New Jersey is the US state no one thinks to visit – here’s why you should

There’s more to this unsung destination than ‘The Sopranos’ and Bruce Springsteen. Ellie Seymour discovers a state of bite-sized distances and diverse cultural, natural and culinary surprises

Forget Manhattan: it’s all about New Jersey (Ellie Seymour)

“Two dead Sopranos in the same bar on the same night, what are the chances of that?”

On stage, Italian-American singer Vincent Pastore mused to a packed-out audience in a thick New Jersey drawl. He was mid-rendition of Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’with his band the Gangster Squad. It was Friday, and I was enjoying a night of live music in the divey low-lit Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, a classic New Jersey shore town with a creative edge set to boom, made famous when American rock legend, Bruce Springsteen, released his 1972 debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

Pastore made it on screen as mafia boss Tony Soprano’s best friend, Salvatore ‘Big Pussy’ Bonpensiero, in HBO’s legendary 1999 TV show, The Sopranos, which was set and filmed in and around New Jersey nearly 25 years ago. Ironically, it’s in one episode set in Asbury Park that Pastore’s character meets his end. As for the second dead Soprano? Admittedly I struggled to spot him, but I like to think it was Tony Soprano’s right-hand man, Silvio Dante, played by Steven Van Zandt, guitarist in Springsteen’s E Street Band.

The empty sands of Cape May beach (Ellie Seymour)

I was halfway through a short but sweet week-long road trip through the unsung US state of New Jersey, which began three days earlier in Cape May in the state’s south, and would end almost 150 miles north in Newark. For travellers short on time, like me, New Jersey offers a journey of bite-sized distances and diverse cultural, natural and culinary surprises, without the overcrowding in other beach enclaves near New York, like the Hamptons on Long Island – even in peak summer.

Read more on USA travel:

• A gas station culinary trail around No Man’s Land, Louisiana
• Sublime soaks: Colorado’s best hot springs to try
• Best USA holidays for the ultimate American experiences

And there wasn’t a tacky Jersey Shore cliché in sight. Earlier that day, I’d checked into the dreamlike surfside Asbury Ocean Club – my room overlooking a dune garden – just as Stevie Nicks did in 2021 when in town for the See.Hear.Now music festival. Later, at nearby Transparent Clinch Gallery, I’d lost myself browsing the fine art photos of rock greats taken by the owner, Danny Clinch, Bruce Springsteen’s official photographer. I mentioned my love of 1990s band Pearl Jam to the lovely charismatic manager, Tina, who whisked me into the gallery office to show me a typewriter lead singer Eddie Vedder used in a music video. No big deal.

Surrounded by colourful wooden houses, I felt I’d been plunged into 1960s San Francisco, pre-gentrification

A stroll along its nostalgic boardwalk, framed by its iconic Paramount Theatre and Convention Hall, offered some perspective, before expanding my seafront horizons on a wander around the residential streets. Surrounded by colourful wooden houses, I felt I’d been plunged into 1960s San Francisco, pre-gentrification. One of the properties is now home to the stylish St Laurent Social Club, a friendly members’ retreat with chic beach-house vibes, 20 rooms, a pool and a lively restaurant, Heirloom. Sipping a ‘milk punch’ – a spicy blend of rum and pineapple – I watched in awe as fashionable staff standing together around a well-lit table by an open kitchen plated up delicate dishes together; a creative spectacle performed with precision yet ease in full view of diners.

Cape May, an easy 40-mile drive south-east from Philadelphia airport where I touched down, is the US’s oldest holiday resort. This Disneyland of colourful Victorian seaside architecture preserved in a historic district is best explored on a trolley tour. People come for whale watching, the monarch butterfly migration and birdwatching – it’s the world’s best destination for twitching apparently, according to National Geographic. It’s also something of a little-known celebrity hangout, attracting the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Bradley Cooper and Tom Cruise, among others, to its out-of-the-way shores.

The iconic Paramount Theatre sits on a nostalgic boardwalk in Asbury Park (Ellie Seymour)

“There’s lots of cocktail party conversation here,” said Diane Wieland, director of tourism for Cape May, when I asked about local brewery the Mooncussers Bar over breakfast at my historic hotel, The Southern Mansion. “Mooncussers were pirates,” she added. On nights when the moon was dim and the sky was dark, ‘mooncussers’ would eliminate the light from any lighthouse or other light source and use their own light to make ships crash before looting them. I considered the pirates’ cunning while climbing the 199 steps of the historic 1859 Cape May lighthouse in Cape May Point State Park, for a view over freshwater meadows, ponds, forests, and dunes bathed in the pink light of dusk.

A highlight of my trip was discovering the lesser-known Wildwoods, a holiday resort on a barrier island with infinite butter-coloured beaches, a 20-minute drive north from Cape May. Developed in the 1950s and 1960s, many original mid-century buildings have since been replaced with condos, but I was amazed at the number that remain. Today, thanks to a move in the late 1990s to preserve the area’s diners, motels and glorious neon signs, The Wildwoods is home to the largest concentration of mid-century doo-wop architecture in America. A visit to the Doo Wop Experience Museum – filled with old signage and other memorabilia – was the ideal way to better understand the Wildwoods.

The Wildwoods is brimming with interesting architecture (Ellie Seymour)

Frank’s Deli, an Asbury diner institution since 1960, was a must-stop before the easy, hour-long drive inland to leafy Princeton, famous for its Ivy League university, whose football team were playing rivals Yale at home the Saturday I visited, causing a buzz around town. An upbeat two-hour history walking tour was the perfect introduction to New Jersey’s haven for big thinkers. Here, both Robert Oppenheimer, inventor of the atomic bomb, and Albert Einstein, the genius behind the theory of relativity – often seen walking barefoot around town – had offices at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. This space was founded by a Newark philanthropist, Oppenheimer himself described as somewhere “great minds don’t have to tune out the world”.

As I drove Highway 95 through a gritty industrial landscape, I felt my journey play out like the opening credits of a Sopranos episode

Newark, my final destination, approached all too soon. As I drove Highway 95 through a gritty industrial landscape, I felt my journey play out like the opening credits of a Sopranos episode. A collage of northern Jersey snapshots appeared before me: the sign for the New Jersey Turnpike, pylons and puffing factory chimneys, stolen glimpses of Manhattan’s distant skyline – dreamy up close from Liberty State Park in Jersey City – the façade of the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, the Bada Bing! strip club. Poised in my driver’s seat, I felt ready to seize whatever surprise New Jersey next had in store for me.

Ellie was a guest of Visit New Jersey and America As You Like It.

Travel essentials

Getting there

British Airways flies daily from London Heathrow to Philadelphia or Newark, New Jersey.

Staying there

The museum-like Southern Mansion in Cape May is an opulent bed and breakfast in an 1860 historic home surrounded by manicured gardens.

The sophisticated Asbury Ocean Club Hotel offers serene rooms with terraces onto a landscape dune garden a minute from the Asbury Park boardwalk and beach.

Read more best USA hotel reviews