The Promise of Pleasantville

With economic fortunes tied to Atlantic City, this New Jersey city’s diverse food scene reveals its revival

A trio holds hands as they head toward Main Street in Pleasantville, a diverse 5-mile-square city on the southern coast of New Jersey. All photos: John Taggart

Welcome to Hometown Appetites, a recurring look at the way this country eats, neighborhood by neighborhood.

There are plenty of summer stories about Jersey Shore food, the vanilla cones and clams and red sauce restaurants, the fudge and the farm stands. This isn’t one of them.

This is a story about Pleasantville, a manta ray-shaped city of 20,000 or so on the South Jersey coast, an exceedingly diverse little working-class burg five minutes across the salt marsh from Atlantic City.

You can get local seafood in Pleasantville, from the Crab Shack, whose blue crabs often come from a dock just off Lakes Bay, on the city’s very pleasant waterfront. And old-school red sauce, too, from JoJo’s Italian Grille that’s been around for over 45 years. It’s just down Main Street from Main Event Custard, where the entire city comes together over sprinkles and banana splits.

The whole, Haitian-style fried fish at Prestige Restaurant.

Those are great; those are delicious. But I pine for all the other good things to eat in Pleasantville.

There’s the whole fried fish and the coffee-colored kreyòl gravy at Prestige Restaurant, opened in 2015 a few footsteps off Main Street by Joseph and Marie Osias. They might simmer goat, chicken, or turkey in that sòs, as Haitians call it, rich with tomato, peppers, onions, Caribbean chile, and spice. It’s cooked hard in a well-worn skillet with the meat, already heavily browned, taking on even more color and complexity.

The Osiases are a stylish couple who met in their hometown of Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, and already ran a barbershop around the corner. They keep a few plush blue chairs by the door for those who stop by for conversation or a warm pâté Haïtien, the country’s French-y laminated pastry version of a patty. Sourced from a crack Haitian bakery in Baltimore, Joseph told me, those and the hard candies Marie gives out as a sweet thank you are among the few things the Osiases don’t make in-house.