The F.M. Kirby Carriage House used to be where you grabbed a quick bite before the curtain went up at Paper Mill Playhouse. These days, after officially reopening earlier this year following an $8.5 million renovation, it’s raising its own curtain nightly, on murder mysteries, cabaret, bingo and karaoke, but with a menu ambitious enough to headline on its own.
The kitchen leans into tavern classics done properly: a Brookside Angus cheeseburger, a 12-ounce prime NY strip with frites or a crab cake that doesn’t need three sauces to be delicious. Oysters on the half shell and a raw bar round things out for anyone treating dinner as the main event rather than the opening number. History buffs get a bonus too: the historic Blue Room and Davis Loft have been preserved, so the building’s past is still very much part of the set design.
Sunday brings brunch, and with it a Taylor Ham (the correct name, and no, this writer will not be entertaining other opinions on the matter), egg and cheese on a roll. Alongside the deeply New Jersey classic sits a French onion grilled cheese, a smoked salmon everything bagel and a double smash burger, for anyone determined to treat brunch as a headliner, not an opening act. And did we mention live acoustic music?
Upstairs, in the second-floor Club Room, is where the Carriage House earns its “more than a restaurant” billing. There, you can enjoy an evening of entertainment, prix-fixe dining and artisanal cocktails. The rotating lineup under the Carriage House Presents banner swings from genuinely elegant to gloriously silly (a Golden Girls murder mystery and a full evening of Mrs. Roper Bingo, complete with karaoke and caftans strongly encouraged).
Pianist Joe Regan entertains dinner guests every Thursday downstairs in the Carrington Dining Room, named after Frank Carrington, who, along with Antoinette Scudder, founded the theater in 1938.
Trivia nights and other pop-up events keep the calendar full on the evenings the bigger productions aren’t running, which means there’s rarely a version of “just going to Millburn for dinner” that doesn’t come with some kind of bonus entertainment attached.
For groups, spaces like the Club Room and the Carrington Room borrow the same split personality as the main room; some historic, some newly built, all available with customized food and beverage packages for anything from a rehearsal dinner to a milestone birthday to a corporate event that doesn’t want to be a corporate event. Given how much of this building already runs on live entertainment, it’s hard to think of a better spot in Essex County to throw a party with actual production value.
The building itself has been part of the story since the 1930s, when it was the first structure completed when Paper Mill Playhouse redeveloped the old Thistle Paper Mill site (yes, that’s where the theater’s name comes from). It served for decades as a modest pre-show restaurant before the Next Act Campaign nearly doubled its 124 seats to 228 across multiple floors. You can still grab dinner here before catching a show at Paper Mill Playhouse next door, that hasn’t changed. What’s new is that the Carriage House doesn’t need the theater to fill a room anymore. It can put on its own show.
F.M. Kirby Carriage House
Instagram: @carriagehousemillburn