The Collingswood Foodies

Collingswood Spring Restaurant Week: Menus and Specials

Who's participating in the multi-course prix fixe week? We've got the list here.

Collingswood Restaurant Week starts Sunday, and what a great week for “foodaholics” like us. Not only are we fans of the food itself, but also the creativity and culture it brings to town.  For the unfamiliar, Collingswood Restaurant Week models itself after Philadelphia’s Center City version, where participating fooderies create multi-course, prix fixe menus ranging from $25-35 per person. Restaurant week is a celebration of food: an opportunity for chefs to flaunt their culinary creativity, and diners to experience something special. Although food options may sometimes include items from a restaurant’s regular menu, oftentimes chefs choose to have fun and create limited and exclusive dishes. For example, Ecuadorian grill El Sitio’s …

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Five Things to Do This Week

Five Things to Do in Collingswood This Week: 2/25/13 to 3/2/13

PFLAG Collingswood hosts a special guest speaker, Collingswood starts a Time Bank, organizing grassroots action, a free concert from William James, and a night out for parents.

Monday, Feb. 25, 6:30-8:30 p.m.—Collingswood Public Library "Guest speaker Riley Keenan will provide a window into his life as a transgendered man. Riley's presentation will be followed with a support group. Come and share your story or feel free to just listen to others. Confidentiality is fully respected. Refreshments will be served." Thursday, Feb. 28, 7 p.m.—Collingswood Public Library "Time Banking can be as simple as a group of moms getting together to share carpooling kids to activities. It can also include services like child care, grocery shopping, taking care of elderly parents, walking dogs, and helping out with homework. The kinds of services people share in a Time Bank depend entirely on what their group or community needs. "…

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Collingswood Businesses Partnering Up in the Post-Christmas Daze

The garland's come down, and the summer dollars are months away. So what are borough businesses doing to drive traffic in the winter?

Look around your favorite Haddon Avenue shops these days, and you might be surprised at what’s in their inventories. It’s not that they’re carrying anything unusual. But they are carrying more and different items, sharing more products among themselves, and fitting out their displays with products from their neighbors.  Like that mint green dress that perfectly matches the swing-arm lamp in the window of Dig This? Surprise, it’s from Frugal Resale (whose monthly ladies night is catered by neighbors at Casona and The Candy Jar). Picking up a bottle or two of olive oil at Blue Moon? You might also go home with a handmade dipping tray produced by local artist Eric Wolff. This kind of cross-promotion helps sustain the flow of business in the …

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Aaron Kuhn

12:24 pm on Monday, February 11, 2013

Collingswood has a parking map here: http://www.collingswood.com/getting-here , but it doesn't have the kiosks on it With you on the hours though. I love Collingswood and know lots of folks there (including Reed) but I would find myself so often trying to go to a store and finding it closed that I kind of just gave up trying to shop downtown.   more ›

Collingswood Restaurants Share Super Bowl Snack Recipes

We asked the kitchens on Restaurant Row to kick over some ideas of what to make for the big game. Here's some of their favorites.

What are you making for your guests for the big game? If you're up in the air—or haven't yet joined the crush of humanity at Wegman's—we can help you add a few more things to that shopping list. We put out an A.P.B. to Collingswood restaurants to get some ideas for make-at-home snacks, and they came back with some winners. Thanks to all who contributed—and if you have any good recipes of your own, tell us in the comments! Buffalo Chicken Hot Pot from The Pop Shop This recipe comes straight from the personal cookbook of Connie and Bill "Stink" Fisher at The Pop Shop, and calls for Frank's hot sauce. Honey Cholula Wings with Guacamole Ranch Dressing from The Tortilla Press (makes 24 wings) Chef Mark Smith offered up this refreshing take on …

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From Finicky Eater to Gourmand

'Homestyle Classics Restaurant Week' Starts Monday

Five Collingswood restaurants offer up their takes on comfort food Jan. 21- 25. Preview the menus here.

Well, they’re at it again. The allure of prix fixe menus has once again lowered its seductive eyes in Collingswood’s direction, setting up what will likely be the first of three Restaurant Weeks to come in 2013. Monday, Jan. 21 kicks off "Homestyle Classics Restaurant Week," in which “the kind of cooking, flavors, and tastes you remember from your mother’s kitchen” come to Restaurant Row, reads a release from the borough. The idea was conceived by Tortilla Press chef Mark Smith who, after visiting his family back in Ohio a few years ago, was teased that he wouldn’t be able to enjoy their cooking anymore because he owned a Mexican restaurant. Smith got to thinking, which led to the big event next week. As per typical Restaurant Week …

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Christina Paciolla

4:01 pm on Friday, January 18, 2013

Wait wait wait: $12 for pancakes, a side of bacon and coffee? $12?? Am I reading that correctly?   more ›

Images from Saturday's Collingswood PhotoWalk

Photographers from all over South Jersey came to Collingswood on Saturday to participate in the worldwide PhotoWalk. Come see the town as they did.

Viewfinders from throughout South Jersey focused on Collingswood Saturday for the fifth annual Worldwide PhotoWalk, an event designed to harness the creative energies of photographers of all skill levels all over the world in a single day. Collingswood enjoyed the happy coincidence of both Second Saturday and the Before the Bridge Music Festival providing fertile subject matter for the experience. Photographers began the walk by checking out the beautiful mosaic artwork in front of the Perkins Center for the Arts, and then took advantage of the beautiful light to capture the classic beauty of the Collingswood Presbyterian Church and First Baptist Church of Collingswood.  The focus of the photowalk then changed to the urban streetscape of …

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'Night Out in Collingswood' Raises Money, Awareness for LGBT Community

Held on National Coming Out Day, the event includes a rollicking evening of LGBT-themed trivia at The Pop Shop with some $3,300 in prizes to be awarded.

You’re sitting down with a coworker at a conference. The group leader asks you to try out a simple exercise with the person next to you. Have a five-minute conversation. Try to get as much information as you can from one another without disclosing anything about one specific topic: your sexual orientation. How much time would you take considering your pronouns? How would you refer to your family members, spouse or children? What kind of information couldn’t you share? Imagine working in a place where you couldn’t disclose that type of information; attending a school where you weren’t allowed to talk about it. That’s what it like, says NJEA staffer Richard Wilson, 55, of Collingswood, for a lot of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (…

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Tom Ryan

11:24 pm on Saturday, October 13, 2012

Suzanne - I am one that read this and did not laugh. How could something filled with such disdain be found to be funny ? I learned a long time ago that I cannot control the actions of others, I can only control how I react to the actions of others. I just wonder how you can feel you are personally leading a life of purity and holiness, when you are filled with such hatred for your fellow man, and…   more ›

I Am Collingswood

I Am Collingswood: Mark Infantado

Mark Infantado, owner of Collingswood's popular Cuban restaurant Casona, dishes about food, the art of hospitality and happy accidents.

You may be surprised to learn that Casona, Collingswood's popular Cuban restaurant, is Mark Infantado's very first foray into the culinary business. In this week's column he shares how he got started, how he defines hospitality, and tells us about some of his favorite foods. Patch: How long have you owned Casona? Mark Infantado: I bought the building in 2004 off of Dr. Johnson, who was here many years. It was late 2004 when we started the renovation. It took us 18 months, and we opened April 8, 2006.  Collingswood Patch: What is your culinary background? Infantado: My history with restaurants is that I built many restaurants. I was on the construction side of it. I started out at Casona with a partner, Lawrence Grillo. He's from …

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Is Casona Haunted?

After a series of misfortunes involving the restaurant, owner Mark Infantado is running out of traditional explanations. Part one of two.

Mark Infantado is out of explanations for the troubling stretch of bad luck on which he’s been for the past half-decade. Infantado is neither religious nor superstitious. But since 2005, he has lost both his brother and his best friend to the 103-year-old Haddon Avenue home in which he operates his Cuban restaurant, Casona. He’s got pins in his ankles from where he shattered them slipping down the back steps. He’s lost the multi-million-dollar construction business he owned for years before renovating the place. And two weeks ago, his servers heard things moving around on the second floor of the building when nobody else was in the restaurant. A silhouette in the mirror Dennyse James is a native of Venezuela who lives in Mantua with Casona…

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Chef's Choice

Chef's Choice: Pedro Reyes' Paella at Casona

Looking for a little Latin flavor for dinner or lunch? Look no further.

Casona is a 158-seat restaurant with indoor and outdoor seating, located at 563 Haddon Ave. in Collingswood. The Latin-Cuban flavor is present not only in the food but also the atmosphere of the restaurant, which zips with lively Cuban music and Spanish-accented chatter. Executive Chef Pedro Reyes touts his paella as the signature dish of the restaurant.

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