With a supportive landlord and his own culinary gifts and good musical instincts, Todd Ellis is helping in his own way to make Stockton the affordable lunch and dinner town it once was.
Ellis opened the Starving Artist Café last winter at 18 Bridge Street. Ellis and his crew of food business veterans serve up great, simple food with twists at affordable prices. Patrons may also enjoy good blues, bluegrass, and real country music, in a fun-loving, intimate atmosphere that seats about 35 patrons.
Such was the case on December 28, the last Saturday of 2024, when Joe Zook, Paul Plumeri, Frank Pinto, and Richie Z. — 1970s and ’80s titans of the Trenton nightclub scene — performed acoustic blues and early rock ‘n’ roll standards in the intimate space.
Ellis is the older brother of Randy Ellis, aka Randy Now, a legendary impresario who put City Gardens in Trenton on the map for national and international touring acts in the 1980s and early ’90s. Now and City Gardens were the focus of a documentary film, “Riot On The Dance Floor,” chronicling the scene he built at the large nightclub on Calhoun Street.
Ellis prepares every meal at the café. He relies on two expert waitresses and his kitchen assistant to produce good meals inexpensively. Ellis’ grass-fed cheeseburgers are distinctive and can be ordered with blue cheese and fig toppings, but the menu is so much more extensive and innovative than that, all centered on perhaps a dozen crowd-pleasing dishes like mac ‘n’ cheese, burgers, hot dogs, steaks, pork chops, simple salads, and some home-made soups.
Now 61, Ellis took a breather at the side of his kitchen after all the patrons had eaten to reflect on his life, which has always involved broadening his musical and culinary horizons. He grew up in Bordentown, where his father was a taxi driver and laundry truck driver and his mother was a home maker. Since then he has lived in Hamilton, Mercerville, and Trenton.
“You have to use the names that our mother hated, Randy Now and Tod the Mod,” he said with a laugh as he took off his apron for the night.
“I grew up loving music. My first job was as a dishwasher at the Bordentown Elks Club. I continued in the food business into catering and weddings and just never looked back. Now here I am, still in the food business. I was also an area musician for most of this same time, so I balanced things; I was either doing music or doing something food-related.”
He worked at the old Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice processing plant in Bordentown for two years after high school and attended Burlington County Community College for a few semesters, but remembers just going to all of his music classes, not much else.
“We used to call it the University of Pemberton. I was in a rock band, so I figured I didn’t need any training. In those days, we were all going to be rock stars,” he said. Although his band played around a lot and did a lot if interviews with radio stations like WTSR, WRSU and WPRB, after those rock star dreams fizzled he jumped into the food business again with both feet.
Perhaps it was while he was fronting and booking his own band, Smart Remarks, playing City Gardens opening for national acts like The Ramones, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and the Replacements that he picked up his knack for marketing and branding. Starving Artist Café has its own logo merchandise for sale, and the walls are filled with interesting rock ‘n’ roll artifacts and a small collection of guitars and old vinyl LP covers. Upon entering the squeaky clean restroom, patrons see a carpet with the Starving Artist Café logo embroidered on it.
“We do blues, and we do old school bluegrass here; we do a bit of everything here. I have a few older guys, The Long Hill String Band who come in and do Appalachian bluegrass. I’ve had Tommy Stinson from The Replacements. Between me and [brother] Randy, we can put some great acts in here.”
All the former punk rockers are now doing acoustic music, musicians like John Doe from X, Stinson from the Replacements, and Tom Morello from Rage Against The Machine. Area musician J.B. Kline does a Facebook broadcast from the café on Friday mornings “and they just did a PBS TV special on J.B. Kline, so let’s face it, breakfast here with J.B. Kline is a great way to start the weekend.”
Ellis and his crew are open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner on weekends and on a more limited basis during the week. The café is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Asked about his packed house on a rainy, cold December night, Ellis was quick to credit his team and his supportive landlord, Richard Phillips. Phillips has been most accommodating.
“I was very lucky to find an old school guy who said ‘Todd, I just want a good guy to take care of my place.’ Face it, these little towns along the river aren’t busy enough to sustain a $6,000 or $7,000 per month rent. It’s always been a weekend business town around here, but you can’t sustain a business being open only on weekends,” he said.
“It wasn’t until about March or April of this year [2024,] that we really got it going,” he said. Most recently in the food business, Ellis ran the More Than Q Barbecue company in Lambertville for nine years.
Over the years, he explained, “I’ve done almost everything you can do in the food business. I’ve worked for Whole Foods Market; I was a wholesale meat cutter in the Italian markets in the early ’80s in Trenton; I was a seafood monger; I’ve done the Bond Street Club in Trenton,” where, he says, he learned how to be an efficient chef. He also worked at many Chambersburg restaurants during their respective heydays.
Asked about his vision for the café, Ellis said he has opened enough small restaurants as a manager to know he also wanted local musicians performing in his room.
“This was my first shot at my own place. I did not have a lot of money, but I knew we had a following, and I thought we had a really good idea to bring affordable food and some music to a town that’s getting unaffordable,” he said. Like Miels, the restaurant that previously occupied this space, he wanted to bring the small town community atmosphere back.
“We’re friends with everybody. We help promote [longtime New Hope bar and music venue] John & Peters; there are all these mom-and-pop places around neighboring towns; so our doors are always open to them, and our doors are always open to local musicians.”
He decided he would go back to his roots, what he did with another small restaurant in the late 1980s and ’90s: fresh pastas, basic, fun food, and distinctive hamburgers and cheeseburgers.
“I say this is my place, but I couldn’t do it without this great team I have,” he said, noting Sebastian “Seb” Olender helps him in the kitchen, while Becky O’Brien serves as GM and Katie O’Hare is an attentive waitress and also a singer-songwriter-promoter.
“We must credit Richard Phillips, the landlord here, he’s been the owner of this property for 50 years. He is in our corner all the way and he is working with us,” Ellis added.
“I surround myself with great people,” he explained, “all this cannot happen without them. Everybody will get to share in this, which is my dream. Help me grow this dream and we can all have fun with it. It’s absolutely our thing!”
Upcoming performances include Brad Vickers’ Vestapolitan Duo, performing Saturday, February 1, at 6 p.m., and The Long Hill String Band, Sunday, February 2, at 12:30 p.m.
Starving Artist Café, 18 Bridge Street, Stockton. For more information, call 609-483-2219 or visit the venue’s Facebook or Instagram pages.
