A VETERAN BARTENDER OF THIS CEDAR GROVE HOTSPOT SERVES UP CUTTING-EDGE COCKTAILS WITH A SUMMERTIME TWIST

BY ERIK SCHONING PHOTOS BY ALEX BARRETO

For Justine Caruso, a seasoned bartender at LuNello in Cedar Grove, developing recipes is a collaborative process. Guests can walk into the restaurant on any given night and find Caruso tinkering on a new drink, giving samples to customers and soliciting feedback. It’s one of several reasons why, for many, the LuNello bar has become a home away from home.

Caruso has been shaking drinks for more than 20 years. She came to LuNello in 2020 at the height of the pandemic, and it took a while for her to get settled in as the restaurant weathered the storm. Today, however, LuNello is back in full swing. For Caruso, it’s been the job of a lifetime.

“The biggest change it’s made in my bartending career is that this is definitely more of a career job rather than a couple shifts here or there,” Caruso said. “I’m there five days a week for six shifts. There’s a level of care that you tend to put into your job when you’re there so much; you treat it like your home and your customers are your family.”

Caruso works with three other bartenders as part of LuNello’s all-women team: Laura Moore, Diana Caggiano, and Deana Capasso. Working on teams of two with the help of barbacks, Caruso and her coworkers manage a bustling operation Monday through Saturday, including lunch, brunch, and dinner rushes.

“The cool part about it is it’s four women behind the bar,” Caruso said. “LuNello was, traditionally, a very old-school Italian restaurant, and up until about the last ten years, we primarily had an all-male staff. Now Chef Louis has four strong, extremely hardworking women behind the bar who really make the place come together.”

The drink menu at LuNello is a carefully crafted and ever-changing part of the restaurant experience. Every season, the bartenders and manager Stephanie Voulgaris, who is also an advanced sommelier, meet with representatives from various high-end liquor companies to come up with a seasonal drink menu that incorporates the hottest spirits on the market.

“We constantly bring in vendors to help us create something cool and different that people don’t see anywhere else,” Caruso said. “Whether it’s an amaro from Sicily or a cool, lesser-known liqueur to make a great pear martini with, we all create it together. I think when you work closely with your liquor reps like that, you’re able to create some really cool stuff that you don’t see anywhere else.”

Caruso’s latest offering is a twist on the classic cosmopoli tan. It’s a deceptively difficult drink to make; as Caruso pointed out, it’s an “amazing” drink if crafted correctly, but terrible if done wrong. Caruso elevates her cosmo with a Japanese yuzu vodka. Yuzu is a citrus known for its bitter and floral notes, flavors that play perfectly with the sweet tartness of cranberry. She is also known for her mai tai, which features a floater of dark spiced rum plus crème de cacao and Cointreau.

The other half of the collaborative process is, of course, the patrons them selves. LuNello is very much a regulars’ bar; Caruso has clients who are in the restaurant four or five times a week. Her regulars are as much a part of menu development as the liquor reps. Everyone has a usual drink order, but Caruso is always looking to expose her customers to new products and combinations. For Caruso’s clientele, the joy of discovery is as strong a draw as a perfectly made, classic martini. Caruso uses vermouth, one of her all-time favorites, as an example.

“I love to find a great vermouth that you don’t see anywhere,” Caruso said. “If someone orders a negroni, I have them sample our vermouth first and say, ‘Listen, I’m using this really cool vermouth, and I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it. Taste it on its own.’ There are so many quality sweet vermouths out there. I actually have customers who have tasted one before I made their Manhattan or negroni who now will have a vermouth as an after-dinner drink.”

Caruso and her colleagues work closely with the kitchen; after all, a drink is only as good as the food it accompanies. In addition to offering wine pairings, the team also debuted a dessert pairing menu. The LuNello rice pudding, for example, is paired with a Rumchata White Russian, the cannoli with a Don Fulano Blanco Espresso Martini. It’s all part of an integrative process; Caruso sees her work as an extension of the restaurant, and the same quality and attention to detail that goes into LuNello’s lauded Italian menu is also funneled into each and every drink.

As anyone who’s worked in the service industry can attest, f inding a stable post is a rare feat in a business often plagued by high turnover and short staffing. But for Caruso, LuNello has become exactly that: a professional home.

“I always say, every day when I go to work I’m hosting a new party,” Caruso said. “And I want all my guests to drink what they like to drink, eat what they like to eat, and have a good time. So often when you go to restaurants and you see people sitting at a bar, nobody’s talking to anyone else. More often than not, the bartenders seem a bit robotic. So we always try to make sure everybody experiences something other than just great food when they’re there.”

LuNello

182 Stevens Avenue, Cedar Grove

973.837.1660 / lunellonj.com