This New Jersey diner served a great meatloaf to Guy Fieri

Last month the iconic Guy Fieri of The Food Network and the host of the famous show Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives pulled his iconic red convertible to the historic Vincentown Diner in Southampton Township, NJ, and could not stop eating the mile-high meatloaf.

The Vincentown Diner is a classic diner that originally opened in 1953, then moved to a new bigger location in 1979 and had restaurant upgrades and management changes, most recently in 2022, but the wonderful quality of the comfort food never changed and has only gotten better. What is impressive about the Vincentown Diner menu is that there is a “normal” number of choices on the menu because it would be impossible to have 100 fresh farm-to-table choices to serve. As we all know, the standard diner here in New Jersey has a substantial number of choices but you know that not every dish on that menu is fresh or farm-to-table.

The Vincentown Diner uses produce from local area farms, they have local craft beers and serve local area vintage wines. They make their dishes from scratch and serve them as fresh as they can be.

The effort that goes into the meatloaf is amazing. They start with a 75/25 ratio of meat, spices, homemade garlic-infused breadcrumbs, milk, sauteed onions, and peppers with a meatloaf sauce that is made with ketchup, maple syrup, steak sauce, spicy sauce, and Montreal seasoning, all cooked. The meatloaf goes in the oven and a few minutes before it is pulled out, they add more meatloaf sauce to glaze it. The total cooking time is about an hour.

After they pull the meatloaf out of the oven, they slice two thick pieces and put them on the flat grill so they get some texture, then after they’re done they add a scoop of their homemade mashed potatoes, add a slice of meatloaf, add more potatoes and the second slice of meatloaf and top it with the homemade gravy.

The gravy is impressive. It includes roasted veal bones, beef paste, sauteed onion, carrots and celery, a bunch of rosemary and thyme, water and this cooks for about 7 hours then it’s drained and a roux is made with butter vegetables, homemade tomato sauce, ground prime rib, and other spices, and it’s emulsified with the stock being added and the gravy ends up thick and very flavorful. They add the gravy to the “mile-high” meatloaf and top it with frizzled onions.

Guy said, “I can’t stop eating this, it’s so flavorful.”

There is more to the meatloaf, but I wanted to point out the effort and process of making a classic meatloaf. That is the effort that The Vincentown Diner puts into every dish. This is a must-stop and a destination for incredibly good homemade scratch farm-to-table dishes.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 weekend host Big Joe Henry. Any opinions expressed are Big Joe’s own.

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