Home Care In Haddonfield, NJ

HADDONFIELD, NJ — One year after bringing an American BYO restaurant to Haddonfield, Chef Dane DeMarco has been named a 2024 James Beard semifinalist.

DeMarco, who runs Gass & Main, was one of two New Jersey chefs nominated Wednesday for a James Beard Foundation Award. Sometimes known as the "Oscars of food," the awards are among the culinary industry's most prestigious.

Gass & Main's rotating menus combine seasonal flavors and sustainable ingredients. The name is an homage to the cross streets where DeMarco and their spouse met their wedding party, before tying the knot in Las Vegas.

DeMarco is one of 20 nominees in James Beard's "Best Chef" category for the Mid-Atlantic. Gass & Main congratulated them on the accomplishment.

"Huge congratulations to Chef Dane DeMarco on their James Beard nomination!" the restaurant's Facebook page says. "Your culinary expertise and passion have truly earned you this prestigious recognition. Wishing you the best of luck on this incredible journey. Cheers to your talent and dedication!"

Find out what's happening in Haddonfield-Haddon Townshipwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The James Beard Foundation will announce finalists April 3 for the 2024 Restaurant and Chef Awards. Winners will be named at June 10's award ceremony in Chicago.

DeMarco, a Willingboro native, previously served as head chef for both Sonny's Cocktail Joint and Wine Dive in Philadelphia. They also owned BurgerTime in Audubon. The restaurant closed in October but developed a passionate fanbase through its creative burgers and hot dogs.

The James Beard Restaurant & Chef Awards celebrate excellence from a wide variety of eateries and experiences, from fine-dining establishments to casual gems, and emerging talents to established luminaries. The honors were established in 1990 and first awarded a year later.

This year marks the third since the organization made sweeping changes following a 2021 audit to address longstanding bias.

The outstanding chef category recognizes chefs who set "high culinary standards: and serve as a positive example for other food professionals, while making an impact on the broader community. The James Beard Foundation Awards also recognize restaurants, restaurateurs and writers.

Gass & Main is located at 7 Ellis St.

HADDONFIELD, N.J. (CBS) -- A battle to find the best soup in Haddonfield is helping fight food insecurity within the community. Steam poured out as cup after cup was filled with soup, from chicken and lentils to classic tomato.

Each soup and stew warmed up those who came out during chilly temperatures for the second annual "Souper Bowl" charity event at King's Road Brewing Company.

"It's a competition among our local businesses for who makes the best soup in Haddonfield," Mayor Colleen Bianco Bezich said.

Ten businesses were serving up their best recipes like Walter Gouldsbury's potato, kale and chorizo soup; all in hopes of getting the most votes.

"We want a little warmth from the chorizo. You have kale, get some vegetables in there," Gouldsbury said. "Potatoes, a thickening agent as well, and just a real hearty warm soup."

Over 200 people taste-tested as they huddled around heaters.

"We had a couple of French onion, grilled cheese, and tomato -- which you can never go wrong with grilled cheese and tomato especially when it's freezing cold out," Christine Wagner said. "Delicious."

Once all the votes were tallied, Haddon Culinary Creamy French Onion Soup won.

But instead of a ring, they took home the prestigious soup bowl trophy.

"We'll have to work with one of our local jewelers to bring a ring into the mix," Bianco Bezich said.

Regardless of which creamy chowder came out on top, businesses said they're thankful all the proceeds will be going to the Cathedral Kitchen, a nonprofit that helps fight food insecurity.

"Cathedral Kitchen is great," Brianna Palmer, owner of Earth Eats Co., said. "It's perfect for food businesses to support something that's food-related."

At least $3,000 was raised for Cathedral Kitchen. The proceeds will help fund free groceries, meals and culinary classes throughout the community.

Marcella Baietto

Marcella Baietto is a bilingual reporter with CBS News Philadelphia. She's originally from Phoenix, Arizona, but considers El Salvador her second home since much of her family still lives there.

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It’s the first restaurant for Matt McMahon of Moorestown, who’s building his menu around hot dog recipes from Paris to Pennsylvania.

If there’s any testament to the heat of the downtown Haddonfield business district, it’s that one of its newest eateries is awaited in one of its unlikeliest locations: the basement at 211 Kings Highway.

With turnkey kitchen spaces high in demand and short on availability, Matt McMahon of Moorestown is working to flip a former law office into a quick-service hot dog stand he’s calling Haute Dog.

“It’s kind of a family project that we’ve been working on,” McMahon said.

His mother, who grew up in New York and North Jersey, enjoyed pushcart-style hot dogs; his dad, who hails from northwestern Pennsylvania, grew up eating hot dogs with chili sauce from a local favorite spot, Nick’s.

McMahon wants Haute Dog to unite their favorites (and others) underneath one roof.

“I want it to be a mom-and-pop shop,” he said. “We’re going to have a happy-meal-style thing for the kids; pup cups for dogs. I hope to build a relationship with [Wildfether] distillery. I want it to be a very family-oriented town shop.”

McMahon, who has a marketing degree from St. Joseph’s University, a bachelor’s of science in nursing from Drexel, and spent time working at his family’s paper recycling business, took an opportunity to try his hand at cooking in the middle of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

“The only recipes I’ve ever known [came from] watching my grandmother cook,” he said. “Her meatballs, lasagna, marinara; I started making it, and giving it out to neighbors. After the third or fourth time, they said, ‘We’ll gladly pay you for it.’”

Taste-testing with neighbors prepared McMahon for the feedback he’d awaited from the most important critics: mom and dad.

“[They] said, ‘I think you missed your calling,’” he remembered.

But McMahon wasn’t confident in the notion of building a carryout business around his grandmother’s homemade Italian recipes.

Years ago, friends of the family had established a Parisian-style hot dog stand that they’d incorporated as Haute Dog, but were no longer using it.

They transferred the rights to McMahon, who began fleshing out ideas for a fully realized storefront.

“The entire design of this plan has come from a hot dog cart that did about 200 dogs a day,” he said. “If I can do that, that will be phenomenal. We are trying to make this as efficient as possible to try and make it a one-man show.”

To get his hot dog shop into the building at 211 Kings Highway East — where multiple businesses, including Earth Eats Cafe and NJ Content Studio, currently reside — required the approval of the Haddonfield Zoning Board, which greenlit McMahon’s application 6-1 at a May 16 appearance.

By virtue of its takeout-oriented plans, Haddonfield Zoning Officer Tavis Karrow offered an interpretation of the restaurant as a walk-up retail facility, and not a dining establishment “designed primarily for consumption on premises.” The board agreed.

The shop will feature a limited number of seats inside, as well as seasonal, al fresco tables on the sidewalk. Customers may enter from a 10-step stairway at the Kings Highway side entrance, or via stairs in the interior of the building.

McMahon has promised to accommodate customers who can’t use the stairs either by employing food runners, or delivering meals himself. While the space is being fitted out over the next six months, he’s working out his relationships with vendors for the dogs and, most importantly, the bread.

“Sabrett’s or no-skin, crunch or no crunch; I want it to be so everyone’s happy,” McMahon said. “Make it a real old-school, mom-and-pop-type place that cares about customers.”

Even with a concrete focus and an emphasis on high-volume takeout business, McMahon said he hasn’t lost track of the idea of offering his Italian specialties somewhere down the road.

“My endgame vision is that you’ll be able to get a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, a sausage-and-pepper sandwich; a slice of lasagna at all times,” McMahon said.

“But at the beginning, I’m going to stick with the hot dogs, and have it be a one-man show.”

Haute Dog is preparing for a late 2023 opening at 211 Kings Highway East in Haddonfield. Stick with NJ Pen for updates.

Notes on a $3.2-million breakup with 2 Hopkins Lane, LLC, the former developer of record for the largest available residential building opportunity in the borough.

In late June, Haddonfield commissioners broke the news that the borough was officially cutting ties with 2 Hopkins Lane, LLC, the redeveloper of record for the former Bancroft parcel at the edge of Kings Highway.

The price of freedom from that seven-year relationship was $3.2 million, a negotiated settlement that emerged from multiple, protracted legal battles over the fate of that 19.22-acre parcel.

After purchasing the property back from 2 Hopkins Lane principal J. Brian O’Neill, whose initial stated intention was to create an inpatient addictions recovery facility there, Haddonfield then reckoned with subsequent lawsuits over what to build.

The citizen group Haddonfield Encouraging Responsible Development (HERD) wanted the project to create exclusively senior housing for borough residents to retire in place. Then the nonprofit agency Fair Share Housing sued to stop that plan, arguing that the borough shouldn’t age-restrict access to new-construction units amid its ongoing affordable housing deficit.

Finally, in December 2022, O’Neill’s group took Haddonfield to court, claiming that the borough had not been a good-faith broker in its discussions, and sued for the opportunity to build either or both a recovery facility and housing there.

That action was “filed without advanced notification, or any efforts to respond to our attempts to move the ball forward, or to negotiate dollar amounts,” Haddonfield Mayor Colleen Bianco Bezich said at a press conference Monday.

Although the agreement between 2 Hopkins Lane and the borough included a walkaway clause, whereby O’Neill was free to abandon the project and pocket a $600,000 payout, that option was exercisable only at the developer’s discretion.

“Typically when you have a breakup clause, you have a bilateral agreement,” Haddonfield Commissioner Kevin Roche said.

“This was unilateral at the discretion of [2 Hopkins Lane, LLC].”

The ongoing legal action — both O’Neill’s suit and that from Fair Share — did, however, yield a key detail that ultimately resolved the matter for all interested parties. In the course of litigation, representatives for 2 Hopkins, LLC told the court that it has no desire or intent to build the project, according to Haddonfield solicitor Salvatore Siciliano.

That pronouncement led to the court ordering Haddonfield to solicit alternative concepts from qualified bidders to redevelop the Bancroft site. Requests for proposal (RFP) were issued in June, and they’re due by 4 p.m. August 10 (Thursday). In the meantime, the borough government posted an addendum to its original notice outlining a handful of qualifying stipulations.

According to the borough-issued addendum to its request for proposals:

“Based upon the RFIs we’ve received, I think there’s a lot of creative ideas that people are asking about,” Haddonfield Commissioner Frank Troy said.

“Or we can say none of this excites us and go back to the drawing board, as long as we’re meeting our 10-unit obligation for achievable housing,” Bianco Bezich said.

Although the $3.2-million settlement was three times the $1.1-million appraised value of the redevelopment rights for the project, and more than five times the amount of its initial opt-out clause, borough commissioners defended the buyout as making the best of a bad circumstance.

“We’ve been able to wrest the control from an outside party, and put it back in the hands of the borough,” Roche said. The settlement will allow the local body to determine “the highest and best use for the community and the stakeholders as opposed to someone who had only a financial interest in the process,” Bianco Bezich added.

“Having this lawsuit settled is a big first step,” Troy said. “We look forward to looking at all the proposals that will come in.”

Alternatively, the borough could have fought the suit in federal court at a cost of thousands of dollars, Bianco Bezich said.

“There is no way this would have ended in a settlement in 18 to 24 months,” the mayor said. “Two years of litigation means hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, application fees, expert costs, appraisals.”

Through 2040, Haddonfield already is committed to paying some $250,000 annually in debt service on the bonds it issued to acquire the property. The borough anticipates its short-term debt related to the property at $10.325 million, which includes site acquisition costs and the estimated $1 million it has already spent to demolish certain structures there.

The borough previously paid $3 million to purchase the 11-acre Radnor Field parcel from the Haddonfield Board of Education ($1.5 million in New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Green Acres funds, plus a $1.5-million municipal match).

In turn, the borough sold off a portion of the Bancroft parcel adjoining Haddonfield Memorial High School to the school board for the same $3 million.

As part of that deal, however, Bianco Bezich said that the borough is on the hook for demolition of Cooley Hall on the school-board-owned property, which is proving both costly and complex.

“The Board of Education would like to have that done as soon as possible,” she said. “The challenge for us has been the demolition of a building that includes asbestos and hazardous material. I don’t think anyone before us assumed that would cost $1 million.”

In February, Haddonfield signed a conditional agreement with Haddonfield Development Group, LLC, to restore and repurpose historic Lullworth Hall — which sits on 1.42 acres that were carved out of the redevelopment plan — into four residential units, including a detached carriage house overlooking a planned garage there.

Haddonfield has also sought help from the Camden County Commissioners to potentially cover costs associated with passive recreation space at the Bancroft parcel, but thus far, conversations remain only preliminary.

Whatever form the proposals take, at Monday’s press conference, all three commissioners underscored their desire to resolve the longstanding issues surrounding redevelopment of the site, particularly as the three are midway through their elected term.

Even if they don’t share the same idea of what might be the best fit there, “we want to move the ball forward,” Bianco Bezich said.

“The RFP represents the opportunity for us to collaborate,” the mayor continued. “I have confidence in the three of us working together to make sure it’s in the best interests of the taxpayers.

HADDONFIELD – The school district has moved one step closer to offering full-day kindergarten at a vacant building here.

Haddonfield’s zoning board on Aug. 22 approved a zoning variance that would allow an Early Education Center to operate at the former Kingsway Learning Center.

But the proposed reuse of the site on the 100 block of Kings Highway still faces at least two more hurdles.

Former Bancroft campus to hold housingHaddonfield pays to settle lawsuit with Bancroft property redeveloper

The state Education Department must approve the district’s plans to offer full-day kindergarten along with its existing preschool services.

And borough residents are expected to vote in March 2024 on a bond issue — its size still undetermined — that would finance the building's purchase and other district projects.

The bond could also fund more space for classrooms and athletic facilities, as well as renovations to auditoriums, learning spaces, and building security and infrastructure.

Haddonfield surveys found support for early childhood education

The district last year solicited input from community members, including parents, residents and school employees, to help identify possible improvements.

It described programs for the youngest students as "a clear desire among participants."

The district is currently "whittling down" a list of potential changes whose cost, if all were implemented, "would be too high for Haddonfield property owners," according to a statement from the district.

If voters approve the bond, work could begin next year for completion by year-end 2027, the district said.

School officials say the two-story brick building — with classrooms, a gym and offices in 59,000 square feet — would "easily accommodate" kindergarten and pre-school services.

The building opened in 1966 as a private high school for Catholic girls, St. Mary Academy of the Angels. It was sold in 1977 to Kingsway, which educated students with developmental disabilities.

Kingsway moved its educational programs to Mount Laurel in 2018, and the building has been vacant since that time, according to the district's application to the zoning board.

The proposed center would serve an estimated 410 Haddonfield children and tuition-paying youngsters from other towns, evenly split between preschool and kindergarten programs.

Haddonfield’s school system, although considered among South Jersey’s best, is one of only six statewide without full-day kindergarten, the district noted in a statement.

“Although the academic benefits are recognized, space has been a barrier in expanding Haddonfield’s program to a full day,” it said.

Meetings with the district's stakeholders last year showed programming for the youngest learners was "a clear desire"

"Full-day programs spread the intensity of academics throughout the day, while blending in social and emotional development that is critical for this age group," its statement said.

The zoning board voted unanimously to approve the district's application.

The variance was needed because the school is in an area zoned for residences.

An earlier variance allowed Kingsway to operate a school, but it was revoked in June 2022 when the building was no longer being used for education.

Jim Walsh is a senior reporter with the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Email: [email protected].