CB Holdings of Mountainview is closing 30 of its nearly 60 restaurants nationwide, including
Charlie Brown's Steakhouse on Route 79 in Matawan. Two-thirds of the restaurants to be shuttered are in New Jersey. Today's announcement, details of which can be found at the
Newark Star-Ledger, is bad news for the 1,400 employees affected by it.
I am very sad to hear of Charlie Browns in Matawan closing. We have been going there for 20 years and love it there. It is a cozy place with great French onion soup and we love the salad bar.
ReplyDeleteI doubt the venue will remain vacant very long. It would be nice to see a locally themed and operated restaurant that focuses on Matawan's Revolutionary War experience. When Poet's Inn (an old coach house and inn frequented by the local Revolutionary War era poet Philipp Freneau) became The Brass Rail, we lost our only local restaurant with an historic theme. Remember that the British burned down the Presbyterian Church here. Patriots from this area served at the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse and even disabled the Sandy Hook lighthouse to hamper British operations during the war. British raids of the area were common. A few Borough-authorized directional signs and state-funded historic site markers would point tourists to the Freneau graveyard, Burroughs Mansion, the Mount Pleasant Presbyterian churchand graveyard, even the site of the 1916 shark attacks (hint: the centennial of that event is fast approaching and could be a boon to local commerce is taken advantage of by the chamber of commerce and Borough). Take a look at the new directional signs placed by Keyport for an example of how it's done.
ReplyDeleteMatawan does a horrible job highlighting the good points in town. There's a lake right on main street without even a bench or any type of park area near it. Instead they have a 7-11 with day laborers littering it. Some new signs, sprucing up the sidewalks with flowers and pushing it's business owners to improve their signage and facades would make a huge improvement in town. Then pushing it's historic sights would seem to make sense. Maybe a new coat of white paint on burroughs mansion. They can't even paint parking spaces on main street or how about repaving their parking lots and putting in white lines to signify a parking space. It would be nice to see some effort to improve main street but I haven't seen it in years....
ReplyDeleteWe arrived here from England on 18 November to stay with our daughter and family as we do several times each year. It was my husband's 65th Borthday yesterday and we were lookikng forward to enjoying our one of our usual meals out at Charlie Browns in Matawan this evening. the restaurant was always so busy. The staff were so welcoming it was a great shock to find that this restaurant had closed!
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