Welcome to the World’s Largest Pickle Bar

If there’s one thing you should know about Edison, New Jersey, it’s that it is home to the world’s largest pickle bar. At least, that’s what the folks at Harold’s New York Deli say.

Harold’s is mostly known for serving enormous — and I mean enormous — deli sandwiches, the largest of which easily serves nine people. (The menu says it serves four to seven people, but just trust me.) But what good is a sandwich without a good pickle on the side? And what good is a six-pound triple-decker sandwich without an unlimited number of complementary pickles on the side?

When you enter Harold’s, as I did one Sunday morning just before the lunch rush began, there are two signs directing you to the pickle bar. While waiting at the bar for your gigantic bowl of matzo ball soup, gargantuan onion rings and the humongous sandwiches you ordered, you can stock up on half sour and full sour pickles, kosher dill pickle spears, sweet pickle chips, hot cherry peppers, sauerkraut, hot and spicy pickle chips, sour tomatoes and health salad (a kind of pickled, mayonnaise-less cole slaw). If you haven’t picked up on it yet, the pickles are pretty much the only thing at Harold’s that come normal-sized, and their impressively varied selection bestows Harold’s with the title of world’s largest pickle bar.

The half sour pickles are the most popular, says manager William Suarez, who stepped up once Harold Jaffe, the deli’s original owner, passed away in 2025. Second is the health salad, with the sweet pickle chips rounding out the top three. The pickle chips — both the sweet and the spicy kinds — were my favorites. The sweet chips are not quite as sweet as the ones Mt. Olive offers, with Harold’s flavor profile leaning closer to kosher dill. The spicy chips are not very hot up front, but the heat cuts through in contrast with the fatty pastrami and sweet soda that accompanied my pickle sampling.

The hot cherry peppers, in comparison, are really, truly spicy. Not hot enough to make you tear up or anything, but hot enough that I wanted to let my taste buds recover before continuing my meal.

Demi and Don, a couple in their thirties driving from New York City from Baltimore, stopped by Harold’s for the pickle bar. It was Demi’s first time at Harold’s, and her favorite thing from the pickle bar was the health salad. Meanwhile, Don, a Harold’s veteran, said the pickled cherry pepper was his favorite, and that he was disappointed by how mild the hot and spicy pickle chips were. I refrained from telling him how shockingly spicy I found the peppers to be.

Jane, originally from Queens but now living in Hoboken with her family, said dining at Harold’s makes her nostalgic for all the old delis in New York City she used to frequent. She said she loves pickles in general, especially kosher sour dills, but nothing compares to the pickles of her childhood. “They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” she said. “It’s just not the same. Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m just older and my taste buds changed.” Even though Harold’s didn’t revive the exact flavor of her beloved pickles of yore, she still loved the food and the establishment.

By noon, the dining area had filled up considerably. As I took my leave, stuffed full of pickles and sandwich meat, I couldn’t help but wonder if a different restaurant, one that puts its pickles instead of its sandwiches front-and-center, will claim the title of World’s Largest Pickle Bar one day. For now, though, Harold’s reigns supreme.