On a Tuesday night in late summer, the parking lot at 4 Chestnut Ridge Road was fuller than it had any right to be for a Tuesday. Inside, servers were running trays of fried calamari and the Antipasto Di Forno board, a spread of Prosciutto di Parma, soppressata, mortadella, burrata, and fig jam built for a table of four to fight over. A server explained the difference between the 18-inch round pies and the Roman squares to a couple who'd clearly never had to make that choice before. Nobody at that table was talking about Trader Joe's.
That's worth sitting with, because for the better part of a year, Trader Joe's is basically all Montvale has talked about. A single shopping center on Chestnut Ridge Road has generated more Facebook comments, more speculation, and more "any updates?" posts than almost anything else in town. And in the middle of all that noise, a family-run Italian restaurant opened one address over, quietly, without a mayor's announcement or a planning board hearing, and it's already the harder reservation to get.
The Rumor Everyone's Been Watching
The Trader Joe's saga at the Chestnut Ridge Shopping Center started with a mayoral post and snowballed from there. The proposal, as reported by Pascack Press, would convert the current Fresh Market space into a Trader Joe's and add a new pad site near Drop Fitness for Shake Shack, CAVA, and Honeygrow. When Pascack Press called the Fresh Market store directly that November, the manager on duty said the store "will not be closing" and referred further questions to corporate, which hadn't responded by the time the story ran. The Planning Board took up the applications that December. We covered where that stood in our earlier look at the Trader Joe's rumor, and the short version holds up: site plan review, traffic studies, and architectural sign-off for a multi-tenant redevelopment move slowly, and there still isn't a public opening date attached to any of it.
That's not a criticism of the process. It's just how these things work when the tenant is a grocery conversion plus a new freestanding building. What it means for residents is that the biggest retail headline in town has, for months now, produced zero new places to actually go.
The order of operations on Chestnut Ridge Road ran backward from what most people expected. The small, independently owned business opened and started taking reservations before the anchor tenant even had a confirmed floor plan.
What Actually Opened
Di Forno Pizzeria first showed up on Montvale's radar in late October 2025, when the restaurant began teasing its arrival on Instagram with countdown-style posts about a space at 4 Chestnut Ridge Road. At the time, nobody had a firm opening date. By the following spring, the restaurant was fully operational, taking reservations through OpenTable, running delivery through Grubhub and Postmates, and collecting five-star reviews on Tripadvisor.
The plaza itself isn't new. It's the same shopping center that's home to The Fresh Market, Jersey Mike's Subs, Gen Sushi + Hibachi, Montvale Nail + Spa, Drop Fitness, and a Chase Bank branch, which is what makes the contrast so sharp. One tenant in that lineup spent close to a year in entitlement limbo. The other signed a lease, built out a kitchen, and started serving pasta before most residents had finished arguing about the grocery store online.
According to one Tripadvisor review, the restaurant is run by an owner named Connie, with family roots tracing back to Manhattan's Little Italy, and the kitchen leans into that heritage rather than chasing trend-driven menus. The food backs that up: San Marzano tomatoes, imported mortadella, grass-fed beef in the meatballs and arancini, and a wood-fired oven doing the heavy lifting on both pizza styles.
Chestnut Ridge Road, Status Check
| Business | Location | Status as of this writing |
|---|---|---|
| Di Forno Pizzeria | 4 Chestnut Ridge Rd | Open daily, taking reservations and delivery |
| Trader Joe's (proposed conversion of The Fresh Market) | Chestnut Ridge Shopping Center | Still in the planning process, no public opening date |
| Shake Shack, CAVA, Honeygrow | New pad site, same shopping center | Proposed, pending Planning Board approval |
| Fire & Oak | 100 Chestnut Ridge Rd | Open, operating for more than 15 years |
The Menu, For Anyone Who Hasn't Been Yet
If you're deciding whether to make the trip, here's what's actually on offer. The restaurant runs 18-inch round pies and Roman-style squares, plus calzones and rolls, with a gluten-free or cauliflower crust available for an extra $3.95. Beyond pizza, the menu covers wings, salads, wraps, hot and cold sandwiches, house-made pastas, entrées, soups, and desserts.
A few specifics worth knowing before you go:
- Fried Calamari, $19.15, wild-caught and served with a slow-simmered marinara
- Eggplant Parmigiana, $16.35, thin-cut and layered with fresh mozzarella
- Arancini Siciliani, $17.95 for three, stuffed with grass-fed beef ragù and peas
- Meatballs alla Romana, $17.95, grass-fed and topped with whipped ricotta
- Clams Oreganata, $22.75, wild littleneck clams with seasoned breadcrumbs
- Treccia Di Forno, $22.75, twisted mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto and baked in tomato sauce
Pizza names worth asking about include the Upside-Down Grandma, a Margherita, an Arthur Ave built around vodka sauce and broccoli rabe, and a Di Forno Four finished with Mike's Hot Honey. On the pasta side, the Paccheri alla Norma and Linguine Vongole get called out most often by diners.
Hours are Monday through Friday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Saturday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. The restaurant takes reservations, and given how full that Tuesday-night parking lot already looked, a call ahead at (201) 299-0660 isn't a bad idea. Full menu and details are on the restaurant's own site.
Why the Smaller Address Always Opens First
There's a practical reason the pizzeria beat the grocery store to the finish line, and it's not about ambition or demand. A restaurant leasing an existing, already-built-out commercial space can sign, permit, and open in months. A grocery conversion paired with a new freestanding building requires site plan review, traffic analysis, and architectural approval from the Planning Board, plus whatever internal corporate timelines the incoming tenant is working against. The Fresh Market itself changed hands in September 2025, when it was sold to the Chilean retail giant Cencosud, according to Pascack Press's reporting, which adds another layer of corporate decision-making before any customer-facing change happens.
None of that is unusual. It's just slower, by design, because the stakes and the paperwork are bigger. The lesson for anyone trying to keep up with what's actually changing in Montvale is that the biggest headline isn't always the fastest-moving one. The smaller, independently owned business is often the one that shows up on your table first.
What This Means for the Rest of the Corridor
Chestnut Ridge Road was never short on places to eat. Fire & Oak has been serving lunch and dinner out of the Courtyard by Marriott for more than 15 years, and it's still the go-to for a steak or a raw bar order on the same stretch of road. What Di Forno adds isn't a first restaurant, it's a second kind of night out entirely, the family-style, red-sauce option that this particular corridor didn't have before.
If the Trader Joe's proposal eventually clears the Planning Board, that plaza will look genuinely different, with a new grocery anchor and three more fast-casual names filling in around it. Until then, the corridor's real news is the one that already has a phone number and a wait on Friday nights.
If you're weighing whether Montvale's day-to-day fits what you're looking for in a next move, Jacqueline Vasquez knows this stretch of Bergen County block by block, plaza by plaza, and is always glad to talk through what a neighborhood actually feels like to live in, not just what's listed for sale in it.