New Jersey Restaurant Among Best In U.S. For Brunch, New List Says

NEW JERSEY — If you’re looking for a brunch spot to take Mom for Mother’s Day, one New Jersey eatery is on the list of 2025’s Top 100 Brunch Restaurants by the online reservation service OpenTable.

Each year, OpenTable looks at diner reviews and demand metrics to develop its list of the best brunch restaurants for Mother’s Day. The restaurant in New Jersey is:

Tops Diner
Established in 1942, this East Newark restaurant aims to grow as its clients do and continue to serve both its Newark family and the community at large, according to their website.

Menu options range from milkshakes to disco fries, pizza, salads, burgers and more. For those who enjoy eating early, the diner also offers breakfast options, including buttermilk pancakes and Belgian waffles.

In March 2024, the diner made the list of 59 Iconic U.S. Restaurants To Try Before You Die, and was named as one of the best diners in the country in 2017.

To make a reservation at Tops Diner, you can visit their OpenTable page. To learn more about the diner, you can visit their website.

The OpenTable list of 100 brunch spots includes restaurants from 25 states. California had almost a quarter of them, with 22 on the list, followed by New York with 12 and Illinois with 11.

Other states represented on the list are Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington and the District of Columbia.

The list is based on more than 10.5 million reviews from diners who booked their reservations on OpenTable from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, 2004.

Minimum thresholds were set for the number of reviews a restaurant had to have to be considered for a review, and the percentage of five-star reviews, the percentage of reservations made in advance, and the percentage of direct searches were among the unique data points considered in the development of the list.

Brunch reviews and Sunday lunch availability were also considered.

Mother’s Day spending is projected to be at a record $34.1 billion this year, according to the annual consumer survey by the National Retail Federation. Of that amount, Mother’s Day celebrants plan to spend $6.3 billion on special outings, including going out to eat.