Rutherford

An Irish pub on the East Rutherford end of Park Avenue, directly across from the Rutherford train station, with the televisions on and fish and chips, steaks and sandwiches coming out of the kitchen. It opens at eleven in the morning and runs to two, which makes it the latest door within walking distance of downtown Rutherford. The kitchen goes until midnight.

Daily, 11am to 2am. Kitchen until midnight

A family-run bake shop on Franklin Place, open since 2014, doing sweet and savory pastry alongside coffee from a local roaster. The counter is the whole operation and the seating is limited, so people take it out onto the block as often as not. It is open Wednesday through Sunday and closes at three in the afternoon.

Wed to Sun, 8am to 3pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday

An Italian pastry shop on Ridge Road with cannoli, sfogliatelle and cookie trays in the case and cake orders taken at the back. It opens at seven in the morning and stays open to eight at night, which is a longer day than anything else on foot from the Renaissance Meadowlands. Hours move with the season and shorten in the run-up to a holiday.

Daily, 7am to 8pm. Shorter around holidays and in some seasons

An Italian market and sandwich counter on Park Avenue, with the prepared-food case along one side and the deli slicer at the back. Sandwiches are built to order and most of the trade is people carrying them out. It opens at nine and closes at six on weekdays, earlier at the weekend.

Mon to Fri, 9am to 6pm. Sat, 9am to 4pm. Sun, 9am to 3pm

A volunteer-run regional history museum in the Kingsland House, a few streets off Route 17 in Rutherford. It keeps permanent displays on the Meadowlands alongside rotating and traveling exhibits, and admission is free with a donation box by the door. It is small, and it opens on most Saturdays only, from ten until four.

Most Saturdays, 10am to 4pm. Closed the rest of the week

A coffee house on a side street off Paterson Avenue in East Rutherford, pulling espresso and doing a short food menu rather than running a full kitchen. It is a couple of streets from the Rutherford train station, so it catches commuters early and quiets down through the afternoon. Sunday is the one day worth checking before you go.

Mon to Sat, 7am to 6pm. Sunday varies by listing

An espresso counter two doors from the corner, pouring beans roasted by Paper Plane over in Jersey City. The pastry case is Colombian rather than Italian, so it runs to pandebono and arepa de choclo alongside toasts made to order. It opens at seven every morning and closes in the late afternoon.

Mon to Sat, 7am to 5pm. Sun, 7am to 4pm

A breakfast and lunch house at the top of Park Avenue, open from seven thirty in the morning until three in the afternoon every day of the week. The menu is pancakes, eggs and omelets, and the turnover is quick enough that a table usually comes free. Nothing here runs past mid-afternoon, so it is strictly a before.

Daily, 7:30am to 3pm

A roadside stand on River Road since 1928, where the hot dogs go into the fryer until the casing splits and the result is called a ripper. You can order it barely fried, well done or charred black, and the mustard relish is the other half of the reason people drive here. There is a counter on one side and a bar with table service on the other, and it is open from eight in the morning until ten at night.

Sun to Thu, 8am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 8am to 11pm

A used book and vinyl shop that operates out of the Williams Center itself, so you reach it without leaving the building the show is in. Nate, who runs it, also lists the vinyl on Discogs, which is a fair guide to what the racks hold. It keeps longer hours than most of Park Avenue and stays open to eight every night, so it is still lit when a curtain goes up.

Mon to Fri, noon to 8pm. Sat, 10am to 8pm. Sun, 4pm to 8pm

The Rutherford branch of the Neapolitan pizzeria that started on West Houston Street, working a wood oven and a short list of pies. It runs continuously from noon, with a break in the early evening only on Mondays, and it has a bar and tables on the sidewalk. Tuesday is pasta night and Wednesday is pizza night at a fixed price.

Mon, noon to 3pm and 4pm to 8pm. Tue to Thu, noon to 3pm and 4pm to 9pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 9:30pm. Sun, noon to 9pm

A fully vegan bake shop that opened on Park Avenue in 2007, back when almost nowhere in Bergen County was doing it. Cupcakes are the core of the case, with cake truffles and cookies beside them, and there are gluten-free and soy-free versions of most of it. It sits at the far end of the Park Avenue shops, a walk past the main cluster.

Tue to Sat, 10am to 5:30pm. Closed Sunday and Monday

A Paterson Avenue diner in the Carlton Hill part of East Rutherford, open from seven in the morning to eleven at night, seven days a week. It runs the full diner card with breakfast served all day, and the booths turn over fast enough that a wait is short. This is the latest kitchen in the batch.

Daily, 7am to 11pm

A 1950 diner on Orient Way in Lyndhurst, renovated but still built around the counter and the booths. It opens at seven every morning and the kitchen runs the standard diner card from breakfast through to dinner. This is the nearest sit-down to the Renaissance Meadowlands that is not inside a hotel or a highway plaza.

Mon, 7am to 4pm. Tue to Thu, 7am to 9pm. Fri, 7am to 10pm. Sat and Sun, 7am to 9pm

An East Rutherford tavern founded in 1934 and still run by the Italiano family, built around a round bar you can sit the whole way around. The food is bar pizza on a thin crust, wings and Italian-American plates, and the beer list is longer than the place looks from the street. It opens at eleven in the morning and serves until close every day.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 11am to 9:50pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 10:50pm

A German bake shop that has been in the same Park Avenue storefront since the building went up, still working a brick oven that is more than a century old and a mixer nearly as old. Crumb cake, black and white cookies and rye come out of it. There is no seating, so it is a counter you stop at rather than somewhere you sit, and it is only open Thursday through Sunday.

Thu to Sat, 6am to 6pm. Sun, 6am to 2pm. Closed Monday to Wednesday