Most summers in Allendale look sleepy on paper. There is no boardwalk, no festival midway, no marquee venue. Yet if you drive West Crescent Avenue on a Saturday evening in July, the parking is tight from the Rec Park down past Crestwood, and the tables at Allendale Social and the AB&G are turning over twice. The town is not quiet in summer. It is just organized around two poles that sit less than a mile apart.
The claim underneath this post is simple. Allendale's summer season is a compact loop, not a scatter of destinations. Crestwood Lake anchors the social calendar on weekend nights. The Celery Farm anchors the mornings and the shoulder hours. Everything worth eating sits on the short stretch of Franklin Turnpike and West Allendale Avenue that connects them. Learn that loop and you have the season.
The Crestwood Lake pole
Crestwood Lake is the reason the summer calendar looks the way it does. The borough's free outdoor concert series runs there on weekend nights, with live music right on the lake, free admission, and shows that run 7:00–10:00 PM. That single programming choice pulls the town's Saturday nights out of restaurants and onto folding chairs on the grass, then feeds people back to Franklin Turnpike after the last set.
The 2026 season has a few dates worth writing down now:
- Saturday, June 20 at 7:00 PM — Skye Lark at Crestwood Lake, 300 West Crescent Ave.
- Crestwood Folk Fest — a free show with a lineup that consists of Leo Sawikin, Sean Kiely, NOHA, Back Train, and Mike Slamer, with food for sale at the Crestwood Lake snack stand.
- Saturday, July 4 — the borough's Independence Day program at Crestwood, historically anchored by a 7:30 PM band concert by the Community Band of Waldwick followed by fireworks after dusk.
- Saturday, September 19 at 1:00 PM — America's Semiquincentennial Celebration at The Fields at the Red Barn, Crestwood Lake. This one closes out the season and is worth planning around.
Note that Crestwood day-use is a residents-and-guests venue for the Fourth. If you are hosting family who live outside Allendale for the holiday, sort tickets before the week of. Concerts on the lawn are open.
The Celery Farm counterweight
If Crestwood is where the town gathers loudly, the Celery Farm is where it decompresses. It sits a short drive north on Franklin Turnpike and functions as an actual working nature preserve, not a park with a walking path.
The scale is the part visitors miss. Over 248 species of birds have been recorded here, and more than 50 are known to breed here, with wetlands and deciduous woods providing habitat for many mammals, fish, reptiles, and insects. The trail that circles the property is short and forgiving — a 1.2-mile loop trail near Allendale, generally considered easy, taking an average of 21 minutes to complete — but the platforms and bridges reward slower walking. The Celery Farm has three viewing platforms built by Fyke Nature Association members and six named bridges, plus 17 benches spaced along the trail.
Two practical notes for summer visits. First, Lake Appert is roughly 20 acres of freshwater marsh that attracts waterfowl, herons, and rails when it's not frozen, generally from mid-March to mid-December, which means late June through August is prime for wood ducks and egrets from the platforms. Second, there are no restrooms, restaurants are available in Allendale, there are no entrance or parking fees, the preserve is open dawn to dusk daily, and poison ivy is present, so wear long pants. The parking lot is small and easy to drive past — it sits on Franklin Turnpike between Pittis Avenue and Alison Court, north of the East Allendale Road intersection.
The counterweight point matters for anyone with a house full of summer visitors. A morning at the Celery Farm and an evening on the Crestwood lawn is a full Allendale day without ever getting on Route 17.
The connecting strip: where to eat between the two poles
Between Crestwood and the Celery Farm lies the entire commercial spine of the borough — a walkable stretch of West Allendale Avenue and Franklin Turnpike. It is short enough to inventory honestly.
Allendale Social. The most recent significant opening in town. Operating at 9 Franklin Turnpike, in the former Restaurant L space, from the same team behind Uno Mas. The kitchen sits in New American territory — Chef Joseph's hand-crafted dishes influenced by global techniques, with carefully selected food, wine, and signature cocktails in a cozy setting, rooted in seasonality and top quality ingredients. It runs later than most of the town, which is why it is where the post-concert crowd tends to land.
Allendale Steakhouse. BYOB, dinner-only, closed Mondays. Tuesday through Friday dinner runs 4 PM to 9:30 PM, Saturday 4 to 10, Sunday 2 to 8:30. The kitchen sells itself on USDA Prime dry-aged steak, dry-aged in house for 35 days. Bring your own wine; they mean it.
Allendale Bar & Grill (the AB&G). This is the room that has watched the town change for ninety years. A neighborhood institution established in 1935, with award-winning hamburgers, prime rib, chicken, and fresh seafood. Located at 67 West Allendale Avenue. Open seven days a week. If you have out-of-town guests who need one meal that tells them what the borough is, this is it.
Fino Ristorante at 114 West Allendale Avenue and Mezza Luna Bistro at 96 West Allendale Avenue cover the Italian side of the street. Savini, on West Crescent Avenue, is the quieter Northern Italian option closer to the lake. Village Pizza at 35 West Allendale Avenue has been family-run since 1997 and remains the wood-fire default when the concert lawn empties out and nobody wants to sit for two hours.
Downtown Allendale is small enough that these six or seven doors are, functionally, the entire dining map. That is not a shortcoming. It is why the town operates as a loop instead of a scatter.
The Saturday morning that ties it together
The Allendale Farmers' Market runs the borough's other set of Saturday hours. It operates out of 500 W. Crescent Avenue, open seasonally from June to October, on the same civic block that hosts the concerts. If you time it correctly, the same lawn where a folk-fest crowd will gather at seven starts its day at nine-thirty with tomatoes and cut flowers.
The market is small and vendor-limited. Do not go for the scale. Go because the round trip — market at ten, Celery Farm walk before it gets hot, lunch at the AB&G or a slice at Village Pizza, then home — is the most efficient way to spend a Saturday morning within the borough boundary.
The mile-long summer
Look at what has changed. Allendale Social opened in what had been Restaurant L. The AB&G crossed its 90th anniversary. The Celery Farm continues its restoration work under Fyke volunteers. The Semiquincentennial in September at the Red Barn is new to the calendar this year. None of this individually rewrites the town. Taken together, it explains why the summer feels denser than the map suggests.
The single mile between Franklin Turnpike at the Celery Farm parking lot and the Crestwood Lake bandshell contains, in practice, the entire program: a nature preserve with nearly 250 recorded bird species, a free weekend concert series, a farmers' market, a July 4 tradition run by residents for residents, a fall Semiquincentennial event, and six restaurants that between them can handle a birthday, a Tuesday, or a post-fireworks crowd. That compactness is what people mean when they say Allendale feels like a real town rather than a set of subdivisions with a zip code.
If you are already here, the summer is not something to plan. It is something to walk out into.
If you have been in your Allendale house for a decade or you moved in over the winter and are still figuring out where the loop begins, we would like to hear how you use the town. When the time comes to think about your home's next chapter — a move up, a downsizing, or simply understanding what your address is worth in today's market — Ana Moniz Premier Homes is here to talk. Schedule a Market Consultation whenever the season slows down enough for one.
