Good news, pizza lovers! After a months-long closure for renovations, Margherita’s on Washington Street in Hoboken officially re-opens its doors tomorrow. After months of updating residents on how the renovations were going via Instagram, Hobokenites finally get to see the newly-done interior and exterior for themselves.
Located at 740 Washington Street, Margherita’s isn’t just known for its slices of pizza. Margherita’s has been open in Hoboken for 26 years, serving everything from iconic Italian pasta dishes like cavatelli and broccoli and seafood like lobster ravioli and seafood Margherita. At the new-and-improved Margherita’s on Washington, patrons will also be treated to a slew of delicious desserts, like a homemade tiramisu. Keep reading to learn more about Margherita’s re-opening on Washington Street.
The Menu
Speaking of tiramisu and seafood Margherita, if you loved the Margherita menu before, you’ll love it now, too. For the most part, Director of Operations Sherry Geck says the menu remains untouched.
“The menu is the same,” Geck tells Hoboken Girl. “We just want to execute it a little bit better. All of our restaurants source from the same companies, mostly local companies and distributors, to try to get things fresher and have a better taste to them.”
So all those penne and parm dishes you’ve been dreaming of for the past seven months? They’ll still be there. Only, they’ll be even better than you remember them!
“We want to make sure the recipes are the same, but just fine-tune them a little bit,” Geck adds.
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The Renovations
This past February, Margherita’s owner Matthew Kopac announced that the local-favorite Italian restaurant would be shutting down for renovations. Ever since temporarily shutting down for construction, the official Margherita’s Instagram has been uploading snapshots of the renovation progression.
In April, the account shared a photo of the newly-tiled bathroom floor and walls. “We promise it will be worth the wait,” the caption read at the time. Then, the next update came over the summer when the Margherita’s Instagram premiered a new sunny-yellow logo featuring a doodle of a flower and the promise, “cucina Italiana reopening soon!”
Soon after the logo premiered, Margherita’s uploaded photos of their new wallpaper — white, yellow, and black paper with lemons and a funky green wall with zebras plastered across it — on IG.
Then finally, in September, fans of the long-time Hoboken staple got the first substantial sneak-peek into the new space.
Featuring mustard yellow light fixtures, deep green benches, and brick and wooden features, the inside of Margherita’s echoes the outside. You’ll see lots of greenery and plants inside, as well as some fun artwork on the walls.
Of the new interior space and overall ambiance of the restaurant, Margherita’s Director of Operations Sherry Geck said, “The new space has been completely renovated. We were going to do just a facelift to make sure the space fit what we wanted, the same feel for [our other restaurants] Matthew’s and White Star, the same kind of ambiance.”
That ambiance sticks true to the most important tenet Margherita’s has cherished over the past 26 years: family.
“It’s a family setting, warm, and inviting,” Geck says. “We wanted to make it very homey with all the plants and stuff like that.”
Even the pictures on the wall have significant, family-oriented meaning.
“We have pictures on the wall that are pictures of the owners. They got married in Italy this past year, so there’s pictures of Italy itself, and from their wedding. It’s all very personal,” Geck adds.
You may have noticed that the mustard yellow-and-green theme as well as the flower on the signage is new, too. Geck says Margherita’s went through a full-on rebranding with the goal of creating signage and a logo that felt personal and rustic.
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“We wanted it to feel more like a rustic feel. Like a coastal Italian kind of feel to it color-wise,” Geck says.
You may recall that Margherita’s has always been a walk-in kind of place, never accepting reservations in the past. Geck says that this will be the case once Margherita’s re-opens, but when things die down a little after the opening, the restaurant will consider taking people by reservation. For now though, the space remains first-come, first-serve.
The Opening
Margherita’s officially opens Thursday, November 7th at 11:30AM and Geck says the thing she’s most looking forward to about the grand re-opening is you, the people.
“[I’m most excited to] just get it back and running. It’s been a long time. It’s been seven months,” Geck explains. “We took a long time to get it done. We were going to do a facelift and then noticed there were some things that needed to be addressed, so we decided to do those first before the facelift. We’re excited to get back in there and to feed Hoboken!”
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