If you want to see a celebrity, this NJ restaurant is known for it

If you’re running a restaurant and a celebrity comes in one night, that could be exciting. It can get you talked about. But what if it’s a lot more often and a lot of different celebrities, and that’s not what you set out to do?

You set out to serve the most delicious food possible, accompanied by impeccable service, in a place like New Jersey, where running a restaurant is challenging at best. Would you welcome becoming a celebrity hangout? Or would it bring a whole new set of issues and become a distraction?

I wondered this when reading about Ristorante MV on MyCentralJersey.com. It’s a posh Italian-American restaurant featuring imported furniture, a prosciutto aging room, and all situated within a 200-year-old stone building.

Ristorante MV in Bernardsville

Do they want the potential headache of big names there constantly? Because it’s happening.

Ristorante MV is at 1 Mill Street in Bernardsville, just off 202 in Somerset County.

They opened only four years ago with father and son owners Pasquino Vitiello and Michael Vitiello offering the finest in all things.

They make everything in-house. The pastas, the stocks, the sauces, everything. Also, the desserts, are in-house. Their veal is even butchered in-house. Their mozzarella is made in-house, fresh, twice a day.

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So all that hard work resulted in people loving them and coming back for more. What they didn’t expect was for it to become such a hot spot for the famous.

A short list of celebrities that are either already regulars or have their name in for reservations…Kevin Jonas, Mike Tyson, Eli Manning, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Teresa Giudice, Gov. Phil Murphy, Elvis Duran, former Gov. Chris Christie, and more.

So how do the owners feel about it? They didn’t plan it.

“You never know who you'll sit next to,” Michael said.

Protocol for dealing with VIP customers

So far, they’re embracing it. They even came up with a protocol. The famous are flocking here to dine so frequently that they hired full-time private security just to handle these growing situations. And the house rule is when a famous person is seated for dinner, no one is allowed to approach their table. If other patrons want to stop a celebrity on their way to or from the table, that’s up to them.

I think that policy is likely to attract even more celebrities, and here’s why. Nobody wants to look like a jerk and have to say, “Not now, I’m eating.” But this house policy is clearly the restaurant’s doing with their staff handling it, not the famous person’s bodyguards. It takes the burden off the celebrity which will, in my opinion, mean even more will want to come to this beautiful Somerset County place.

It sounds like even if you dine at Ristorante MV on a night when no famous folks are there, you’ll still have an outstanding experience. But if you could catch a glimpse and maybe a quick conversation with someone like Jennifer Lawrence or John Oliver then who could resist?

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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