Route 34 Strip Is Aberdeen-Matawan's New Main Street

Times change.

When we first moved to the area thirty years ago, Main Street in Matawan was a different place. A neighborhood-sized Foodtown grocery store was not in contention with Price Club. Harris Hardware was not yet wrestling with Home Depot and Loews. Matawan Drugs was not competing with CVS and Walgreens. And Johnnie's Cozy Corner was serving breakfast and lunch to a walk-in crowd that wasn't coveting an IHOP meal. While there's still a bank, a post office, and a library on downtown Main Street, there's little else to draw a crowd.

Today's Main Street is the Route 34 Strip between Main Street in Matawan and Lloyd Road in Aberdeen. Locals looking to avoid the big box stores and movie multiplexes in Keyport, Hazlet, and Holmdel go instead to convenient shopping centers and stand-alone store fronts along Route 34. Here are some of my favorites:

• My regular light breakfast gnosheries are Starbucks and Eli's Bagels. See what Mack-Morris Realtors has to say about Eli's. They're not the only ones offering praise.
  
• A more substantial meal can be found at Park Place Diner, Trattoria Rustica, or Court Jester. Peter's Fishery is good but my wife is allergic to shrimp so I'm not a regular.
  
• An exotic meal can always be found at Amravathi (Indian), Kicky's (pan-Asian), or Mahzou (Japanese).
  
• Fast food includes many of the regulars: McDonald's, Taco Bell, KFC, and Burger King. (Wendy's is on Rte 35. Subway is near the Parkway Exit 120; and where the heck is a local Quiznos??)
• When Friendly's closed, that left the strip with no chain restaurants: the closest Applebee's are in Middletown and Marlboro; Friendly's and TGIFridays are in Hazlet. Red Lobster is in East Brunswick. And Chili's and Houlihan's are in Holmdel. (I heard that a Benihana will replace the Macaroni Grill that closed in Holmdel. True?)
  
• Summertime desserts are found on the strip at Ice Cream Palace or, just north a ways on Route 34 to Rita's Italian Ices. And don't forget Stewart's drive-thru on Main Street just south of Route 34 for summertime burgers, fries, and fountain drinks and desserts.
• Shop Rite and Stop and Shop are the big grocery stores on the strip. Maybe too big? Neither is the kind of place you want to drop into for a quick purchase of hot dog rolls or milk and eggs. Shop Rite has lots of ready to eat meals and a fancy bakery near the door, but you have to walk to Pretoria to find the milk, eggs, and juices. No doubt there is a market for a cozier, more convenient grocer.
• None of the drug stores have a local character. That market is glutted. I think I shop most at Walgreens on Broad Street, but they're all pretty much the same. Watch for a shakeout.
• Bank of America probably has the most local branches but its office along the Route 34 strip is completely off anyone's radar. Could it be more difficult to get into or leave? I take my drive-thru ATM business to the BOA branches on Main Street in downtown Matawan and the Hazlet branch near Airport Plaza. (I dearly miss the drive-thru ATM in the A&P shopping center on Route 35, by the way. That ATM disappeared when the UJB branch closed and brought its ATM into the A&P store eons ago. That old branch became the Cliffwood branch of the US Post Office, thus the many inexplicable "drive-thru lanes" behind the post office.)
• For fun there is Strathmore Lanes and the Clearview Cinemas in Strathmore Shopping Center. You can rent a movie at Blockbuster, but I suspect that business is on borrowed time.