Newark's Ironbound Settled a Barbecue Rivalry. The Rest of Ferry Street Never Agreed to the Terms.

Ferry Street picked a winner this spring. The Ironbound Business Improvement District ran what New Jersey Monthly called a battle of the Portuguese barbecue, pitting Ferry Street BBQ against McWhorter BBQ for bragging rights on ribs and chicken done the neighborhood's way. Ferry Street BBQ took it.

That result tells you something true about a few blocks of the Ironbound. It tells you almost nothing about the rest of the neighborhood's table, because most of what's actually cooking there right now was never eligible to compete.

What the Contest Was Really Judging

The Ironbound Business Improvement District, which operates as GoIronbound and represents more than 570 businesses and 170-plus restaurants across the neighborhood, framed the whole thing as a measure of who does Portuguese barbecue best. That's a specific, narrow lane. Ferry Street BBQ and McWhorter BBQ were both playing the same game, by the same rules, for the same title.

It's a fun contest, and a legitimate one for the two shops entered in it. But a barbecue-off measures one style against itself. It doesn't touch Basque cooking, Brazilian steakhouse rodízio, or a sushi counter three doors down, because those kitchens were never in the running to begin with.

Three Doors Down, Nobody Entered This Fight

Walk Ferry Street past the barbecue smoke and the menu changes fast. Casa Vasca, on Elm Street, has been serving Spanish-Basque cuisine for years without any need to weigh in on which barbecue joint deserves the crown. Mompou Tapas Bar & Lounge, at 77 Ferry, runs a modern take on Spanish tapas, from tortillas topped with Cabrales blue cheese to patatas bravas. Adega Grill, spanning three connected spaces at 130 to 132 Ferry, pairs Portuguese and Spanish menus with a wine list built around both countries. Brasilia Grill brings Brazilian steakhouse rodízio, meat carved tableside, to a stretch of street that a barbecue contest would have filed under an entirely different category. Manu's Kitchen Bar & Sushi Lounge adds a sushi counter to the same corridor.

None of these places show up in a contest built around one style of smoked meat. That's not a knock on the contest. It's a reminder that a single headline about a single rivalry can make a neighborhood's food identity look smaller than it actually is.

The Bakeries Never Needed a Verdict

Some of Ferry Street's steadiest businesses have avoided this kind of head-to-head entirely, and they've done fine without it. Nova Aliança has functioned for years as a gathering spot for the neighborhood's Portuguese old guard, the kind of bakery where regulars show up because it's theirs, not because it won anything. Teixeira's Bakery, with three locations across the Ironbound, has built its reputation as the best-known stop for sweets almost by default, simply by being consistently good for long enough.

Pao da Terra, at 135 Ferry, is the quieter case. Co-owner Raquel Nascimento and her husband have run the bakery for fifteen years, turning out pastéis de nata and paode mafra, a rustic bread native to the Lisbon area, the same way the whole time. Nascimento has said the tarts remind longtime customers of the pastries they grew up with back home. No contest measured that. No business improvement district issued a ranking. Fifteen years of steady work did the job instead.

A Congregation That Never Picked One Language

The layering shows up outside the kitchens too. St. Stephan's Grace Community Lutheran Church, at the far end of Ferry Street from Penn Station, holds services in English, Portuguese, and Spanish under Pastor Moacir Weirich, who is Brazilian. A single congregation running three languages in rotation is its own quiet argument against the idea that the Ironbound's identity can be settled by picking one winner in one category. Ferry Street itself, chartered back in 1765 as Old Ferry Road to move goods and people between the ferries and Newark's marketplace, has been absorbing new arrivals and new menus for that long. A barbecue title is a recent addition to a much older habit.

What's Being Added to the Table This Fall

The neighborhood's food conversation keeps widening. New Jersey African Restaurant Week is set for October 8 in Newark, with the specific venue still to be announced. It's a citywide event rather than an Ironbound-only one, but it lands on the same calendar as the barbecue contest and adds another cuisine to a lineup that already runs from Portuguese seafood to Basque cooking to Brazilian rodízio.

For anyone who already lives in or around the Ironbound, that's less a headline and more a nudge to keep the rotation going past Ferry Street's most photographed block. If a walk after dinner sounds good, Riverfront Park's newest stretch, known as The Notch, opened in October 2024 and runs from the Dock Railroad Bridge to NJPAC with a paved walkway, an outdoor amphitheater, and food kiosks along the Passaic. It sits close enough to Ferry Street to work as the second half of an evening without needing to drive anywhere.

The Real Menu Doesn't Have a Single Winner

Ferry Street BBQ earned its title fair and square, and there's nothing wrong with a neighborhood having some fun deciding who does one dish best. But anyone using that contest as a summary of what the Ironbound eats is working from an outdated menu. The street that judged a barbecue rivalry this spring is the same street where a Basque restaurant, a Brazilian steakhouse, a sushi lounge, and a bakery that's kept its own counsel for fifteen years are all doing business within a few blocks of each other, none of them waiting for a verdict.

That's worth knowing if you already live here and haven't walked the full length of Ferry Street lately. The next contest, whatever it turns out to be, still won't cover all of it.

If you're thinking about buying, selling, or investing in a home anywhere in the Ironbound or the rest of North and Central New Jersey, Cesar Rosado brings more than two decades of local experience to the table, in English and Spanish. Let's Connect.