Garlic Rose Bistro

Having been regulars at the Madison location, my husband and I were saddened when that location closed. We love Garlic Rose, so we decided to check out the Cranford location. It’s less than a mile off the GSP, so it’s extremely accessible. There is a public parking lot in the rear of the building, so parking is much easier in Cranford than it was in Madison. The restaurant also has doors in both the front and back so it can be accessed from the street as well as the previously mentioned public parking lot.
The food and the service are on par with the Madison location. The food was just as good as I remembered. After ordering, they serve bread, a roasted garlic bulb, and their «bread dipping sauce». The sauce has pesto, grated parmesan cheese, garlic, and oil in it. It is heavenly. Definitely ask for a refill if you use it up, which you will. All appetizers come with a house salad (they will let you sub it out for a Caesar salad if that is your preference).
To date, I’ve been to this location twice. On my first visit, I ordered the Roasted Rack of Lamb which is served with their famous Gilroy potatoes. The lamb is juicy and superb, to the point where you’ll want to pick up the bones and nibble every last drop of meat off of them. And those potatoes! They are scalloped and cheesy and oh so good. You’ll just have to try them for yourself. On my second visit, I had Shrimp Garlic Angel. That was my absolute favorite dish at the Madison location, and it did not disappoint. It’s shrimp over you guessed it, angel hair pasta. It’s served with tomatoes and olives (but I skip the olives).
One big difference is that this location has a full bar, whereas Madison was BYOB. So if you want to partake in some spirits, expect to shell out some more money. On both visits, I had the red sangria. I highly recommend it. On the first visit, I was will a bunch of girlfriends, so we shared a full pitcher. When I went with the hubby this weekend for Valentine’s Day, we just ordered the half pitcher to share (since we had to drive a distance to get home). It was the perfect amount for us.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that for dessert, they offer Garlic Ice Cream. Yes, you read that correctly. The garlic flavor is overwhelming in the ice cream. It was tasty, but I could only eat so much of it. One of my girlfriend’s absolutely loved it, so we let her devour the rest of it and devour she did.
Garlic Rose has a rewards program called Garlicious Rewards. I highly recommend signing up for it. They swipe your card each time you dine and when you accumulate 150 points, they send you a coupon for $ 15 off your meal. They also send coupons for your birthday, half-​birthday, anniversary, and occasionally throughout the year.
Make sure to make a reservation if you will be dining on a Friday or Saturday night because during these peak times, a table can be hard to come by.

We love this place… always. Order the Harvest Chicken.. You can’t go wrong. My hubby had the stacked chicken which was just as good and we ordered the brie as an appetizer also hitting the spot. This place has always been our favorite.

Had a really great dinner for NYE here. Even on a busy holiday the service and ambiance was great! We even got there 30 minutes before our reservation and they seated us right away. The only thing about the place that was negative, it was a little warm. They need to cool it down a little.
The owner was there and sat us and apologized ahead of time for the noise to come before a big party was seated. Even after they sat, it was just fine.
They start off with warm bread and a whole roasted garlic!!! Reason enough to go here… Not many do that and it was AWESOME! They also had a garlic oil spread as well which was great. And the two mixed together, fab! We both had the Lobster Bisque… It was delicious and big lumps of lobster. I had the Garlic Angel Shrimp which was very good and my boyfriend had the Romeo and Juliet (steak and shrimp) and he loved it as well. We finished with the Garlic Ice Cream… Which was interesting. Good but interesting. You should try the sample to just see what it’s like!
We also had a bottle of wine… At first I thought this was a BYOB… So was a little disappointed when they had a bar (thankfully looked menus online before we went and saw that). But I was pleasantly surprised by the prices. We got a bottle of Chianti for $ 30… Which was definitely doable.
Our waiter was attentive and helpful and gave advice on what we should order. The service was fast and we didn’t wait long for anything we ordered but still wasn’t rushed. I don’t understand the comments on slow service, this was a holiday and still the service was great!
We joined their frequent diner program and will definitely be back. There is more on that menu we want to try!

Love, Love, Love this place. Food is always delicious. Consistently, perfect every time. The servers are extremely attentive. Plenty of parking in the back of restaurant too.

This is one of my favorite places in the area. The food has been consistently great each time and they even offer a rewards program. They will work well with food allergies and the wait staff is very attentive.
The harvest chicken and the carbonara are my two favs but dont skip out on appetizers! Go for the artichokes!

My husband and I were attracted to this place due to the really cute downtown this city has. We’re not from this area but decided to pick a restaurant out of the many in cranford and we are so glad we picked this one! We loved the food! We had the baked asparagus and baked brie for appetizers and both were absolutely amazing! I was truly blown away. We had their highly recommended red sangria to drink and for our entrée we split the crabcakes. The crabcakes were pretty good however I could’ve easily ordered another round of the apps and made a full meal out of those! The service and prices were good. Overall, excellent place.

I went in with low expectations considering I am picky with Italian food and I was somewhat pleasantly surprised. We had the spinach salad which was good. The bacon wrapped shrimp was tasty of course, can’t go wrong with anything wrapped in bacon. The eggplant rollatini was decent, certainly not the best and the sauce was a bit too sweet for my liking. Husband had the beef tenderloin and said it was ‘OK’ so nothing to write home about. Would possibly return but not going to be one of our local go to spots for sure.

This restaurant is a family favorite, we have celebrated quite a few birthdays and graduations here. I have yet to bring someone who did not like the food. Having tried so many of the menu options, I am never disappointed. The pasta is my go to but the Chilean Sea Bass is amazing as well. Their Sangria is very tasty. Overall, a quaint and low key gem in the heart of downtown Cranford.

I saw a lot of advertising for this place so we decided to try it out, and that was our first mistake. We stopped in for an early dinner and there was no one else in the place. We stood at the hostess desk for over five minutes before someone decided to seat us! (we should have left at that point). After sitting for another five minutes I got up and went back to the front to ask for menus and told the woman that the waitress hasn’t been to our table yet. She said she’d send her right over. (We were the only ones in there). After sitting another 10 minutes with no waitress, we just got up and left. No wonder it was empty.

My wife and I were regulars at the restaurant in Madison until it closed down. We loved eating there and were big fans of BYOB and were sad that it closed.
Needless to say, we ate at the Cranford location tonight and loved it. It had everything that Madison had and more.
We started the evening with the bread and roasted garlic clove and bread dipping sauce which was super tasty. After that, we had our complementary salad with a great garlic salad dressing.
For beverages, we had a pitcher of peach sangria, which was recommended by our waiter. It was crisp and full of flavor. It was one of the best pitchers we have ever had.
For dinner, we had our favorites. I had the stacked chicken with Mozzarella cheese instead of the brie. The waiter was super accommodating and the service was stellar. My wife had the rigatoni a la mama. The sausage, broccoli and the sun-​dried tomatoes complement each other making the flavor of the pasta delightful.

We had a party of about a dozen people for lunch on a Tuesday. We arrived at 1. Had a table by the window. There weren’t many other diners. Though our order was taken right away, it was not served until 2 and took 5 minutes or more so we were saying «eat while it’s hot.»
The food was good and I love garlic but no one said it was over garlic-​ed. I had eggplant rolatini and it was delicious. It was a large enough portion that I «doggie bagged» one of the rolls. Everyone else left very little on their plates so I assume it too was very tasty. So I averaged the 5 starts for food taste with the 1 star for service.
Note the menu was large and looked like it could have been also used for dinner — there were no lunch «specials.»

My boyfriend and I came here for dinner upon the suggestions of my mom and a coworker. For our appetizer, we ordered little neck clams. The sauce was very good, but the clams were too salty for our liking. We were also brought out bread with a pesto dipping sauce and a baked head of garlic. It was amazing! We wanted more but opted not to so we wouldn’t be full when our meals came. For our entrées, we ordered lump crab cakes and the Romeo and Juliet (two steak medallions, shrimp scampi, and gilroy potatoes). Both meals were absolutely delicious! They came with house salads, which were good as well. For desert, we ordered crème brûlée. The sugar on top was melted perfectly and it was a great ending to our meal. We also ordered a pitcher of red sangria with our meal. It wasn’t anything to write home about, but it was still good and went well with our meal. Besides the little neck clams, my only other complaint would be that the prices are a bit high. Both entrées were around $ 30 each and we ended up paying around $ 124 for two people. We will probably come back again, but we won’t be making this a regular date night restaurant.

I drove all the way to Cranford to try this restaurant after hearing all my coworkers say how good it is. I would not say the 40 minute drive was worth it. The food was good and the staff were accommodating to my nut allergy, just a bit far from my home. The place is a bit expensive in my opinion.

I have been here several times and it is always a great meal. They serve everything with lots of garlic. If you are not a fan at all, do not bother going.
They start you off with a loaf of bread with a dipping sauce with garlic of course. Very good.
For appetizers, we ordered littleneck clams, Italian long hot peppers, sausage, and eggplant rollatine.
The littleneck clams ($ 12.95) was the only disappointment of the night. They were in fresh garlic, cilantro, thyme and white wine olive oil sauce. There was about 15 clams or something. The ones I had were sandy and salty. When I dipped bread in the sauce, that was extremely salty too. The Italian hot peppers ($ 8.95) were solid. I would have liked the peppers to be cooked a little more, but they were tasty. They gave at least 10 peppers. They were cooked in garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. The sausage (not sure of price) was the best appetizer I had. It was Spanish chorizo sautéed with garlic and white wine sauce. The sausage was very tender and the sauce was phenomenal. The sausage had a nice little kick to it as well. The eggplant rollatine ($ 10.95) was good. The eggplant seemed fresh and the tomato sauce was not too over the top. It was filled with ricotta, garlic and basil. The abundance of cheese was something I enjoyed very much.
I ordered the salmon St. Michelle ($ 24.95). All meals come with a fresh house salad. The salad consisted of lettuce, tomatoes, croutons, parmesan cheese, and a homemade vinaigrette dressing. It was a straight salad, no complaints. I liked the dressing a lot. The salmon was broiled with garlic and red peppers in a lemon veoute sauce with saffron rice. The piece of salmon was a good size. The seasoning along with the veoute sauce was delightful. The rice was cooked to perfection too. I did not think the red peppers fit with this dish, but they were good regardless. I also tried some one’s filet. The dish was called Romeo and Juliet. The filet was cooked medium and was unreal. It was one of the best filets I’ve had in a long time. I wish I ordered this dish instead because of how good this filet was.
For dessert, I ordered what I usually order, tartufo ($ 7.95). It was a good finish to a very good meal.
Will I go back? Easily.

Love this place, absolutely fantastic dishes, you can request to have no garlic or a little garlic. they serve a roasted garlic bulb with bread on every table, a little pricey like 25 a dish but well worth it

Visited for dinner on a quiet Wednesday night. They didn’t have a lot of staff working and we were able to seat ourselves. We were in the mood for fried calamari but it wasn’t offered on the menu. Little disappointed. Each entrée came with a house salad that was small. The table bread was warm and fresh and the garlic oil for dipping was really good. Our entrees included the Eggplant Rollatini, the crab cakes, and the cavatelli with broccoli and sausage ala mama. The portions were very generous and tasty. No complaints. We had the carrot cake for dessert which had a strange taste.
Overall the service was ok. We waited probably 25 minutes for our main course. It was also uncomfortably warm in the restaurant. The prices were very fair except the crab cakes ($ 26.96) was a bit high.

They don’t call it the garlic rose bistro for nothin’ — seriously every dish has a ridiculous amount of garlic in it. I’m okay with garlic but at some point it just becomes over kill. The garlic ice cream that is raved about was by far one of the most disgusting things I’ve ever had and I feel like I kind of know desserts. Overall the places okay when it comes to décor — with good service, The food was pricey and in my opinion just ok. Basically if you want to go to this place for the novelty of a restaurant that uses garlic as its main ingredient be my guest but if you want to go somewhere where you get your socks knocked off maybe skip this place.

Fantastic food. I have been here many times and its always good. Today we had lunch from there in our office and everyone was extremely happy with their lunch
I had my moms repass there in August and they did a fantastic job. So attentive and very good food. All the guests were very satisfied. Please try if you havent. Their potatoes are excellent.

I like this place but the obnoxious diners sitting at the table behind my group ruined our experience. They must’ve been sailors the way they were cussing up a storm. It was like they were the only ones dining that night. I’m surprised no one else complained about the experience. I’m not saying I don’t cuss but there was a older woman whose every other word was F*ck, MF & Sh*t! I mean really? Come on now. NO ONE wants to dine out and hear someone’s personal conversation.
I digress.
I had the Eggplant Rollatine as an app, it wasn’t tasty at all. It lacked garlic and pepper. For my entrée I had the crab cake dinner. That was very tasty! I’m not sure what kind of dressing they use for their house salad but it was amazing!
3 bottles of Wine later and I was feeling extremely hot :)

I am a garlic fiend. I eat it just about every night, raw, several cloves of it. I LOVE THE STUFF SO MUCH.
And…I really liked this place. I mean, the concept alone, sits well with me. The food was well executed and enjoyable, not incredible and super memorable but that’s rare. It was a great meal overall. The garlic ice cream was delish and stood out for obvious reasons.
The sangria is great and got my mom kind of drunk, which is rare. I got to see my mom laugh finally!!! MAJOR POINTS! Cute restaurant, nice atmosphere, good vibes.