The Restaurant
Luna Restaurant opened on Grove Street in 2019 inside the restored Hudson Bank building — a 1920s vaulted-ceiling banking hall with the original marble teller counters preserved along one wall. The dining room runs about a hundred covers across the main hall, with a separate twenty-cover private room in what was once the bank vault. The cooking is unambiguously Italian — handmade pasta, dry-aged steaks, wood-grilled fish — and has settled into the role of Downtown's most reliable serious dinner for groups of six to twelve.
All pasta is rolled and cut in-house daily. Signature plates run the city's most carefully composed pasta roster: cacio e pepe finished tableside in a wheel of pecorino romano; the 'Mountain and Sea' fettuccine with porcini, shiitake, and spinach; pappardelle Bolognese that has been on the menu since opening; lobster ravioli in a saffron-cream sauce; espresso-braised short ribs over polenta that the room's regulars order in pairs. The bar runs Detroit-style pizzas (the kitchen acquired a dedicated Detroit-style oven in 2023), a four-cheese version that has become the city's most-ordered party plate, and a happy-hour negroni programme at $11 a glass.
The wine list is medium-deep — about 180 references with a working Italian regional anchor (Tuscan, Piemontese, Veneto) and a smartly chosen California section. The bar's spritz programme is one of the most thoughtful in the metro area. Service runs at a polished, fluent, family-restaurant-trained tempo that handles birthday parties of fourteen without dropping a beat. Private events in the vault room take parties up to twenty-four with a separate prix-fixe menu at $85 per person. The room books two to three days ahead for prime time and absorbs walk-ins at the bar.
Why This Is Jersey City’s Birthday Pick
For a birthday in Jersey City — particularly a party of six to twelve that wants serious cooking, a celebratory room, and a price ceiling that does not require negotiation — Luna is the obvious move. The vaulted banking hall reads as instantly celebratory, the pasta programme handles a table of mixed appetites without effort, the espresso short ribs and dry-aged ribeye anchor the meat-heavy orders, and the wine list's Italian regional depth gives the host a Brunello or Barolo to mark the occasion. The private vault room takes the larger parties cleanly. And the Grove Street PATH stop is a thirty-second walk for the inbound guests crossing the river.
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