Featured Center City Business: Bruni's Breakfast & Burgers

Photo of Rob Bruni by Bill Horin/ArtC. Story by Rob Laymon/ArtC.

This place has been an icon in Millville for many years, starting with Joe Torelli's (my mom's cousin) & since 2014 as Bruni's. And Rob Bruni is doing it right.

To hear Rob Bruni tell it, the spirits of delicious take-out have always hovered near this site.

Bruni is the latest proprietor to hold the honor of serving some of Millville’s favorite food at this spot, 432 N. High Street, a location formerly occupied by Torelli’s, the Midway Double Dip and Billy D’s. He opened on the day after Thanksgiving in 2014.

Today, with help from Kara, Whitney, Naomi and Shelby, Bruni’s Breakfast and Burgers puts out mouth-watering burgers on potato buns, cheese steaks, breakfast sandwiches, hot dogs and cheese fries. More than one reviewer has called it the best food in town.

“I have always been in the food business, since I was a bus boy at 15, and later when I became a manager at Outback,” Bruni said. “But I always wanted to do something on my own.”

The restaurant Bruni founded turned out to rely as much on the traditions of the spot as on his own imagination. He opened the shop expecting to offer a smaller breakfast menu, but customers wanted burgers also, no doubt remembering Torelli’s old practice of serving burgers right from opening. So Bruni added burgers to the menu. Thus did Millville become perhaps the only town in America for whom burgers are a prized breakfast food.

Bruni’s is happy to carry on the tradition, along with serving a variety of daily specials like Sloppy Joes and Sausage and Pepper sandwiches. They are open every day but Sunday, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Customers can eat on the premises with counter service and a few tables or take food out.

“I love it here, and I have such a good staff,” said Bruni, who grew up in Franklinville. “We are trying to not take anything too seriously.”

Bruni’s Breakfast & Burgers

432 N. High Street

Phone: 856-765-5063

Eat-In or Take-Out

Social Media: Bruni's Breakfast and Burgers

Featured Center City Business: Clay College

Photo by Bill Horin/ArtC. Story by Rob LaymonArtC.

Over the years, ArtC has collaborated many times with Jackie Sandro-Greenwell. First, at the original Clay College & in recent years with Jackie & Randy Wilfong at RCSJ Arts & Innovation Center. The work done there is amazing.

The thing about clay is that it brings people together. Director Jackie Sandro-Greenwell has spent 25 years at Clay College watching ceramics inspire not only creativity but community.

“Clay people are very down-to-earth,” she says. “I think there is a kind of unification in working with clay that makes us all part of the same family. It’s a very unintimidating medium—I haven’t come across a person yet who doesn’t smile when given clay to work with.”

Sandro-Greenwell has believed this and other transformative things about clay for as long as she has served as the director of the facility, part of Rowan College South Jersey.

For Sandro-Greenwell the artist, clay has always illuminated a clear path. With an MFA from Tyler School of Art and teaching experience, Sandro-Greenwell joined the push for Clay College at its very inception, when the idea for the Millville Arts District was taking shape.

Visitors to her facility will find all the equipment necessary to do good work in ceramics: pottery wheels, kilns, and ample space for students to work. The college is proud to provide hands-on training in techniques like wheel-throwing and hand-building, to a student population of all ages, available in both credit and non-credit courses.

What will be harder to see is the camaraderie formed by the common project of throwing clay and making beautiful things.

“We’re kind of like a gym,” Sandro-Greenwell says, “in that people can just come in to use the studio. I think there is something related to the process that makes it different from other art forms. There are steps involved, with chemistry, glazing and firing, and interaction with many processes. You never get bored with ceramics.”

Clay College

First floor, Arts and Innovation Center

321 N. High Street

Phone: 856-776-2380

Website: artsinnovation/clay-college

Email: aic@cc.rcsj.edu

Featured Center City Business: China Wok

Photo by Bill Horin/ArtC. Story by Sal Emma/ArtC.

Millville is fortunate to have several very good Chinese restaurants & China Wok is exceptional. With her husband, John, Karen Wang has been cooking Chinese in Millville for over three decades. Their restaurant, China Wok, has been at its High Street location since 2009.

China Wok’s runaway favorite dish is General Tso’s chicken. But Karen and John offer a large and varied menu of Chinese treats including daily specials. The restaurant does mostly takeout, but it has a few tables, too.

“John was already cooking when we met. He taught me the restaurant business and we decided to open our own place,” Karen says. John’s father settled in Millville from Mainland China and it became their home, too.

China Wok has been family-owned since the beginning. “John and I are here, every day, doing the cooking and greeting customers. They like our food, of course, but they also appreciate our stability and reliability,” Karen says.

Karen and John make fresh and flavorful food with a little extra – a naturally friendly approach and genuine warmth for the people they serve.

Website: ChinaWokMillville

Social Media: Facebook