Five days ago, Lackawanna Plaza shut down for eight acres of jazz. The Montclair Jazz Festival's Downtown Jamboree and Block Party ran from noon to 10 p.m. on Saturday, with Christian McBride's Grammy-winning Big Band, Dianne Reeves, Patrice Rushen, and the Spanish Harlem Orchestra taking turns on the main stage while Grove Street sat closed to traffic. It was the 17th year the festival has done this, and it drew the kind of crowd that now requires a free advance registration just to manage the gate.
About six weeks from now, on September 26, something happens on Bellevue Avenue that has never happened there before. A daylong music festival called Uptown Sound will close the street and put a stage where cars usually park. It is Upper Montclair's first standalone music festival, organized by two owners of a local burger restaurant.
The two festivals offer distinct settings for Montclair's food and music scene this year. It is not a coincidence that both corridors are getting new restaurants at the same time their festivals are taking shape. If you live here, the Jazz Festival has just taken place downtown, and Uptown Sound is coming up on Bellevue Avenue.
How Uptown Sound Began
Dan Campeas and Dayanna Ordonez own Dan & Day's Burger Place on Bellevue Avenue. They announced the festival on Instagram in May, according to Montclair Local, which quoted Campeas describing the goal as bringing more business and attention to uptown.
What started as a single Instagram post turned into a full afternoon on Bellevue Avenue, running 2 to 8 p.m., free and open to everyone, dogs welcome on a leash. The festival is still working toward formal nonprofit status, but it already has a presenting sponsor in Frederic's Fine Jewelers and a five-week lead-up called Summer Stage, free Friday concerts on the lawn of St. James Episcopal Church at 581 Valley Road, backed by Radio Free Montclair. Campeas has said the long-term goal is something closer to Maplewoodstock than a typical street fair.
The two corridors now offer different backdrops for the season's restaurant openings.
What Downtown Built Around Its Institution
Bloomfield Avenue didn't need a reason to get new restaurants this year, but it got several anyway, timed almost perfectly with the run-up to the Jazz Festival. Campofiore opened March 31 at 664 Bloomfield Avenue, a farm-to-table Italian concept from Stout NYC Hospitality Group led by chef Dan Drohan, who spent 16 years as executive chef at Otto Enoteca Pizzeria in New York before helping launch Eataly Flatiron. Ju-Ichi opened in June at 512 Bloomfield Avenue, a family-owned sushi and ramen spot with roots in Morristown. A few doors down, Ani Ramen at 511 Bloomfield added a full sushi program under executive chef Julian Valencia, something the longtime ramen shop, open since 2014, had never offered before. Hummus Republic took over the old Plaza Convenience Plus space at 412 Bloomfield, and Insomnia Cookies opened its doors at 332 Bloomfield in April, catering as much to Montclair State students as to late-night regulars.
That stretch of Bloomfield Avenue is the same stretch the Gotham Kings marched through Saturday, leading a New Orleans-style second line from Church Street and Park Avenue to the festival grounds at Lackawanna Plaza. Every restaurant that opened this year sits inside the corridor the festival has anchored for 17 years. The Jazz Festival brings a recurring audience to the downtown corridor, alongside this year's restaurant openings.
Uptown's New Festival and Restaurant Scene
Valley Road's version of this story looks different because there was no festival to build around until this fall. Clementina opened in June at 627 Valley Road, taking over the former Saunders Hardware space with a menu from chef Michele Rocchi inspired by the Adriatic coast. A few storefronts away, the family-owned Mediterranean spot formerly known as Jackie's Grillette expanded into the space next door at 612 Valley Road and shortened its name to just Jackie's, giving a longtime neighborhood favorite more room without losing the breakfast sandwiches and fresh juices that built its following.
Those two openings now sit inside the same corridor where Uptown Sound will close Bellevue Avenue on September 26. A week before that, on September 19, the annual Upper Montclair Sidewalk Sale runs from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Together, the Sidewalk Sale and Uptown Sound will give Upper Montclair programming on two consecutive weekends.
Two Festivals, Side by Side
The scale difference between the two events is worth naming plainly, because it's part of what makes the uptown effort notable.
| Downtown Jamboree + Block Party | Uptown Sound | |
|---|---|---|
| Date | Saturday, August 15 | Saturday, September 26 |
| Location | Lackawanna Plaza, Bloomfield Avenue | Bellevue Avenue, Upper Montclair |
| Hours | 12 p.m. to 10 p.m. | 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. |
| History | 17th annual | First edition |
| Access | Free, advance Jam Pass registration required | Free, no registration mentioned |
| Scale | Roughly 30,000 attendees, eight acres of festival grounds | Single-street closure, five or six full band sets |
The Jazz Festival has 17 years of institutional weight behind it, a nonprofit producer in Jazz House Kids, and this year a Smithsonian partnership tied to the nation's 250th anniversary. Uptown Sound is a new festival, preceded by a summer of Friday night warmup shows. The Jazz Festival has just taken place downtown, while Uptown Sound is still ahead.
What This Means for the Next Six Weeks
If you already live in Montclair, the practical takeaway isn't which festival is bigger, but how each corridor pairs with its restaurant scene.
Downtown, the restaurant cluster around Campofiore, Ju-Ichi, and Ani Ramen's new sushi menu sits an easy walk from Lackawanna Plaza, where festivalgoers could pair a pre-festival dinner reservation with a stroll to the block party. Uptown, Clementina and Jackie's sit close enough to Bellevue Avenue that a Sidewalk Sale afternoon on September 19 can turn into dinner without moving the car, and the same is true for Uptown Sound a week later.
This year brings new restaurants on both streets and a new festival in Upper Montclair alongside the established Jazz Festival downtown.
Whether you grabbed a slice window pizza before the Jazz Fest or plan to try Clementina before Uptown Sound's first downbeat, the short version is this: Montclair's two main streets offer different reasons for a Saturday outing this year.
If you're keeping an eye on how neighborhoods like this one continue to develop, whether that's the restaurant scene or the housing market underneath it, Fast Track Real Estate Company has spent four decades watching North Jersey towns change block by block. Reach out when you're ready to talk about what's next, on Bloomfield Avenue, Valley Road, or wherever your next move takes you.
