This has to be one of the best Italian restaurants in New Jersey

Good food never loses its luster. If you've got good food, people are always going to come back. It's what keeps a restaurant around for decades (obviously.)

The saying goes "If you built it they will come" but my saying for restaurants is "If you have good food, they will always come back." I feel like I might have just come up with something there!

Villa Barone in Robbinsville, NJ, absolutely fits the bill of having great food. So it's no coincidence that my family and I keep going back.

The restaurant is at 38 Robbinsville Allentown Road, just off Route 130 and less than a mile from the famous DeLorenzo's.

Screengrab via Google Maps.

Their website describes how the restaurant came to be. It's been passed along through generations in Italy until it made its way here to America.

Here's how their website describes it:

"It all began in Naples, Italy, the city of eternal sunshine. “Nonno” (Grandpa) Giovanni Barone, a man with a passion for Southern Italian cooking and a talent for transforming fresh, simple ingredients into works of art, opened Villa Barone."

Their menu is amazing, but my personal favorite is the chicken fra diavolo. I've tried it at other restaurants and it never measures up to Villa Barone's. It's become my barometer for what chicken fra diavolo should be. No other place even comes close!

They serve it over angel hair pasta with cheese, and hot peppers. The sauce itself has a strong kick to it too. Personally, I love spicy food so that makes it even better. Dip their bread that comes with it in the sauce too and it's seriously one of the best meals you'll ever have. It'll take your pallet to new levels I guarantee it.

They're in an area where so much great food is near (where isn't there great food in Jersey?) but Villa Barone stands out as one of the best around.