Holsten’s – The ExhaustNotes Blog

By Joe Berk

Very few (if any) final scenes have sparked as much discussion and controversy as the final Sopranos scene. Tony Soprano and his family are meeting for dinner at Holsten’s in Bloomfield, New Jersey, the fictional mob wars between the New York and New Jersey families have ended, and we think all is well. Their favorite local restaurant is Holsten’s, which Tony mentions in the series. Is it a real place?

Absolutely. And it’s good. We found Holsten’s and had lunch there (it’s at 1063 Broad Street in Bloomfield, New Jersey), and I was surprised. The place has to be the most famous small local restaurant in the world, and you’d think with the kind of publicity they’ve had, they wouldn’t be very good. People from literally all over the world (more on that in a minute) find their way to Holsten’s. But it is good. Very good, in fact. More on that in a minute, too.

I was able to park directly in front of Holsten’s, and as I was getting out, I noticed a young couple scrambling to cross the street and get into the restaurant. I had an idea why, so I slowed down a bit.

Okay, to make what I’m going to show you make sense, I need to tell you a bit about that last scene up front. In the photo below, there are three Holsten’s locations you need to know about. The photo below shows them as you enter the restaurant.

As you enter Holsten’s, there’s a long lunch counter and booths at the back of the restaurant. Arrow B points to where the likely hitman initially sat. Arrow A points to the small hallway that leads to the restrooms, where the shot that took out Tony was fired from. Arrow C points to the booth where Tony sat, enjoying his onion rings, when he got whacked.

That young couple racing to get into the restaurant? I was right. They were hustling to grab the booth all the way in the back, where Tony, Carmela, and AJ sat. In the Sopranos scene, Tony was flipping through the mini-jukebox on the table. Today it’s the only table in the restaurant that has that little jukebox. They used to be at every table in any New Jersey diner. Notice the sign denoting the booth, too.

We sat one booth up from the Sopranos’ booth and we started talking to the young couple I mentioned above. They were doing the same thing we were: hitting locations that appear in different Sopranos episodes. Sue told them we were from California. They told us they were from (get this) Poland! Yep, they flew all the way from Poland to do what we were doing. These folks were serious Sopranos fans. Check out his tattoos:

This is beyond being a mere fan, I think.

Impressive. Christopher, Tony, Silvio, and Pauly. And before you ask: Yes, I know these are fictional characters.

You no doubt realize by now that I am a serious Sopranos fan. But I don’t have any tattoos denoting any of the characters in The Sopranos, and I have no plans to get any.

We had a lunch, and (as mentioned above), it was surprisingly good. I had a tuna melt. We ordered a plate of onion rings. Just minutes before he got whacked, Tony Soprano said they were the best onion rings in the state. I’ve sampled a lot of onion rings in New Jersey, and I think he was right.

The menu was simple. Our lunch selections were excellent. The people from Poland thought so, too.

We left feeling pretty good. I grabbed one more shot with my cell phone.

A parting shot: The Holsten’s storefront.

About that last scene: The audience never does find out exactly what happened. Tony looks up as Meadow (his daughter) is entering the restaurant, and the screen and the sound suddenly go to a silent black. Most people thought their TVs had gone out. I did. Then the credits start rolling by, and we realized that one of the best series ever, all six seasons of it, were over. It was brilliant.

Take a look, remembering the locations I pointed out in that photo above.

The Sopranos ExNotes Wrap Up (for now)

Well, sort of. I’m not entirely done with The Sopranos. This is the fourth (or maybe fifth) one of our blogs on The Sopranos, and I don’t have any more planned until the next trip back to the Garden State. About that “maybe fifth” business: One of The Sopranos episodes takes place in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. I rode the Pine Barrens when I did the piece on Jerry Dowgin’s Honda 305 Scrambler (rest in peace, Jerry). The Sopranos episode didn’t actually take place in the Pine Barrens, as anybody knows who’s ever been there (it was filmed in a forest somewhere in New York, and they didn’t even have pine trees). Parts of that episode were funny as hell, though, as you can see in this clip: