Bloomfield Center Now Has a Full Night Out, and It Fits on One Block of Washington Street

Walk down Washington Street in Bloomfield Center on a Friday evening and you can build an entire night without moving your car. Start with a pint at Varitage Brew Works, the soccer-centric brewery at 58 Washington Street that runs Premier League mornings and turns into a full watch party for Champions League finals. Walk a few doors down to Bucco at number 61 for an Italian-American dinner. Then, depending on your mood, throw an axe at Bury the Hatchet, work a puzzle at Amazing Escape, or feed quarters into whatever's running at Hometown Arcade, all within the same short stretch that also holds the train station and a run of newer apartment buildings.

None of this required a trip to Montclair. That's the part worth sitting with. For years, "going out" in Bloomfield meant driving somewhere else first. The businesses that filled in this one block over the past few years changed the math, and most residents who haven't walked it lately are still picturing the old version of downtown.

The block that closed the loop

Bucco's own description of its location makes the case better than any outside writer could: it sits in the heart of what it calls Bloomfield Center's up-and-coming stretch, nestled among luxury apartments, the train station, and a cluster of small attractions, and it points customers toward Varitage, Hometown Arcade, Bury the Hatchet, and Amazing Escape as the natural before-or-after stops. That's a restaurant telling its own diners to go spend money at four other businesses within walking distance, which only makes sense if all five are close enough that nobody has to get back in a car.

Varitage itself has leaned hard into being a destination rather than a stop. It has no kitchen, and it doesn't need one. Food comes from next door. A Bloomfield Center podcast called "Pizza, Brews and Two Dudes" paired Varitage with Blue Steel Pizza as neighboring businesses, with beer from one counter and pizza carried in from the other. On trivia nights, the wings come from WNB Factory, another Bloomfield Center neighbor. These businesses share more than a zip code.

A short version of what's now walkable from one end of that block to the other:

• Varitage Brew Works (58 Washington St.) – craft brewery, no kitchen, soccer on every screen, trivia and wing nights with WNB Factory
• Bucco (61 Washington St.) – Italian-American dinner and lunch, steps from the train platform
• Hometown Arcade – classic and modern arcade games
• Bury the Hatchet – supervised axe throwing
• Amazing Escape – themed escape rooms
• Blue Steel Pizza – pizza available near Varitage

That's a full evening's itinerary that fits inside a five-minute walk, which is not something Bloomfield Center could have said a few years back.

The Brookdale adds two nearby concepts

According to a Patch report, the other half of this story is a few blocks over on Broad Street, where The Brookdale has been building a name since it opened in 2020, largely on the strength of a one-pound mozzarella stick that shows up in nearly every review of the place. Rather than take that popularity and open a second location somewhere new, the ownership group known as 5 LC Group put its next two concepts two doors down from the original: Fanny's Restaurant & Bar, serving regional Italian food with a contemporary edge, and Ladyfingers Bakery & Bar, a bakery by day that turns into a cocktail and tasting bar after dark.

Chef and owner Jonathan Kavourakis explained the move to Patch:

"Our 5 LC Group has bonded and become family over the past three years. Now we're ready for expansion."

Together with Washington Street, the Broad Street cluster gives Bloomfield Center two separate corridors, roughly a ten-minute walk apart, with multiple dining and entertainment options.

What's actually on the calendar

If you're deciding what to do with the next few weekends, two dates are worth putting on the calendar now rather than finding out about them the week of.

On Friday, September 18, Bloomfield's Parks, Recreation & Cultural Affairs Department runs its annual Movie in the Park and Overnight Family Campout at Pulaski Park on Mt. Vernon Avenue, with the movie starting at 7:45 p.m. It's part of the township's 2026 Summer of Fun series and it's one of the last outdoor gatherings before the weather turns.

Then, on October 17 and 18, more than 150 juried artists set up across Brookdale Park for the fall Rose Squared Art Show. Admission is free, the show runs rain or shine from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days, and the work spans ceramics, jewelry, painting, glass, photography, and artisanal food, all inside a 121-acre park that Essex County ranks as the third largest in its system. The land carries its own layered history: it was once a gathering place for the Lenni-Lenape before Dutch settlers turned it into farmland in the 1600s, and it now sits astride the Bloomfield and Montclair border, one of the few pieces of ground both towns share and both towns show up for.

Between those two dates, the Essex County summer concert series that opened at Brookdale Park back in July has been giving residents a reason to bring a blanket to the park on a weeknight, and the Brookdale Park Conservancy has kept its usual rhythm of community workdays and pollinator garden mornings running through the season for anyone who wants a lower-key weekend than a bar crawl or an art fair.

Why the stacking matters more than any single opening

It would be easy to write this up as a list of new places to try, and there's nothing wrong with that version. But the more interesting read is the pattern of nearby options. A brewery with no kitchen has food available next door; the Broad Street corridor now has three concepts from one ownership group; and an arcade, an axe-throwing venue, and an escape room offer distinct activities near one another. That pattern is easy to miss if you only look at one business at a time.

For anyone who already lives in Bloomfield, the practical takeaway is simpler than any of that: the block you might associate with a quick coffee run or a train commute now holds enough on its own to fill a full evening, and the town's two main entertainment corridors, Washington Street and Broad Street, are close enough together that picking one over the other is mostly a matter of mood.

If you're weighing what a neighborhood like this means for your own next move, whether that's a starter home near the train line or a property with room to grow into, Cesar Rosado has spent more than two decades working these Essex County blocks and can walk you through what a given address actually puts you close to. Let's Connect.