things.

And I had a really good time. But even more than that, I had almost like a photographic memory of just always being able to remember what I cooked. And then having that extra drive, even at a young age, to be a little bit more creative with adding different elements to a certain dish.

So that, at an early age, definitely showed me that I was very interested in cooking, and I had a lot of pressure at a young age about what college to go to, and this and that. At the end of the day, you have to find what you love and what you're passionate about — that's what you're going to put the extra love into, to be able to grow that, nurture that. Something amazing happens eventually in your life. But there's a lot of patience in this business, working as a young cook and aspiring chef. ... It was not an easy road but one I would never change.

Q: You built yourself into a very successful restaurateur with the successes of Calidelphia, The Venice Whaler and The Pier House. And to what do you attribute all that success? Was there anyone or any specific experience that really impacted you in your journey?  

A: Yeah, I mean, God, there's probably too many to name. Of course, my parents did an amazing job raising me and, I think, giving me the freedom to explore the world and the confidence, and just how to be a good person. But my wife was actually a huge part in, I think, shifting my focus and what I want because my wife's from Brooklyn.

We met on the East Coast when I came back here for a wedding in 2004. And she moved out [to California] shortly after that a year later. And being a Brooklyn girl, she's just — she saw I was just living this crazy life of surf lessons in the mornings and running to the restaurant working all night, just all over the place. And she's just like you're really you're spreading yourself out a lot. You're a great chef, you have all these aspirations of doing that much more, you need to get a little bit more serious with it and I definitely took the next step at that point — which led me [to] ... a gentleman that gave me huge inspiration and a jumpstart on my career. 

His name's David Myers, and I took a job with him at a Michelin star restaurant called Sona at 24, 25 years old. I was really intimidated. It was a style of food I had never been exposed to. I was raised on just very farm-to-table, peasant-type food, and then with my own creativity or whatever was in a particular time, but this was a lot of molecular gastronomy, all different types of techniques that I wasn't exposed to before. So that heightened my experience, my education and my drive, and the integrity that I was putting behind everything I was doing at that point. It challenged me to every possible plateau you could possibly imagine.

Q: So when and how did you first get involved with the culinary entertainment industry? And what was it like going from working at a restaurant with Myers and then going to TV?

A: It's funny, the first time I met David, I pretty much pitched him a show. It was called "Surf and Turf" at the time, and it's been ever-evolving ideas of shows since then. So it was a lot. I can't tell you how many times I was denied an audition. 

I just started accumulating a list of things that I personally needed to knock off my list. And that list is still continuing, even today, but just more things to conquer. But I knew I had a presence of making people happy and creating experience because that's why I wanted to be a chef or that's why I wanted to be a restaurateur because I really enjoy seeing people happy and creating an experience for them that makes them feel really good and brings them back.

Q: Your recent show "Restaurants on the Edge" aired at the start of the pandemic in February 2020. What was that like for your show to come out as the world was starting to grapple with what was happening around them? I mean, the show kind of gives an escape for everyone to watch, and let some travel from their homes. But what was that like for you?

A: Yeah, I mean, the show went live on February 28. I was in Los Angeles at the time. And everybody was out and about, no one was really freaking out. There were some people talking about, I guess, COVID a little bit at that point. But it was exciting. I mean, they've had a great — an amazing buzz going all around the world. It was like number one in different parts of Europe at the time. And it was great, it was certainly a high point of my particular career of getting a show like that being executive producer, host and, and where all the restaurants were at that particular time.

But at that time, I was also planning a move to the East Coast, because we had just had our third daughter. And I'd always played around with the idea of opening up a restaurant on the East Coast and raising our children over this way. It was a tough time for production, especially to go back into production. But the show went live when all the restaurants were on the edge — and everybody for that matter. So everybody was just trying to save their own business ... everybody was on the edge. And still is to a certain extent with the exception of certain restrictions being lifted. But we have over 100,000 restaurants [that] have gone out of business over the past 12 months. So that's pretty crazy. But for the show going live during that time, as you had asked, it was pretty wild.

As I said before, I'm really grateful we shot it when we did because there could have been a possibility that show could have never happened if production was going into this past year.

Q: And with a pandemic, the anniversary of the start of the pandemic is approaching. What changes have you seen within the restaurant industry in general? And then since moving back to Bucks County to the restaurant industry here?

A: I mean, I'm constantly studying where certain restaurants are all over the world, whether my friends own them or not — it's my life so it's my business to kind of be looking into things that are trending and what's happening now. A lot of people had to adjust and adapt their businesses if they didn't have a takeaway program before they put those in place.

Of course, wearing masks and gloves and sneeze guards and partitions, structures outside, as we've seen all throughout New York, Philadelphia and other cities. Moving into cashless transactions to just seeing other businesses thrive during this time. Like if it's somewhat of a pandemic-proof model, like Chick Fil A, or a lot of pizza places. And now, what we're getting into [with Borscht Belt] is a little bit more of that bagel-type business moving forward. 

But yeah, everyone's had to adapt. And even more now with the wintertime, seeing people struggling with outdoor dining still and with the heaters. I've sat in some of these myself and sometimes it actually gets too hot in some of these, but yeah it's been very inspiring.

I was a lot in the press, in the very beginning of this, talking to people about how to operate in a certain time like this. And that's when I had initially put together 618 Hospitality, which was consulting for businesses that need help, whether it was a pandemic or not, with their food, cocktail programs, both front and back the house systems, and all that good stuff. So it was a tough business before it'll be a tough one during and after. So it's always been sink or swim. 

So you have to understand how to be creative and scaling your menu down and things like that are cost-effective and things that you can keep consistent, and ultimately what people are still going to be engaged with and what's going to keep them safe. And the most convenient way for them to obtain your product or whatever you're doing.

A: Do you have an idea of what the future might look like for the restaurant industry? Do you see certain COVID trends staying into the future even after the pandemic ends?

Q: Clearly, none of us have a crystal ball, but it's tough to speculate with what news to listen to or not. There's a lot of people saying, it's going to take years for us to get out of this pandemic properly. And hearing that and seeing where vaccines are and stuff, it's going to take some time. So I don't want to get ahead of myself and I certainly don't feel wrong thinking that way, because I think you need to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. But a business can be run properly this way, and if anything with sometimes less labor or less on hand as far as what your costs are, and a restaurant needs to operate at least 75% to be profitable. A lot of people are operating 50% less.

So you have to be smart, as far as your strategy on what you're selling, and how people are going to be able to obtain it, and how accessible it is. And is it something that people are going to want on a daily basis? And I tried to think of those things initially, coming back here.

I drove cross country during the pandemic. I left California on March 12 last year. Initially coming back, I was going to be opening a modern New American-type restaurant in the Bucks County area with a liquor license and an ever-changing menu. But that didn't seem like the smartest move at the time, especially where, how things have played out over the past year.

So moving forward, and what I'm doing right now, is creating somewhat of a pandemic-proof model that has a takeaway window, that's going to be easy, very easily accessible for delivery and pickup. And food that is not over-the-top expensive, and things that people can crave — a type of cuisine I see that's not really accessible in this area. So with that said, kicking around a lot of different ideas.

My business partner, Mike Dalewitz, and myself, started talking about what's going to work and what this area needs. And we both love Jewish delis. And Mike being from New York and myself — I visited Jewish delis all across the United States but mainly in Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and surrounding areas and Jersey. 

So we went on a good little deli tour really looking at the why. Why do we love this place? Why do we love the aesthetics, what pulls us, and what says deli? What do I crave when I go into a deli — asking all those different questions and getting those answers along the way, and getting inspiration and passion, and having a little bit better idea of where we needed to kind of go. 

I want to create a beautiful environment for my family, for my business partner, his family, but more than anything for everyone in the area to be able to come and visit.

I'm looking forward to eventually when the time comes to where we don't have to wear masks where everyone can see my smile again, not just the pictures on social media. So it means a lot to me to keep everyone safe and to create the best experience I can for everyone that'll be visiting the Borscht Belt.

Hira Qureshi covers food and drink for the greater Delaware Valley and Jersey Shore. She can be reached at HQureshi@gannettnj.com or 856-287-8106. Help support local journalism with a Courier-Post subscription.