A new mixed-use development that is under construction across from City Hall in Downtown Newark will include a location of a unique restaurant concept.
Cornbread, which currently operates a location along Springfield Avenue in Maplewood, is expected to come to the ground floor of the upcoming five-story building at 915-933 Broad Street. The farm-to-table soul food restaurant was co-founded by Adenah Bayoh and Zadie Smith and opened in Maplewood in 2017. The existing location, which serves brunch, lunch, and dinner, includes kiosks for customers to order their meal. Menu items include chicken and waffles, whiting and grits, fried chicken, peach cobbler, and, as the restaurant’s name implies, cornbread.
Cornbread’s Newark restaurant is expected to open in the summer of 2020, according to spokesperson Steven Galante.
“Adenah is opening a new Cornbread in Newark because, having grown up in Newark and as a product of Newark’s public school system, she wants to be a part of the community’s renaissance by bringing new opportunities to the city,” Galante explained. “It is important for her to give back to the city that has given her so much.”
Galante told Jersey Digs that there are other Cornbread locations in development but declined to reveal where those restaurants would operate.
The site where the new building is being constructed was previously a wooded lot owned by the Newark Housing Authority. However, the property was sold to Broad Hill Partners in 2016 for just under $2 million. Construction on the 84-unit development, which has been referred to as “915 Broad” and “City Hall Apartments,” began last year. Bayoh, who is one of the developers of the project, is also planning to operate an IHOP restaurant inside the building near the Cornbread location.
