Jersey City: HopsScotch (September 2014)

My spouse and I dined at HopsScotch for lunch on a Saturday afternoon in late September 2014. We stayed nearby at the Doubletree Jersey City, and it was a leisurely 5-minute ½-mile walk along Washington Boulevard to the restaurant. HopsScotch occupies the location where Pizzeria Uno once operated.

HopsScotch is located at the corner of Christopher Columbus Drive and Washington Boulevard, a few blocks from the Hudson River, the PATH train, and the ferry landing. HopsScotch is open daily for lunch and dinner, and the kitchen serves food until 10:00 pm.

The restaurant space is large, with three areas clad in stone and dark wood. One room houses a table shuffleboard game and high-top bar tables. A room near the rear of the restaurant (adjacent to the kitchen and the bathrooms) has both booth and table seating with many TVs on the walls for your sports-viewing pleasure. The main room of the restaurant houses a long bar and tables spread over two levels. The back bar is made of stacked stone and features taps that contain over 40+ different draft beers. The restaurant also stocks over 100 scotches and whiskeys. A wall of windows brightens the main space in the daytime. Regrettably, no option for outdoor dining exists. On-street parking is available, or in the attached garage or a public lot nearby. The restaurant is located on the street level of an office building, with additional retain space for fast-food restaurants Five Guys Burgers and Muscle Maker Grill.

We ordered from the restaurant’s Oktoberfest menu, most of whose menu items were also on the regular menu. We shared the meat platter, with three different types of protein (bratwurst, knockwurst, and bockwurst), accompanied by sauerkraut and an item called “grandma’s bun dumplings”, which are sort of like mashed potato triangles topped with bacon marmalade and braised red cabbage. For dessert, we shared apple strudel (which was more like an apple spring roll) accompanied by vanilla ice cream sprinkled with sliced almonds and drizzled with raspberry sauce.

We sat at the bar, so the bartender was attentive, but the kitchen was slow, and it took a long time to receive each of our courses, even though the restaurant was nearly empty.

We had a decent meal at HopsScotch, and we enjoyed the casual atmosphere where we could watch sports on any one of its fifteen TVs. In fact, we returned later in the evening for an after-dinner cocktail.