Summer Salt — Restaurant in Avalon

An upscale, “Hampton-esque” style, farm-to-table restaurant, in a beautiful beachside setting, with easy parking. Oh we wanted to LOVE Summer Salt so much, but ended up just liking it instead. The highlights here are, polished & attentive service, Lovely beachside ambience, the sauces! (Oh those sauces!). Interior decor is simple but elegant in a beachy sort of way. Every dish is simply but attractively plated.

We liked the idea of trying a pre fix FTT menu with multiple courses, each based on simple but delicious preparations. The real standouts here are the exquisite sauces that accompany each dish. Someone really knows their sauces. Those mouthwatering accompaniments aside , most of the dishes were just okay.

The (big) downsides here are the teeny tiny portions that will remind you of tapas, but at 2x or 3x the price you’d expect for the quantities of food offered. And while Summer Salt graciously accommodates dietary restrictions, their alternative choices for some dishes are just not inventive & equivalent to the original dish. So instead of a nice Crabcake (which unfortunately had breading) you get 5 small Al dente greenbeans in a pool of hummus? Instead of corn fritters you get (literally) an eighth of an ear of corn, served with the cob still attached (?) in another fabulous sauce. C’mon.

The standout of our meal was the Carolina pan seared pork chop. Absolutely delicious and a decent size chop, with little trimming required. The scallops were less successful in that the plate arrived with three medium size scallops with some nice red pepper slaw. This was more like an appetizer portion, and the scallops themselves had little flavor and were undercooked.

If you are very hungry and/or are used to typical restaurant portions, you may be doing a Yelp search for “best fries near me” after dinner. The authentic farm style chairs are nice to look at, but after the first 45 min, the flat hardwood seat bottoms became uncomfortable. Grab the banquette if you can. Then there is THE bathroom (yes, there is only one gender neutral restroom). There was a line for the bathroom during most of our meal. It is spotlessly clean, but still, one restroom for a restaurant this size is not enough. Plan ahead potty-goers.

Given the location of Summer Salt, in the exclusive enclave of Avalon NJ, I’m sure many guests here will not even notice the $85pp charge. And I’m sure that is very much inline with other local restaurants. The problem here is the food is mostly good (not great) and even after eating multiple courses, you might easily leave a little peckish. Anyone know the best fries in Avalon? As long as you know what to expect here, and don’t have a big appetite, you may like Summer Salt just fine. There’s a lot to like here. But for us it did not quite live up to...

No doubt this is a very good restaurant. All of the food and desserts were very good. I was under-educated about the restaurant, so I am writing this review to help folks know what to expect and to help maximize your experience. (1) Sitting outside must be fabulous, and I'm sure would have made a huge difference to our evening. We were seated inside...there are tables lined up against one side of the wall of what is really a long hallway between the front of the restaurant and the deck seating. There is nothing interesting or comfortable about the indoor seating...make sure you book a reservation outside. (2) The current menu is a four-course fixed-price offering...make sure you review the current menu online before you go to make sure it's a good match for your party. I had read reviews about steak and chicken, and was confident that we would therefore find something on the menu for everyone in my party to eat. In fact, there was only one non-fish entree choice. (3) Your table is served family-style plates of three items for both the first and second courses. All of this food was good, and the servings were ample. But our party had a couple of picky eaters, so this large variety of food was not useful for us (a couple of us would normally skip appetizers altogether). And for someone who is trying to eat less, having two courses of appetizers before the main course is not what I was looking for. We ended up having boxes of food to take home. (4) We were there for two and a half hours...so long that we asked for our desserts to be boxed so we could leave after the main course. We went long periods of time without any food in front of us...took about 45 minutes from the time we were seated until the first course was served. (5) There is a very effective air conditioner at the beach end of the indoor seating...it's probably lovely for people sitting at the far end of the indoor seating, but it was pretty brutal sitting close to it...it would have been fine if I had brought a sweatshirt or jacket. (6) All of the food was good, but nothing was memorable. I enjoyed some of the apps more than my entree. Not sure why my entree came with peas and carrots after having been served both peas and carrots as appetizers. (7) With a standard tip, this was a $100+ per person meal. In summary, for the right group...sitting outside...this could be a great night out. It wasn't a good fit for my party, and I only blame myself for not fully understanding the offering...

We enjoyed dinner with a group of eight friends who tasted a wide variety of the menu. My wife and I started with the roasted carrots with whipped tahini. The carrots of all colors were roasted to a comfortable tenderness. The sauce, the tahini and carrots blended flavors without any overwhelming dominance. There were enough on the small plate for each of us to have a good and tasty appetizer. Others had the grilled shrimp, the stone fruit salad and burrata. Each raved about their own dish. I had a chance to try the shrimp, burrata and fruit and I would like to try a full plate of each in the future. My second course was the rosemary grilled scallops. There was an adequate balance of scallops to the corn, tomatoes and bacon. It was a little heavy on onions which were not noted in the menu. They were relatively large pieces and easy to remove. Each dish is cooked to order and I could have requested that it be made without onion. The oven roasted Cape May chicken is a specialty using locally farm grown chickens. At least four in our group had the chicken and raved about it. I had a large taste ( I did trade a scallop for it.) and found that it was delicious. My wife had the zucchini steak with tomato risotto. She really liked it but saved half of it for the next day and to leave room for dessert. She did have a small stone fruit salad for that course. She also had some of my bread pudding with blueberry sauce. I generally don’t order bread pudding but this was made from the gems on the shelf from Isabels bakery. It was devoured and it was excellent. Other desserts around the table included strawberry shortcake and unbelievable cookie sandwiches. Homemade whipped cream or ice cream were available at your choice. This restaurant/pop-up event in Isabel’s bakery and coffee shop offers a very comfortable, relaxing and quiet setting. The service was attentive and really outstanding. One comment was that it was like having a private chef in a home. I must note that this group of friends is well-traveled and well fed and gathers in Avalon every year for two weeks with dinner out almost every night. We visited most of the restaurants in the area and everyone agreed that this was the best meal we had this year. We plan to return before they close in...