Video: The resilient food purveyors of the Seaside boardwalk

Zagat, the international restaurant rating service, recently visited the Seaside boardwalk to check in with pizza, seafood, and ice cream vendors. 

The result?

Despite back-to-back disasters — forcing some business owners into trailers and spurring another slower than normal summer — optimism is in the air.

“If you’re a boardwalk person, you’re born and raised here. I mean that’s all you know what to do. You have that window to make the best of it for your family,” Park Seafood owner Nick Dionisio says in the Zagat video from his restaurant at the Aztec Ocean Resort in Seaside Heights. 

NewsWorks interviewed Dionisio just days after the massive September 2013 fire destroyed his two seafood stands in Seaside Park. 

“At this point, all you can do is be optimistic. I’ve been through negatives in the past year. There’s no reason to be pessimistic,” he said last September.

“Just have to hope.”