The Independent Edition

Star Bazaar Owner: Romeshkumar Patel Opened:  2016 Cooperative:  none Location:  1760 Easton Ave, Somerset, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 We are on the north end of Somerset, New Jersey for a look at this 9300 square foot Indian supermarket right on the Raritan River! (We were previously about four miles to the southeast for a Stop & Shop , a Tropical Supermarket , and a Fine Fare .) Now above, we see the new facade installed on the store. But the store itself dates back to the 1960s, and by zooming out a little we can get a good idea of what it used to be... Certainly a beautiful remodel of an A&P centennial! The building is just over 18,000 square feet, meaning that Star Bazaar takes up a little more than half of the space. Star Bazaar opened in 2016, making it pretty new. It's very nice inside, and spotlessly clean! The store includes eight aisles plus the produce department. The floor looks great! It's the first thing you notice. Very clean. By the way, the A&P s

  Our next stop as we travel north through the middle of the state is here in the Somerville area! Somerville isn't a particularly large city but it's a substantial town with a few other towns immediately surrounding it. Much of this area was agricultural and green space, and some of it still is (see the gorgeous  Duke Farms , located just outside Somerville). This is a solidly suburban area which, again, borders on rural especially to the south and west. We begin in the northeastern corner of the group, with stops in Middlesex, Somerset, South Bound Brook and Bound Brook, then on to the northwest in Bridgewater, Manville, Somerville, Raritan, and Branchburg, and finally Hillsborough to the south. I mentioned Duke Farms a second ago, and generally, we're circling counter-clockwise around Duke Farms in the middle (which is within Hillsborough Township). There's a lot of interesting stores here, so let's begin with a former supermarket in Middlesex over on  Grocery Ar

Asian Food Markets Owner: Jon Chen Opened:  2006 Cooperative:  none Location:  1339 Centennial Ave, Piscataway, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 We're here in the section of Piscataway that has all the big box stores. Centennial Square, where this store is located, also is home to a Lowe's, a Walmart, and an ALDI (which we're also touring today because why not!). Also check out today's tour of the ShopRite across the street here . Our past tours of Asian Food Markets include Jersey City and Marlboro . The 23,000 square foot store starts with an expansive produce and meat department in the grand aisle, with service seafood and butcher taking up the rest of the back wall. The last aisle has frozen foods, with a bakery and prepared foods department in the front corner. Like many deep and narrow stores, this location is divided with a center aisle halfway across the store. The meat department takes up the back corner. Oddly, there is no sign other than the poster advertising

Subzi Mandi Cash & Carry Owner: Harwinder Singh Opened:  2010 Cooperative:  none Location:  1347 Stelton Rd, Piscataway, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 The road between Edison (on the Highland Park side) and Piscataway starts in Edison as Plainfield Avenue, then becomes Stelton Road across the border in Piscataway. So yesterday's produce market was just up the street, even though the name of the road is different, about a mile and a half. And as we circle north from Edison into Piscataway, we're circling around the northern side of Rutgers University's Livingston and Busch campuses. After we see the last few stores here in Piscataway, by the way, we're crossing the Raritan River into New Brunswick, where we'll see other stores between Rutgers' College Avenue (to the northwest) and Cook-Douglass (to the southeast) campuses. But for now, we're stopping by this independent Indian grocery store that opened in 2010 in a small strip mall. The store is about 4,0

Edison Pepper Farm Owner: Edison Pepper Farm Inc. Opened:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  431 Plainfield Ave, Edison, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 Today's look inside is a very quick stop by an 1800 square foot store on the road between Edison and Piscataway. It's a bit out of place among the industrial buildings and warehouses in this part of Edison but it also seems that it's been a produce market for a very long time, so it might very well predate all of the warehouses. (See today's other post here .) The store consists of two aisles, with some groceries on the back wall. The rest of the store is pretty much all produce items. There's one single register at the front. It's a great little spot and I'm glad I took the time to go inside! That's our final store in Edison, and our next stop will be just over the border into Piscataway. That'll be right here on The Independent Edition tomorrow, so come back to check it out!

Glatt 27 Owner: Azriel Weizel Opened:  2003, ca. 2013 in current location Cooperative:  none Location:  1177 Raritan Ave, Highland Park, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 Our second stop here in Highland Park is just outside the downtown, back east towards the Edison border. (The first store we saw, in case you missed it, was the Stop & Shop downtown .) This store is smaller than the Stop & Shop at just 5600 square feet, or the ground floor of this very attractive building. It fits into the streetscape nicely, in fact so much that I totally missed it when I was driving by and had to circle back to find it. This store replaced an older one just to the west at 1109 Raritan Avenue in 2013. And by the way, Raritan Avenue is NJ route 27, in case you were wondering about the name. The store, although very small, is a complete kosher supermarket. Produce is in the front right corner, with deli lining the right side wall. Meats line the back wall, with frozen and dairy on the left side of