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Let me start by saying I have tremendous respect for restaurant workers (and all service employees). I know the jobs aren’t easy, and a lot of hard work goes into everything they do. So this post isn’t meant to demean employees themselves or hurt anyone’s feelings. Maybe we just happened to go on an off-night. Maybe we didn’t order the right things. Maybe other factors were taking place that we didn’t see.

Whatever the case may be, if you’re going to spend more than $300 on a meal, you’d expect everything to be above and beyond. But that simply wasn’t the case at a recent dinner at Lita in Aberdeen.

Lita’s is a modern Iberian restaurant that took over the space of what used to be Eli’s, a beloved bagel place in my favorite strip mall in the Armpit of America. It’s received several awards and been on countless “best restaurants” lists. Everyone seems to have nothing but wonderful things to say about this place, but unfortunately, I do not understand why. Everything from the service to the food was such a let down. I’d much rather prefer a bagel from what it used to be.

When the chef is waiting tables…you know there might be a problem

Interestingly, there’s a blurb on the menu about how the entire staff is cross-trained on each role and how they all rotate positions each week. While this sounds good in theory — to ensure equal pay and remove the hierarchical drama in restaurants — I think this might explain some of the disappointment. I mean, if you have different people cooking the food each week, I’d think it would be hard to maintain the same level of quality.

And I can’t imagine the staff like this arrangement either. Imagine if you’re a successful chef, landing a gig at this prestigious, James Beard Award-winning restaurant, only to find out that you’ll have to spend a week waiting tables, followed by a week washing dishes, etc., rather than focusing on the food each day. Which brings me to my first point of contention.

Our waiter seemed like he was meant to be a chef. He was nice, but didn’t seem very comfortable talking to people. He was wearing a beanie on his head, which didn’t seem that appropriate for this fancy shmancy restaurant, but is normal for the cooks to wear in the kitchen. And overall, he didn’t seem on top of his game. For example, we ordered clams, and half-way through he realized he forgot to give us a separate bowl in which to put the clam shells and bread to soak up the sauce. (Side note – we’re not fussy people and didn’t even notice that lack of a shell bowl. But at the price point of this restaurant, I recognize that the service should have been top-notch, and this oversight shouldn’t have happened.)

He also seemed overwhelmed the whole time, which contributed to very slow service. We were there three hours, and it was over an hour before we even got any food. The worst part was when he finally came to our table to take our order. He pulled out his pen and pad, but then some customer at another table called him over. Instead of telling this obnoxious douchebag that he’d be with him in a moment, he left us and walked over to the other table, where he then spent 15 minutes walking them through the menu. Rude.

Again, none of this is meant to disrespect him or anyone else working there. Not everyone is a people person, myself included. I’m extremely introverted and could never imagine being a waiter. I worked at Taco Bell for two years and always preferred being heads down making the food or washing dishes instead of working the register and having to talk to customers. But that’s why I think they should reconsider their model; having introverts on waitstaff isn’t the best idea.

James Beard? More like James Weird!

Now onto the food. The menu is prix fixe, so you pick one item for each of three courses, with dessert being additional. For the first course, we got patatas bravas, or fried potatoes. They were decent, but came in such a small serving. I understand that’s the whole tapas style, but it was literally just five very tiny piece of potato. The other item was “romesco with winter vegetables.” This was more disappointing; it tasted like store-bought red pepper hummus served with cold broccoli and cauliflower to dip in it.

For the next course, we got garlic shrimp, as well as the aforementioned clams in white wine sauce. Both were good enough (despite the late-arriving bowl and bread), but didn’t seem like anything special. I felt like we could have gotten the same kind of dishes at Red Lobster at a fraction of the cost.

For the main course, we got their short ribs, which like most of the food we got, was decent, but nothing too amazing. But the other choice was the oxtail. While I expected big, succulent chunks of meat, what we got were little strings of shredded meat, hidden among a “noodle omelet.” This noodle omelet was a mass of short, skinny noodles fried until crispy. This might sound good, but it was very unpleasant to eat; the noodles were hard and sharp and didn’t have good mouth-feel at all. It also came with pickled celery and a “shrimp salsa verde.” And yes, shrimp salsa verde is as weird as it sounds.

To me, this dish was just a mix of random components that didn’t fit will together at all. It reminded me of something from the show “Chopped.” It was like the chef was given a mystery basket with oxtail, noodles, shrimp and celery: “So I have my noodles and oxtail meat cooking in a pan; my quick pickle celery is marinating; and now I’m making a salsa verde to tie everything together. Then I realize I haven’t touched the shrimp yet. So I decide to throw it in the blender with my salsa and hope it works.” If only Alex Guarnaschelli or Scott Conant were there to rip it apart.

Now, if the chef really was given those ingredients and whipped something up like that without planning in advance, it might be impressive. But this is a James Beard Award-winning restaurant. You’d think they’d know better.

Finally, on to dessert. We got Lita’s signature dessert, a “baked Madeira,” which is their version of a baked Alaska. It consisted of layers of passion fruit sorbet, banana ice cream, hazelnut ice cream and flourless chocolate cake, all covered in a meringue casing that was flambeed at the table. While it may sound impressive, it didn’t really work. That’s mainly because the passion fruit sorbet, while delicious, overpowered everything else, so you couldn’t appreciate any of the other, more subtle flavors.

So, that was my experience at Lita’s. To be honest, I’ve gone back and forth about whether to post this or not. As I said at the beginning, I don’t want to criticize hard-working people. But I do want to give an honest review for other people in my situation. We were set to enjoy a rare, child-free night out — and willing to pay good money for it. Had I read a review like this, we would have chosen a different, more enjoyable restaurant.

I also acknowledge that had we gone on a different night, with another server and ordered different items, perhaps it would have been a more positive experience. Yet, I feel that at such a prestigious restaurant (and especially given the price), even the worst thing on the menu should have been amazing. But to be so underwhelmed by both the food and service, means I will not be going back.

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This entry was posted on May 2, 2025 at 7:35 am and is filed under Central Jersey, Food, Reviews. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

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