When Café Amici's sign came down on Franklin Avenue in June 2025, the reflex reaction in a lot of towns would have been to brace for a vacancy, then wonder what chain or concept might eventually fill it. That's not what happened here. The same owners who had run the place for 23 years didn't sell the lease. They gutted the dining room, built the full bar they'd wanted for two decades, and finally got approval for the patio that had been stuck in permitting. Three months later, in September 2025, Wyckoff Tavern opened in the exact same 315 Franklin Avenue space, and this fall marks its first full year in business.
That's the pattern worth noticing if you live here and eat here regularly: Wyckoff's oldest addresses don't tend to turn over to strangers. They get inherited, reinvested in, and handed forward by the people who already know the room. It's true of the restaurant that reopened downtown last year, and it's true of the farm up Lawlins Road that's been feeding this town since before most of its houses existed.
A 23-Year Restaurant Becomes a 40-Year Chef's Kitchen
The interesting detail isn't that Café Amici closed. It's who showed up to run the kitchen next.
Wyckoff Tavern is led by chef and owner Arthur Toufayan, who brings more than 40 years in professional kitchens to a 3,000-square-foot tavern space, including stints at Union Square Café, the Waldorf Astoria, Aureole, and Mondrian, on top of the 23 years he already spent at Café Amici itself. That's a resume built at some of the most demanding dining rooms in New York, landing on Franklin Avenue instead of another flagship opening in the city. The menu still describes itself as farm-to-table, the same phrase Café Amici used for its Caprese and rigatoni bolognese, but the format shifted from a sit-down Italian-American restaurant to a 50-seat tavern with a 12-seat bar and daily fresh fish and oysters, built to work as easily for a quiet dinner as for watching a game at the bar. The 20-seat outdoor patio, the one piece of the old plan that took years to clear municipally, finally opened with the new concept.
For a resident, the practical read is this: the identity of the space changed, the cooking philosophy didn't, and the person behind both incarnations is the same. That's not a common outcome when a two-decade-plus restaurant closes. Most towns lose that kind of institutional memory the day the last dinner service ends. A year into the new concept, Wyckoff Tavern is heading into its second fall with the patio and full bar already broken in rather than brand new.
Ninety Years, Four Generations, One Address
Abma's Farm runs on an even longer version of the same logic. The farm at 700 Lawlins Road sits on 32 acres with roots back to the 1790s, and it's been in continuous operation for more than 90 years under the Abma family, currently in its fourth generation. It remains Bergen County's only working produce and egg farm, which is a distinction that gets harder to hold onto every year land in this part of North Jersey gets developed for something else.
What makes Abma's a genuine fall destination rather than a nostalgic holdover is that the family keeps adding to it instead of just maintaining it. The 200-year-old Dutch-style barn, one of the last of its kind still standing in the country, now houses a full farm market alongside a Tomasello Winery tasting room, a flight running $16 per person. The petting zoo admission runs $5.50 to $7 depending on age, cheaper if you book online than if you pay at the gate, a small friction worth knowing before a Saturday trip with kids in tow. Beyond the market, fall means pumpkin picking, tractor-drawn hayrides, a daytime corn maze included with every pick-your-own ticket, and select Friday and Saturday night rides that require reservations. The farm-to-table dinners hosted by Josh and Valerie Abma and Chef Kim happen only a handful of times a year and reliably sell out through a waitlist months in advance.
None of that reads like a business trying to survive. It reads like a family business that keeps finding new reasons for people to drive up Lawlins Road, without ever needing to become something else to do it.
What Actually Changed, What Didn't
| Café Amici → Wyckoff Tavern | Abma's Farm | |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Same owners, same chef | Same family, fourth generation |
| Timeline | Closed June 2025, reopened September 2025 | Operating continuously for 90+ years |
| What's new | Full bar, approved patio, tavern format | Tomasello tasting room, night hayrides, chef-hosted dinners |
| What stayed | Farm-to-table cooking philosophy, 315 Franklin Ave address | Family name, 700 Lawlins Rd address, produce and egg farming |
Laid out side by side, the two stories rhyme. Both show a Wyckoff institution absorbing change from the inside rather than being replaced from the outside. Willow & Whisk fits the same shape from a different angle: it's not new at all, and that's exactly the point. The breakfast and brunch spot has been voted Best of Bergen every year from 2021 through 2026, which means it earned the same distinction six years running rather than riding a single opening-week wave of attention. In a restaurant economy where turnover is normal, six straight years of the same recognition is its own kind of local data point.
What This Means for Your Actual Weekend
If you're mapping out the next few weekends, the throughline gives you a workable route rather than a scattered list. Saturday morning starts at Willow & Whisk, whose outdoor seating with heat lamps makes it usable well past the point most patios close for the season. From there, an afternoon at Abma's Farm covers the pumpkin patch and hayride while the kids are still fresh, with the option to circle back for a Friday or Saturday night ride if you'd rather see the farm lit up after dark. Dinner reservations at Wyckoff Tavern make sense on a night you want the patio while it's still warm enough to use it, since a 40-year chef's tasting instincts are easier to notice over a full meal than a quick bar order.
None of this requires treating Wyckoff like a place you're evaluating. It's the fall rotation for people who already live here, built around three addresses that didn't need a grand-opening headline this year because they'd already earned their place the year, or the ninety years, before it.
The Real Pattern
Towns that lose their character usually lose it one lease at a time, when a longtime owner sells to whoever's next in line with capital, and the replacement has no relationship to what came before. Wyckoff's version of change looks different. The same hands that ran Café Amici for 23 years are the ones plating oysters at Wyckoff Tavern tonight. The same family that's farmed 700 Lawlins Road since the 1790s is the one pouring Tomasello wine flights inside a 200-year-old barn this month. Willow & Whisk didn't need a rebrand to stay the town's favorite brunch spot for six consecutive years.
That kind of continuity doesn't show up in a listicle of best restaurants, because it's not really about the restaurants. It's about who's still standing behind the counter when the sign changes, and in Wyckoff, more often than not, it's someone who was already there.
If you're watching this stretch of Franklin Avenue and Lawlins Road with more than casual interest, whether you're weighing a move to be closer to it or wondering what your own Wyckoff home is worth in a market shaped by the same kind of long-term local ownership, Joseph Simone has spent decades tracking exactly this kind of neighborhood detail. Request a free home valuation and local market consultation to talk through what continuity like this means for your own address.
