At a time when restaurant design has neared aesthetic ubiquity—we’re looking at you, Edison bulbs—it is refreshing when a space bucks the trend. To enter Shana’s Wild Fig in Blackwood (which opened in November) is to encounter a different take on American hospitality. Eye-popping pink accents abound, feminine down to the feather-stuffed bud vases. Velvet ropes set off tables in the front room, where an upright piano is perched beneath a beaded chandelier. A rehabbed Louis XV couch offers front-row seating for weekend jazz, and modern art hangs on the walls.
This is a maximalist space, an artistic point of view written in capital letters. Yet the lasting memory after a meal here is one of kind, generous hospitality. Dinner at Shana’s feels like you are dining with family friends.

Courtesy of Shana’s Wild Fig