At Gass & Main, chef Dane DeMarco mines nostalgia for its power of reinvention

I had no idea I was craving a cheeseball, chicken croquettes, and Salisbury steak for dinner because, well, it’s 2023. The Jersey diner, among the last guardians of such classic Americana, is tragically in a death spiral. Swanson TV dinners, the frozen tablet meals of my Jetsons cartoon-watching youth, are fading fast from memory. And it has been a while since anyone reminded me of the timeless virtues of decorating food with green olive rings.

But Dane DeMarco at Gass & Main is here to remind us that peering backward into the maw of mid-20th century cafeteria kitsch can sometimes be fulfilling, especially when seeking inspiration to spring forward with wit and contemporary swagger.

DeMarco’s cheeseball in March, for example, was a wicked riff on the dirty martini that blended Birchrun Blue into cream cheese with vermouth, ringing it with a belt of Castelvetrano olives. The Salisbury steak shattered my bland TV dinner memories with a meatloaf-like patty made of ground bison from Salem County that was glossed, alongside its rainbow carrots, with a mahogany demiglace enriched with mushrooms. Neither are still on the menu, of course. Because cheeseballs and revamped TV dinners in DeMarco’s hands are fleetingly seasonal, too.

May’s cheeseball is a burrata flanked by shaved spring radishes topped with green goddess pesto and the tangy-sweet pop of balsamic pearls. Shrimp scampi gets a forager’s seasonal transformation into “sc-ramp-i” with ramps in the creamy mix. Even fusty old chicken a la king is freshly made over with a splash of wine and kick of Dijon to its pan gravy, a mushroom medley also adding a woodsy echo to its bed of wild rice.

“It’s fair to say that I’m embracing reinvention here,” says DeMarco, 36, who means that in multiple senses of the word — in personal, professional, and culinary terms.

The pandemic was a jolt that led to some seismic changes for the Willingboro native. After burning out from a longtime post as executive chef overseeing a trio of gastropubs (American Sardine Bar, South Philadelphia Taproom, Second District Brewing), DeMarco stepped away from the kitchen for several months to recoup, spending time as a DoorDash driver. Next thing you know, DeMarco had launched two new restaurants in South Jersey (including Audubon’s Burgertime 2022), married longtime fiancé Sierra Lander in Vegas (at the intersection of Gass & Main), had a baby named Indigo, changed names to Dane, and came out as nonbinary.

“All my siblings’ names start with D, so you know I had to pick a D name,” DeMarco says. “It’s been a very busy year.”

In the process, DeMarco has also unexpectedly redefined themself as a chef, whose current focus on updating American nostalgia plates is currently distinctive on the local scene. A longtime reputation for inventive sandwiches and bar food simply didn’t seem to apply to the charming Haddonfield BYOB space that fell into their lap, a 36-seater accessed through an open kitchen that used to be Valente’s Cucina.

Lead server Kyle Massi, the most enthusiastic nonresident Haddonfield booster I’ve ever met, came with the space as a warm holdover from Valente’s. The rest of the room was redecorated with farm tools, tchotchkes, and artifacts — horse collars, ice picks, vintage photos — from DeMarco’s childhood living on Peartree Lane.

It’s quaint in a sit-down BYOB kind of way. And DeMarco knew it was their cue to dive more deeply into what they call “food food.”

“I’m having so much fun taking a break from slinging burgers and putting food on plates again,” says DeMarco, who nonetheless still serves a serious $21 burger and Wagyu hotdog here.

The real fun at Gass & Main, though, lies beyond those upscaled grill house icons. DeMarco, a self-professed “lover of old lady food,” has turned to a collection of vintage American cookbooks, from Betty Crocker to the Time Life series, to fuel an imagination that borrows liberally from those crinkled pages and revives some out-of-fashion highlights with a wink.

Ants on a log has been reinterpreted with chicken liver mousse and brandied cherries, while mac and cheese gets bougie with truffle peelings and sweet English peas to sauce tender gnocchi. Chips and dip hits another level with freshly fried potato chips, house French onion dip, and the briny orange pop of salmon roe. Thick and snappy green spears of grilled Jersey asparagus were delicious enough on their own beneath a frothy flow of ranch-whipped cream. But the smoky crunch of “1990s-style” McCormick imitation bacon bits was the lowbrow move that nearly stole the show. (”They’re vegetarian!” DeMarco says.)

DeMarco’s straight-ahead take on classic chicken croquettes for a special — superbly moist and meaty — is the best I’ve had outside the Dining Car in Northeast Philly, albeit with a current twist of hot honey glaze and pink peppercorns. It was the chef’s best gambit to get proper Haddonfielders to eat with their hands. If that doesn’t work, the chef’s fried green tomato chips with zesty comeback sauce, or the occasional special of crispy duck wings with blood orange-chile puree, surely will.

The chef’s contemporary instincts are obvious in the creative energy devoted to vegan offerings, from a winter flauta with celery root and sweet potatoes, to an artichoke cake meant to evoke crab, but served with vegan hollandaise.

But there is something for every omnivore at Gass & Main, which puts its chophouse char-broiler to good use for a beautiful steak primavera, a perfectly medium-rare prime-grade hanger cut fanned over a spring portrait in green — favas, ramps, spring onions, peas — streaked with a smoky white wine mustard sauce. At $40 for eight ounces, it’s the most expensive item on a menu that hovers in the $20s. But it’s worth it.

DeMarco’s homage to Pennsylvania-style pork and kraut with a juicy “good luck” pork chop for the New Year was just as memorable. A big bowl of mussels in lobster stock, however, had too many empty shells, and was one of the few disappointments.

I still need to check out brunch, with its plate-size “big a** pancake” and jumbo biscuits. But if DeMarco’s desserts are any indication, indulgence overdrive here is a virtue, from the vegan monkey bread pudding with soft pretzels, caramelized bananas, and an “Oreo’d” oat milk sauce to a toweringly delicious chocolate layer cake. You’ll also find one of the best slices of apple pie around, a double-crusted beauty glazed in salted caramel, topped with vanilla ice cream and then a snowfall of shaved Prairie Breeze cheddar.

But who, I wonder, can possibly resist the Happy Ending? Heads turn enviously and impromptu “Happy Birthdays” erupt in song because this massive banana split always makes a festive entrance, its lit sparklers snapping atop a giant banana split with brandied cherries, brûléed bananas, and vanilla ice cream in a house chocolate magic shell dusted with Maldon salt. No birthday required.

It’s a reference to DeMarco’s favorite childhood finale at Friendly’s, but the chef concedes many of their guests will interpret the name with the smirk of a less wholesome connotation. You know from DeMarco’s chuckle that there’s no wrong conclusion there. That a chef’s mission to embrace reinvention through nostalgia could result in such routine acknowledgments of joy — and South Jersey’s most engaging new dining experience — is a happy ending in its own right.

7 Kings Court, Haddonfield, 973-721-3179; gassandmain.com

Lunch Wednesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner Wednesday through Sunday, 5 to 9:30 p.m. Brunch Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Dinner entrees, $17-$40.

Gluten-free options are plentiful.

BYOB, but Gass & Main is also an outlet for Auburn Road, a Jersey winery whose dry rosé is not bad at all for $21 a bottle.

Not wheelchair accessible.