David Burke drives 50k a year keeping up with his NJ restaurants

David Burke is a celebrity chef and a very busy guy. He owns and oversees many restaurants across New Jersey and other projects include one in New York City and one in West Palm.

I wrote about him last month with my psychological meltdown over his "blind dining" sensory nights at some of his places. Still a hard pass, I’m more paranoid than I am adventurous.

NJ Monthly just did a piece on him in which he talked shop, cars and commuting. According to policygenius.com, the average number of miles per driver annually in the Garden State is 12,263.

Chef David Burke is piling up more than four times that.

I put a thousand miles a week on the car,” he tells NJ Monthly. “And I work from my home office, where I hold meetings and have two assistants help sort out my schedules. At night I hit the restaurants. For somebody like me, traveling and dining out is inspirational, and leads to stronger ideas.

For most of us 50,000 miles a year would lead to nothing but stress. What does he do it in?

Most of the mileage is thrown on a workhorse, his Jeep Gladiator. The other, with only 20,000 on it over two years, is a Maserati Trofeo. It’s an SUV but a fast one. 572 horsepower that hits 60 mph in 3.8 seconds. Those are well over $100,000.

He says he’s not really a car guy. But when he test-drove the Maserati he found it “wonderful—more understated than a Bentley, not as recognizable, not as showy. It doesn’t turn heads when you pull up. Inside, the sound was like being in a jet. It felt powerful, fun to drive, the best-built vehicle I’d ever been in.”

As he bounces around between the Red Horse in Rumson, Dixie Lee Bakery in Keansburg, and the Bernards Inn in Bernardsville he doesn’t seem to be worn down by all those Jersey miles. If we could commute in a Maserati we might have a better attitude about it too.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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