It is a question that has yet to be satisfactorily answered.
When Tony Soprano sat down with his family at Holsten’s in Bloomfield, the final scene of the ground-breaking HBO series ended with a sinister-looking guy in a Members Only jacket, the jangle of bells at the entrance to the famed malt shop. And then, shockingly, the screen cut suddenly to black.
Today for our own concluding episode of our “Eating at the Scene of the Crime” summer tour, which has taken us to restaurants, dives and diners where some of the state’s more notorious tales of crime and corruption have played out, we also find ourselves at Holsten’s — arguably one of the most famous, albeit fictional, scenes of a Jersey criminal repast. And we will attempt to answer the question that remains on the minds of so many people.
Not the endless debate over whether Tony, North Caldwell’s most lovable mob boss, did indeed get whacked in the end. Nope. We’re staying focused on what’s on the table and will deal with whether in his final words on camera, Soprano was right all along.
About the onion rings, that is.
Are they, as he insisted, the best in New Jersey?
In a place with hundreds of diners and countless cheap boardwalk takeout joints with hot fryers, onion rings could easily be celebrated as the state vegetable of New Jersey (actually, it’s the tomato). A sectional “ring” of onion dipped in batter or bread crumbs and then deep fried, onion rings are hardly haute cuisine. But a good one — hot, crisp, and seasoned — can be a bite of heaven. A bad one is all but inedible. Good or bad, they are loaded with enough saturated fat and sodium to likely have ultimately killed Tony, even if he wasn’t perhaps gunned down by the Members Only dude.
Traced by some to British cookbooks dating back to the early 1800s, the origin of onion rings has also been claimed by Kirby’s Pig Stand of Dallas, which maintained it was the first to serve them up to customers back in the 1920s. Crisco published an onion rings recipe in a New York Times advertisement in 1933.
As for Holstens’ own onion rings that Tony had ordered for the table, David Chase, the creator and executive producer of “The Sopranos,” had apparently tried them when he had lunch to check out the restaurant’s interior months earlier and wrote them into the script.
Never a major offering on the menu, Holsten’s co-owner Randy Stark said he suggested a hamburger or a sandwich instead.
“We tried to steer them away from the onion rings,” he said. But Chase, he recalled, “had onion rings on his brain for some reason.”
‘Leave the gun ... Take the cannoli’
Wiseguys love their food, even in the movies.
“The Godfather,” the classic 1972 film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, gave Italian pastry the quotable line that will live forever in cinematic lore.
It begins when Peter Clemenza, a top-level caporegime in the Corleone crime family, leaves his home.
“Don’t forget the cannoli,” his wife calls out.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” mutters actor Richard Castellano, who portrayed the character, as he gets into the 1941 Packard Super Eight One-Eighty Sport Broughama driven by the doomed Paulie Gallo.
It is a death ride for Paulie. Fingered as a traitor to the family for betraying Vito Corleone, he unknowingly drives himself to his execution while mob soldier Rocco Lampone sits ominously in the back seat awaiting to administer mob justice.
They end up on a remote road bordered by a sea of phragmites that suggest they might be in Jersey’s Meadowlands, where so many other victims of organized crime were said to have been dumped over the years amid the garbage landfills. In the background, however, one can see the Statute of Liberty. They are far from the Meadowlands. The film crew actually set up the scene along Freedom Way in what is now Liberty State Park in Jersey City.
“Pull over. I’ve got to take a leak,” orders Clemenza.
As Paulie sits behind the wheel, Clemenza steps out to relieve himself. Suddenly there is the echo of three shots fired by Lampone at close range into the back of Paulie’s head.
Clemenza returns to the car where a box of cannoli he had picked up earlier in the day from Luna’s on Mulberry Street in Little Italy still sits unopened on the front seat next to the murdered man.
“Leave the gun,” Clemenza tells Lampone. “Take the cannoli,” he adds, a line that Castellano was said to have ad-libbed.
Even in real life, eating off the menu has played a role in racketeering cases against organized crime.
Prosecutors back in 2011 went after Joe Ligambi, the reputed Philadelphia mob boss, after they secretly recorded conversations from a five-hour luncheon at La Griglia in Kenilworth. At the meeting was Ligambi and several of his associates who broke bread with high-ranking members of New York’s Gambino crime family, during which authorities alleged many were said to have boasted of their exploits. Following two racketeering conspiracy trials, however, prosecutors could not convince a jury that Ligambi was guilty of anything. Defense attorneys argued that it was just a group of friends having lunch and talking about the old days.
Whatever they might have been talking about, the details of the meal were no secret. They ate Chilean sea bass, yellow fin tuna, filet mignon and chicken with broccoli rabe. Wine flowed heavily, followed by fresh berries and cheesecake.
We did not eat quite as well at Holsten’s. It’s just not that kind of place, with a vibe that suggests an after-class hangout for high schoolers and a menu heavy on burgers and shakes. But then again, there is the likelihood that Tony never ate anything more than the onion rings he had ordered for the table.
“Best in the state, far as I’m concerned,” he declares, popping a small one in his mouth whole. Almost like a communion wafer, some have suggested.
Tony’s booth
Holsten’s Brookdale Confectionery was a New Jersey institution long before Chase decided it was the last place we would see Tony. Essex County residents have been coming to the Bloomfield ice cream parlor — with its dining room stuck in yesteryear — for more than eight decades for sundaes, milkshakes, burgers and chocolates.
More than 10 years after Tony’s last scene, Holsten’s today remains a revered shrine to fans of a crime family that never was. There are Sopranos T-shirts for sale. The wait staff is dressed in black with red Sopranos-style logos. Many diners come as much for a photo as they do for the homemade ice cream that originally put the place on the map, opened in 1939 as Strubbe’s Ice Cream Parlor.
Stark said Holsten’s saw an uptick in business right after “The Sopranos” finale aired.
“A lot of people came to try to find an answer, they thought maybe they could find out what happened,” he said. After a sharp downturn in business during the COVID pandemic, Holsten’s is once again hopping as one of the most popular ice cream shops in New Jersey.
The bells on the front door that played a part in the final episode are gone. So are prominent murals on the back wall that were made for the set, which then featured panels of Bloomfield High School and the faded glory of championship football players from the 1970s, setting the scene when a weary-looking Tony, who played high school football, walks in and sits down.
Instead, there is a painted view of an open farmhouse door and windows to the imagined pastoral green fields beyond. But the restaurant’s wood paneled walls are the same. The red vinyl seating is unchanged. And Tony’s booth where he sat with his son, AJ, and his wife Carmela (his back to the wall, but unthinkingly in the direct line-of-fire of the men’s room) awaiting the arrival of daughter Meadow, remains intact.
Atop the worn yellow tabletop where they perused Holsten’s menu is a shiny chrome jukebox, the only one in the place. It’s just a prop that doesn’t do anything, but appears ready to play Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” at the drop of a quarter. If the booth is open, it’s the first place most diners want to sit. Or at least take a selfie.
The plastic laminated Holsten’s menu that Tony slaps down in front of his wife and son in an oddly affectionate gesture, has also not changed.
“What looks good tonight?” Carmela asks.
Truth be told, there’s actually little for her choose for dinner. It’s not an extensive menu. Despite its two pages, much of it is taken up by Holsten’s raison d’être: ice cream, sundaes, floats, milkshakes and ice cream sodas. Still, there are hamburgers, cold and grilled sandwiches, double-decker clubs and cheesesteaks. Of course, there are onion rings, although curiously not featured prominently despite their starring role in the episode.
Still, if Mr. Soprano did indeed lose his life in that final scene, at least he did it in one of the Garden State’s greatest food establishments. What looks good tonight for us is the cheeseburger deluxe, a grilled chicken sandwich, a vanilla Coke, a chocolate egg cream, as well as the onion rings.
Maybe onion rings were Tony’s last meal. We hope not. We like to think he got to order the vanilla Coke, made fresh with vanilla syrup.
The grilled chicken was average diner fare, but they do know how to make an egg cream, which contains neither eggs nor cream, but was once a required job skill of any respectable soda jerk in Brooklyn.
Tony most definitely should have ordered one of Holsten’s understated but nonetheless scrumptious cheeseburgers. It’s not huge, and it’s not piled high with toppings. It isn’t wagyu. Just ground beef, American cheese, pickles, lettuce, tomatoes and ketchup if you’re so inclined.
It’s satisfying but you won’t be stuffed to the point where you don’t have room for ice cream (the best in New Jersey according to our latest ranking). If Tony was as smart as we think he was, he was ordering a duster sundae — Holsten’s signature dish. The requisite malt dust’s singular flavor, sprinkled atop Holsten’s already marvelously creamy ice cream, is truly an essential New Jersey food experience.
As for the pièce de resistance, there’s nothing wrong with Holsten’s onion rings, which come frozen in a bag like so many others. But has there ever been anything wrong with onion rings?
We have had hand-cut onion rings at one of the top steakhouses in the state, and chowed down on less dutifully prepared offerings at Jersey’s ubiquitous diners. Truth be told, as long as there is a sliver of onion, some batter and it gets thrown in a fryer, it’s probably going to taste pretty good. Greasy and salty, crunchy and golden, less is indeed more when it comes to the deep-fried delicacy.
While A.J. seemed to sniff derisively as he sat down, Tony was undeterred by his son’s attitude when he ordered them for the table.
But was Soprano right? Does Holsten’s have the very best onion rings in the state?
After a summer on the road eating at the scene of the crime in locales ranging from a Chili’s in Freehold to the Morton’s Steakhouse in Atlantic City, we would definitely have to sa…
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