Closed since 2023. Jai-Alai Restaurant did not reopen after the five-alarm fire of September 2023. This site is kept online as an archive of the restaurant, its menu and its Basque-Spanish kitchen. What happened
Jai Alai Restaurant Basque Spanish Cuisine · Dover, NJ

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The Jai Alai menu: Basque and Spanish cooking

Everything was prepared to order and finished in Spanish extra-virgin olive oil, from a casserole of garlic soup with a poached egg to a one-and-a-half-pound stuffed lobster. Below is the whole menu as it was printed, transcribed into readable text.

Menu heading from the Jai Alai Restaurant website reading Featured Item and Full Menu.

Please note: Jai-Alai Restaurant closed permanently after a five-alarm fire in September 2023. The dishes and prices below are the ones on the restaurant's last published menu card and are kept here as a record. Read what happened, or see the FAQ.

How the kitchen worked

To order, in olive oil, without shortcuts

The menu card opened with a promise: “We are proud to serve you the best of our heritage in food and wine. We will prepare your desire individually and to order. Please enjoy yourself.” It closed with a single line in small caps — all food is prepared to order using only the finest Spanish extra-virgin olive oil — which explains most of the cooking on this page.

Garlic was slow-roasted rather than fried hard. Sauces were built on sherry, brandy, Jerez wine and saffron stock instead of starch. Fish and shellfish arrived as casseroles big enough for two or more, priced per person, in the style of a Basque mariscada. Egg-battered escalopes and albardados ran through both the seafood and the meat sections, exactly as they do along the Bay of Biscay.

Two things were worth knowing before ordering. First, paella and mariscada are priced per person and are meant for two or more diners. Second, the lobster dishes were always market price, because they were bought fresh. A shared plate carried a $5 charge.

Read more about the signature Basque dishes →

The dishes behind the menu, and the region they came from.

Basque specialties explained About the Basque people Menu questions in the FAQ