Perhaps you know, or have seen, John Nye. After all, the owner of Nye & Co. Auctioneers, Appraisers and Antiques (20 Beach St.) has appeared on the popular PBS show "Antiques Roadshow" and will be doing so again. But to really know him, to really deep down see what he’s about, you have to visit the Nye & Co. Bloomfield showroom. The excitement is evident in his voice, in his eyes. “It’s amazing,” he responded when I ask him about his career. “No two weeks are the same. I love that it’s so different and varied. There’s a huge psychological component to it. We go into someone’s house and make …

So, you want to know about hospitality? Here goes. I had an interview scheduled with Chris Lai, the owner of Brookdale Pet Center and my car died (again). I was faced with walking about a mile and a half in the rain to visit the store. Nothing doing. I called Chris to reschedule. “Steve,” he said, “if you want, I can offer you a ride.” And I accepted that ride, folks -- to and from the store. And that’s the type of friendliness you get when you visit this welcoming spot which the Lai family has owned for 18 years. When your pet needs food, you seek per care advice, or you’re in the market for…

When Emily Rose was attending Centenary College in Hackettstown, New Jersey, she worked at a tiny little Mom and Pop boutique. “It was awesome,” she recalls. “It gave me a lot of inspiration.” Little did she know, however, that she’d soon own a like establishment. Coach’s Corner Deli is its name: a corner. The almost-completely triangular building fits perfectly at the corner of Hoover Avenue and Valentine Road. Emily’s parents bought the building, and her sister Mollie ran the business while Emily was away at college. However, when the Business Administration Management major returned home, …

The next time you’re shopping at a local Shop-Rite or dining at a local Italian eatery, the product you’re purchasing or the food you’re eating may very well have come from a dream started by Eugenio and Immacolata Siciliano. “It is,” says their son, Paul Siciliano, owner and manager of frozen pasta manufacturer San Marco Ravioli Food Products, originally located in the extreme southern end of Bloomfield bordering Belleville and north Newark, now off of Belleville Avenue, “a real Horatio Alger story. My parents came here from Italy when I was 5. “ Eugenio arrived a year earlier than his …

Affordable Premium Insurance Agency is located a stone’s throw from Bloomfield High School on Broad Street in a home built by an architect in which he himself lived in back in 1895. Depending on how you look at it, the blue-green with red trim, two-story structure either sticks out like a sore thumb or is the beauty of the boulevard. Aesthetics aside, it’s what happens inside the walls that matters most. Robert Issa is the broker at and owner of Affordable Premium Insurance Agency, which handles all kinds of insurance: auto, home, health, life and commercial insurances. In business on …

Question: How do you spell “resurrection” in the bar and grill business? Answer: C-O-N-C-A. As in Ralph, Mark, Danny and Phil Conca of Nutley. The Old Canal Inn, originally opened in 1934 and closed in 2008, had fallen into disrepair. But now it’s back, the original bar from the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens, New York, shuffleboard action to the right room of the bar area, the “Death Seat” -- all of it. What? You’ve never heard of the “Death Seat?” Fear not, and I really do mean, fear not. I ask Mark Conca if he’s loyal to the legend. “Oh, yeah,” he responds seriously. How loyal? He’s creating …

Salon Gossip has been in business for over 10 years. It is different from other salons in so many ways.  It has often been described as a reality show waiting to be discovered, a living room where hair is done, or the salon version of Central Perk from the sitcom “Friends”. Come check out this eclectic and unique salon today.   These are the words of Donna Vaicels, a 1990 Bloomfield High School graduate, and owner of Salon Gossip. Okay, she IS the owner, and she is going to say the above. But there’s something different about Donna Vaicels. She’s got heart in her hands when she does hair, and…

“Ready?” asks Frank Durantino with a bit of a laugh. “Are you ever ready? My parents even took out a second mortgage on our Bloomfield house.” Durantino was looking back to 1997, when the Dee’s Shell service station location he had previously worked as an auto mechanic for on the corner of Darling and Kingsland Avenues in Nutley was up for sale. He had been a mechanic there for roughly four years, but had left. “I knew that I didn’t want to work on someone else’s car unless it was for myself.” So the 1989 Bloomfield High School graduate and fireman of 17 years bought – with his parents’ …

Okay, Bloomfield, I’ll unveil a best kept secret that wasn’t supposed to be a best kept secret. A Turano-owned restaurant is and has been back in Bloomfield for two years, although you may not have known it. Make no mistake, though. When you dine at Pizza Rustica, soon to be Turano’s Italian Bistro (the awning will soon be up), you will know the quality and the taste. Pat Turano, who also owns Montclair’s upscale Trattoria Rustica, originally owned Casa Turano (now Victorio’s) on Belleville Avenue back in the mid 1980s, a favorite lunch spot of mine. Shortly thereafter, he opened Casa Turano …

“We should just stand outside,” said Al Greig, Jr. with a laugh, “and hand them their coffee as they go by.” He then laughed again. “So many people walk by here in a rush heading for the train.” “Here” is Al’s Coffee Shop II, located at 124 Washington St. in Bloomfield. Formerly Guiliano’s Deli, this location is named “II” in honor of the former Al’s Coffee Shop I, which seven years ago closed its doors on the corner of Franklin Street and Berkeley Avenue, Greig's old stomping ground. Greig’s first name is on the awning, but the coffee shop is owned fellow Bloomfielder Kim Flubacher, a …

I’m sitting in the comfortable waiting area of three-month-old Mes Reves restaurant. My back is to the front window and busy Broad Street, and that’s good because far more fascinating are Quang and Tammie Tran, owners of the first French restaurant in Bloomfield. And it’s their first go at restaurant ownership as well. “Valentine’s Day was busy. Wow, what an experience!” said Executive Chef Quang. Was it their busiest day thus far? “The third Saturday (Feb. 26),” says Tammie. “We had 40 reservations and 20 walk-ins.” You have to love when people take a chance. The Trans both worked in New …

Jerry Witczak had to know it would come to this - owning his own deli, in the town in which he grew up. Except for a brief nine-year hiatus in neighboring Nutley, Witczak, who grew up on Berkeley Place in Bloomfield’s south end, has and always will be a Bloomfielder. “I always had it in me,” he said of deli ownership, and Jerry’s Broad Street Deli has his special stamp on it. Just enter and check out his wall opposite the counter lined with Pittsburgh Steelers memorabilia. A plaque and poster dedicated to Hall-of Famers, quarterback Terry Bradshaw, a poster-sized photo of running back Franco …

Anthony Lauro, co-owner of both Lunch Box Deli on Broad Street and Anthony’s Cheesecake on Washington Street, is wearing a gray baseball cap with a red “B” on it. "Brooklyn or Bloomfield?” I asked the Bensonhurst, Brooklyn raised Lauro, and he grinned. “This is for Bloomfield.” A lot has been happening during the past years for Lauro and his partner, Phil Byrne, both current Bloomfield residents, who have watched part of their homemade cheesecake business expand into different playing fields. Pun intended: the duo’s product is now the official cheesecake of the New Meadowlands Stadium. Lauro’…

I love Nero.  “Nero,” said Romel Fernandez, manager of Bloomfield's John A. Bukowski Shelter for Animals, “is five months old.” The spry, black dog, previously barking to have his cage open – and coincidentally, the loudest barker at the shelter – is now happily wagging his tail, his eyes on a strange visitor: Me. Fernandez pats his head as the dog leans out of the cage. “I think he’s part Chihuahua, and maybe a mini Labrador.” Bloomfield's animal shelter, located off Hoover Avenue at 61 Bukowski Pl., has seen significant improvements. In a nutshell, the facility is more organized now than it…

Three years after taking over the family travel business in 1995, Tom Paris said it was ironically “location, location, location” that caused him to move the offices of Club ABC Tours from Union to its current headquarters in Bloomfield. Paris, co-president of what he describes as one of the largest travel clubs in the country, said the change would make it more convenient for everyone. “We used to be in Union, NJ and we were looking for a location that was easy to get to from the perspective of our suppliers,” said Paris, who owns the travel business with his brother, Robert. “Where we’re …

I have a saying when it comes to restaurants: “Gems are found in a strip mall.” I don’t and never need the finest of fine dining restaurants to satisfy me. That’s fine, if that’s what you want, and I have indeed indulged in the past. But give me a place that’s been around for a while, is affordable, has good food and is cute, and rest assured I’ll return again and again. Victorio’s Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria (69 Belleville Ave.) isn’t elaborate, but it doesn’t need to be. For me, it’s the spot that always satisfies. When it comes to holidays, and we’re thinking of nearby eateries big and …

You’d be hard pressed, I believe, to find a group and structure that has endured as long as the Prince Joseph Poniatowski Beneficial Association and Essex Manor Bar & Grill in Bloomfield. This, folks, is true history, right smack in the center of a town named after a Revolutionary War general. Walk through the Essex Manor & Grill, the earliest part of which was an old farmhouse purchased back in 1910, and see the history on the wall in photos of famed Bloomfield High School sports coaches like Bill Foley and George Cella, All-American Bengal Kelly Tripucka and more. Feel the tradition as you …

Seventy-five years and $7,500. That’s a lot of birthdays and money. But 130 members ... this number is a wee bit low. The initial number is the amount of years the Bloomfield Public Library’s Friends of the Library (FOL) has been active, supporting the township’s cultural lifeblood. The Bloomfield Public Library is more than just books. More on this in a moment. The second number indicates the amount of money the FOL donated to the library as an anniversary gift for repair work on The Little Theater, which sits below the Children’s Library. “It’s a nice space,” said Carol Steen, FOL president…

Glen Ridge resident Jodi Badagliacca is performing straight-leg deadlifts with light dumbbells. She has to do four sets of twelve repetitions. She’s on set three. “I feel changed," Jodi Badagliacca said. "This is mental and physical therapy.” It’s also new territory for Jodi Badagliacca. It’s the first time she’s ever returned to any gym following a first workout. “Someone told my daughter about Leslie. So I came in, and I wound up falling in love with the environment, and the concept," she said. “Leslie” is Leslie Ingram-Lewis, a spiritually motivated, certified personal trainer and exercise…

My younger brother and I recall when Barry's Service Center was a Phillips 66 gas station when our family moved to this area of Bloomfield in 1969. A young Barry Maslowski, owner of Barry’s Service Center (97 Orange St.), worked there prior to joining the Marines and heading over to fight in the Vietnam War. Heck, there were even gas pumps here back then. The Phillips 66 sign, as well as the pumps, are long gone, but Maslowski is still here, 40 years later. “I lived in Bloomfield until I was five, and then we moved to Cedar Grove,” said Maslowski, who had owned Barry’s Service Center for 38 …