Valet at Ninety Acres used to work the old-fashioned way. You pulled up, handed over your keys, and tipped the attendant whatever felt right. Now that the restaurant operates under Pendry, valet runs twenty dollars plus tip, or you park yourself and walk. Meanwhile, at Liberty Park, the borough's Recreation Department is finishing plans for an event that has cost visitors nothing for more than two decades. Both things are true at the same time, in the same six weeks, in the same borough. That contrast is worth sitting with, because it tells you more about how Peapack and Gladstone is changing than any single ribbon-cutting or menu relaunch could.
The New Twenty Dollars At Natirar
Ninety Acres opened in 2009 and became one of the most sought-after and best-reviewed restaurants in New Jersey long before anyone in town had heard the word Pendry. It sat on the Natirar estate, a property that once belonged to the king of Morocco before developer Bob Wojtowicz began restoring it. For over a decade, Ninety Acres was the independent, farm-fed dining room that made Peapack and Gladstone a destination for people well outside Somerset County.
That changed in 2024, when the restaurant relaunched with a refreshed design and new leadership, installing Executive Chef Peter Rudolph and Pastry Chef Alexandra McMillen Cavallo as part of the broader Pendry Natirar hotel opening. Rudolph's résumé reads like a luxury-hospitality circuit map: he came from the Ocean Restaurant at Cape Arundel Inn in Kennebunkport, Maine, before that Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park, and before that a decade with Ritz-Carlton as cook, sous chef, and chef de cuisine. The food still leans on the property's own ground. The dining room sources from the estate's sustainable 12-acre farm, the same acreage that gave the restaurant its name.
What's different is the transaction around the meal. The $20 valet charge is a small thing on its own, but it marks a real shift from a locally owned farm-to-table dining room to a line item inside a national luxury hotel brand's operating model. If you've been going to Ninety Acres since before the Tudor mansion next door had guest rooms, you've watched a piece of Peapack and Gladstone's identity get absorbed into something bigger. The food on the plate hasn't changed much. What surrounds it has.
The Twenty-Six Years That Still Cost Nothing
Walk two minutes off Main Street to Liberty Park in mid-September and you'll find the opposite story. The Peapack-Gladstone Recreation Department once again presents Art in the Park, and this year's event marks the 26th time the borough has put it on. Dozens of local artists and makers set up across the park each September, showing fine art, jewelry, pottery, textiles, and photography, while visitors browse to live music and food from local vendors.
There's no valet line, no cover charge, no new ownership group deciding what the experience should cost this year. It's the same event it was in the early 2000s, run by the same Recreation Department, in the same park. Liberty Park does the heavy lifting for the rest of the borough's calendar too. It hosts Community Day, the Fire Department's Classic Car Show, and Christmas with Santa, and its Memorial Day services carry on the original intent of the Liberty Park Association's founders. That's a lot of civic weight for one green space to carry, and it does it without ever charging admission.
Main Street Hasn't Needed To Change
The dining strip along Main Street tells a third version of the same story, closer to the middle. Peapack and Gladstone's restaurant scene has stayed largely independent even as the estate up the road went corporate. Gladstone Tavern, Il Monello, Cafe Azzurro, Gladstone Market, Trattoria Mediterranea, and Stazione Pizza all still operate as they have for years, family-run and priced for a regular Tuesday, not a special occasion.
Il Monello is a good example of what that continuity looks like up close. The restaurant sits at 89 Main Street, and its chef, Martino Asagjeka, trained in the traditions of classic Abruzzese cooking and has spent more than three decades working in some of the region's finest restaurants and steakhouses, including high-end venues in New York City. That's three decades of continuity on one stretch of Main Street, no rebrand required.
A few things worth knowing if you're planning a week of dinners without leaving town:
- Gladstone Tavern and Cafe Azzurro both draw the after-work crowd for casual, sit-down meals.
- Trattoria Mediterranea and Il Monello lean toward the more traditional Italian end, good for a slower night out.
- Stazione Pizza covers the quick, no-reservation option most weeks call for.
None of these places needed a design studio or a hospitality conglomerate to stay busy. They just kept doing what they were doing.
The Park Circuit That Keeps The Town Together
Liberty Park isn't the only green space doing quiet work in the borough. Komline Park, once a working farm, was acquired by the borough using Open Space Preservation Funds through an agreement with the longtime Komline family, and today it offers a gazebo, walking paths, and recreational facilities. A set of regulation tennis courts and a hitting wall were added there in 2015, giving the park a second life beyond its farmland roots.
Smaller still is Rockabye Meadow, tucked at the intersection of Main Street and Old Chester Road along a feeder branch of the Raritan River. It's not a destination park. It's the kind of green pocket you pass on a walk and don't think much about until you need five quiet minutes between errands.
Together, Liberty Park, Komline Park, and Rockabye Meadow form a circuit that costs the borough in Open Space funds and volunteer hours, not admission fees. That's the same pattern as Art in the Park: infrastructure the town built for itself, maintained by the town, free to everyone who lives here.
What The Contrast Actually Means
Put the two halves of this story next to each other and a pattern shows up. The things Peapack and Gladstone built for itself, the parks, the September art fair, the Recreation Department's calendar, have stayed exactly as accessible as they've always been. The thing an outside luxury brand acquired and renovated now comes with a line item that didn't used to exist. Neither version is wrong. But if you've lived here through the Natirar transition, you've watched in real time what happens when a piece of the local landscape becomes part of somebody else's national portfolio, and what stays untouched because nobody outside the borough owns it.
That's worth knowing whether you're deciding where to eat this weekend or just trying to understand what this town has been quietly protecting for 26 years running.
If you're weighing a move to Peapack and Gladstone, or wondering how these local shifts are showing up in what buyers are willing to pay for a house near Main Street, Hope Salamone Homes can walk you through it. Request a complimentary home valuation and consultation, and get a straight read on the market from someone who actually tracks what's changing here.
