Eno Terra restaurant helping to protect the earth
Kingston eatery certified as 'green'
BY CHRIS MURINO Staff Writer

SOUTH BRUNSWICK — Eno Terra, a newly opened restaurant on Route 27 in Kingston, held its grand opening on Friday. The restaurant, co-owned by Carlo and Raoul Momo, has been certified green and has over 7,500 bottles of wine in stock.

Carlo Momo has been in the restaurant business for 26 years.

"I got involved with it because of my brother," Momo said. "I just graduated and it seemed like a pretty fun thing to do."

Momo talked about his parents, who owned an Italian deli named after Teresa, Carlo's mom, in Rockland County, N.Y.

"We had to do that most of our lives, during weekends and summers," Momo said.

The brothers now own the Terra Momo Restaurant Group, which has three restaurants and one boulangerie. Carlo talked about the differences between this new venture, Eno Terra, and the other restaurants, Teresa Café and Mediterra in Princeton.

"We're concentrating on local sourcing here more than the other restaurants, though we do a decent job with the others," Momo said. "We're a certified green restaurant, one of four in the state. [Another difference] is the depth of the wine program."

Momo believes it is extremely important to get ingredients from local areas, and the restaurant's philosophy is "Eat Local, Drink Global." Most of the ingredients used at the restaurant will be shipped from within a 50-mile radius.

"Why would you get produce flown in or trucked in just for the sake of having it out of season?" Momo said. "It's an oldfashioned approach to eating. You eat what's in season."

Momo cannot ignore what is going on around the world, in terms of the regressing economic situation and global warming. Eno Terra was certified a green restaurant last week, as well, by the Green Restaurant Association (GRA), a nonprofit organization that tries to improve sustainability in the restaurant industry.

"They look a lot at your methodology, what products you're buying, energy use and are you composting, recycling," Momo said. "We applied for it before the opening and got it last week."

Momo not only considers himself a lover of the environment, but also a lover of wines. The restaurant has a list of about 350 wines to choose from.

"I want to attract the wine lover here," Momo said. "I want to make sure there's a wine for every occasion, a wine for everyone, a wine for every food. I very much consider [wine] just another food group. It's no accident the great cuisine of the world also happens to have significant wine culture, like France, Spain, Italy, California. It's just part of the meal for us and very much the European way. I love discovering new wines. It's like a breathing, living thing, every bottle is different."

Why was Kingston chosen as the locale for this new restaurant?

"It's right at the gateway to Princeton," Momo said. "We have a beautiful setting here, with parking. There's not an ocean of parking, but there's some parking. And we just loved the history of this little village."

It took seven years for their restaurant to reach fruition, for various reasons. They thought about giving up many times, but they were too far along financially and emotionally to just give up.

Momo said the appearance of the restaurant is fantastic, especially considering what it used to be — the Wine Press. The building has been around since the 19th century, when it was a general store called Fisk Grocery. Its Bar and Wine cellar features original 18th-century timbers.

"It was the transformation of a dark, somewhat depressing, low-ceilinged, smoky place into a bright, airy, modern, sophisticated setting," Momo said.

He said that people are doubly impressed by the setting when they know what came before it. People are even more impressed by the work by artists from around the Princeton and Kingston areas. There were painters, sculptors and landscape designers. The main theme, according to Momo, was the artists and materials being local.

"The benches were made from stones excavated here," Momo said. "The walls were made from stones excavated here."

Executive chef Christopher Albrecht has worked in New York City and Las Vegas.

"It's important to find someone who gets what we're doing and we found that with Chris," Momo said.

On Sept. 20 from noon until 5 p.m., the restaurant will be hosting a special afternoon event featuring tours for $10 and celebrating the artists and landscapers whose work can be found throughout the restaurant. People who bring two corks for its cork-recycling program will receive a free glass of one of several preselected wines. Funds will go to support the Princeton School Gardens Cooperative.

Lectures will be given by Albrecht on cuisine and Carlo Momo on wine tasting. There will also be talks about masonry and landscaping, photography and stone sculpture.

Contact Chris Murino at

cmurino@gmnews.com.