Dentists in Long Branch and Oceanport, NJ: Every License Checked, and How Each Practice Takes New Patients

Published by Garden State Circle — Tiffany and Jake Slowinski · Long Branch, Interlaken, Oceanport, Deal, Allenhurst and Loch Arbour, in Monmouth County

We did the homework here.
For the places actually worth your time, money and babysitter, follow me: @tiffanyknowsnj.

Finding a Dentist in New Jersey: What I’d Actually Want to Know Before I Book

By Tiffany Slowinski

Finding a new dentist should not be this annoying.

You ask a friend. You Google. You end up staring at 17 practices that all have somewhere between 4.7 and 5 stars, beautiful photos of extremely white teeth and websites promising some version of “gentle, comprehensive care.”

Great. Which one am I actually supposed to call?

For something this personal, I want more than a star rating. I want to know who I am seeing, whether I can get an appointment without rearranging my entire life and whether the dentist is going to explain what is happening before handing me a treatment plan that costs more than my first car.

I also want to like them.

That matters.

A dentist is one of those people you hopefully stay with for years. I do not want to reintroduce myself every six months or wonder whether I am ever going to see the same person twice. If I choose a practice because I read about a specific dentist, I want to know if that is actually the person I am going to see.

Then there is the very practical stuff.

Can I get an appointment when I need one? Are there early morning, evening or Saturday appointments? What happens if something hurts? Can I book online, or am I entering a three-day game of phone tag?

A gorgeous office is not especially useful to me if I cannot get there without canceling half my workday.

I also want to know what happens if I need more than a cleaning.

Some practices handle a wide range of treatment in-house. Others refer out for root canals, oral surgery, implants, orthodontics or more complicated cases. Neither is automatically better. I just want to know before I need something.

And yes, I care about how my teeth look too.

I can want healthy teeth and still be interested in whitening, straightening something that has bothered me for years or fixing a chipped tooth I stare at in every photo. If cosmetic dentistry matters to you, ask what the dentist actually does regularly instead of assuming every office that uses the phrase “cosmetic dentistry” offers the same thing.

The biggest thing for me is communication.

I do not need a dental degree. I do need to understand what you see, what you recommend, why you recommend it and what happens if I do nothing right now.

If there are multiple options, tell me. If one costs significantly more, tell me why. If something can wait six months, I want to know that too.

Trust gets a lot harder when you are lying backward under a bright light while someone throws around words you do not understand and you are nodding because there are four instruments in your mouth.

I want a dentist who explains things like a normal person.

I would also pay attention to treatment philosophy.

If a dentist recommends something significant, I want to understand what needs attention now and what can be watched. I want to know my options. For something expensive or irreversible, I am completely comfortable asking questions or getting another opinion.

That is not being difficult.

Those are my teeth.

Then there is the money.

Dental insurance is confusing enough. Before significant treatment, I want the office to explain what they expect it to cost, what they expect insurance to cover and what I am responsible for. If the practice is out of network, tell me. If payment plans exist, tell me. If there are different treatment options at different price points, I want to know that too.

Nobody enjoys talking about money while wearing a paper bib.

Talk about it anyway.

And if you hate going to the dentist, you are hardly alone.

Some people had a terrible experience years ago. Some hate needles. Some have sensitive teeth. Some are embarrassed because it has been way too long since their last cleaning.

A perfectly fair question is: How do you handle nervous patients?

Pay attention to the answer.

You are not looking for someone to promise that nothing will ever be uncomfortable. You are looking for an office that listens when you tell them what makes you anxious and does not make you feel ridiculous for saying it.

At the end of the day, you can research a dentist for three hours online and still learn more in 20 minutes sitting in the chair.

How does the staff treat you? Does the dentist listen before talking? Do you feel rushed? Are your questions welcomed or tolerated? Do you leave understanding what happened and what comes next?

That is the stuff that makes you stay.

It is also why we built these guides.

Garden State Circle checks the public information available on each practice, including active dental licenses, who the practice actually names as its dentists, whether it appears to be independently owned or part of a larger group when that information is published, how it handles new patients and whether it offers evening or weekend hours.

We are not telling you which dentist is “the best.”

I do not think a spreadsheet can tell you that.

The dentist I love may not be the dentist you love. You may care deeply about Saturday appointments. I may care about seeing the same person every time. Someone else may want a practice that can handle the whole family or offers a specific service.

What we can do is make it much easier to compare them.

Because choosing a dentist should start with better information than whoever happened to show up first on Google.

You do not need to find the fanciest dentist.

You need to find the dentist you will actually go back to.

The Guide: Dentists in Long Branch and Oceanport, NJ

Every dentist in Long Branch and Oceanport, with “NJ dental license, checked Sept 3 2026” for each, checked September 2026.

See the Businesses

New Jersey licenses dentists as individuals, not as practices. The state keeps a public register of every dentist it has licensed, with a number and a current status, and anyone can search it for free. It takes about a minute, and the steps are at the bottom of this page.

This guide lists every general dental practice we could find with an office in Long Branch, Interlaken, Oceanport, Deal, Allenhurst or Loch Arbour, names the dentists each practice names on its own website, and shows what the state register said about each of those names on the day we checked. It also records who owns each practice and how each one takes a new patient, in each practice’s own words. West Long Branch is a separate borough and is outside this guide; several practices there — West Long Branch Dental, SparQ Family Dental, Drs. Damurjian and Nasr, Hanna Elite Dentistry, Joseph DiFazio, DMD, and Dr. Richard Lubitz — serve Long Branch and Oceanport residents and are named here so a reader is not left wondering why they are missing.

The Practices, Compared

Listed alphabetically. The dentists column shows names exactly as each practice writes them on its own website; where a practice has no website we could find, the name comes from the business profile it maintains on Google, and the cell and the entry say so. The license column shows the status the New Jersey register returned for each name on the date in the header. Ownership and new-patients restate what each practice publishes, and “Not published” means the site says nothing either way. Hours are as published, with evening and Saturday times called out because they are what most people are looking for.

Practice	Dentists, as named on their own site	NJ dental license, checked Sept 3 2026	Ownership	New patients	Evening or Saturday hours, as published
Blue Water Dental Arts, Oceanport	Dr. Anthony A. Testa	Active	Not published	New patient forms	Weekdays 8 am–5 pm, Monday to Thursday; no evening or Saturday
Broadway Dental Office PC, Long Branch (Facebook)	Danny R. Alcantara, DDS (from the Google profile)	Active	Not published	Not found by us	Not found by us
Garden State Healthy Smiles PC, Long Branch	Dr. Sevil Pinkhasov	Active	Not published	Request an appointment	Monday to Friday 10 am–7 pm; no Saturday
Kenneth W. Ledwitz, DMD, Long Branch	Kenneth W. Ledwitz, DMD (from the Google profile)	Active	Not published	Not found by us	Not found by us
Saka Dental Spa, Long Branch	Dr. Sammy Saka	Active	Independently owned	New patient forms	Monday 11 am–7 pm; one Sunday a month

Checked against the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs Dentistry licensee search.

License statuses were read from the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs license verification register on September 3, 2026, by searching each name as a person under the profession Dentistry and the license type Dentist. Practice details were verified against each practice’s own website the same day. Where the table reads “Not found by us,” the practice has no website we could find; that is a limit of our check, not a statement about the practice.

The Practices

Blue Water Dental Arts, Oceanport

Blue Water Dental Arts, at 265 East Main Street in Oceanport, is the practice of Dr. Anthony A. Testa — the site's home page calls him Dr. Testa, and its Meet the Doctor page gives the full name. New patients start with downloadable patient forms and an appointment request form. Published hours are 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Thursday, closed Friday and Saturday. The register showed Anthony A. Testa, DMD, of Oceanport as Active on September 3, 2026.

Broadway Dental Office PC, Long Branch

Broadway Dental Office PC, at 568 Broadway, Suite A, in Long Branch, has no website we could find; the business profile it maintains on Google, and a second profile at the same address and phone number, name Danny R. Alcantara, DDS. With no site to read, the new-patient path and hours read Not found by us; the Google profile publishes opening hours. The register showed Danny R. Alcantara of Long Branch as Active on September 3, 2026.

Garden State Healthy Smiles PC, Long Branch

Garden State Healthy Smiles PC, at 170 Morris Avenue, Suite A, in the Morris Avenue Medical Building in Long Branch, names Dr. Sevil Pinkhasov on its site, states that it is currently accepting new patients, and takes appointments through a request form. Published hours are 10 am to 7 pm Monday through Friday, closed weekends. The register showed Sevil Pinkhasov as Active on September 3, 2026. Google also carries a profile at this address under the name Dr. Namik Yusufov, DDS, which the practice's own site does not mention; the register showed Namik Yusufov as Inactive the same day.

Kenneth W. Ledwitz, DMD, Long Branch

Dr. Kenneth W. Ledwitz practises at 747 Westwood Avenue in Long Branch. We could find no website of the practice's own, so the name comes from the business profile it maintains on Google, which publishes a phone number but no hours; the new-patient path and hours therefore read Not found by us. The register showed Kenneth W. Ledwitz of Long Branch as Active on September 3, 2026.

Saka Dental Spa, Long Branch

Saka Dental Spa, at 614 North Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, is the practice Dr. Sammy Saka opened, in the site's own words, to serve his community; it offers preventive, restorative, cosmetic and emergency care, states that it is currently accepting new patients, and starts them with digital forms, a complimentary consultation and an appointment request form. Published hours are 11 am to 7 pm Monday, 10 am to 3 pm Tuesday, 9 am to 5 pm Wednesday and Thursday, 9 am to 3 pm Friday, and one Sunday a month by arrangement. The register showed Sammy Saka of Long Branch as Active on September 3, 2026.

Listed in the Market, Not Checked the Same Way

Six listings have an office in Long Branch, or publish one, but did not pass all three tests on the day we checked. They are listed here so that a name you were given is not simply missing, with the reason in each case.

Barry J. Elbaum Dental Center (Monmouth Family Health Center), Long Branch

The Barry J. Elbaum Dental Center, at 335 Broadway in Long Branch, is the dental site of Monmouth Family Health Center, a federally qualified health center; Google lists it as the Dr. Barry D. Elbatim Dental Center. Its own pages publish dental hours — 8 am to 5:30 pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday, to 6:30 pm Tuesday and Thursday, and 8 am to 4 pm on the first and third Saturday — and say no one is denied care for inability to pay, but they name no dentist. The only name attached to the address is a Google profile for Dr. Raymond Simmons, whom the register showed as Inactive on September 3, 2026. A community health center with published dental hours is very likely staffed; it sits here only because no page names a dentist we could check.

The Dental Center (Dr. Hector F. Morales Medina), Long Branch

Google lists The Dental Center at 9 Memorial Parkway, Suite B, in Long Branch. The practice's own website publishes one office, at 1 Branch Avenue in Red Bank, and does not mention Long Branch, so the second prong — an office in the market stated on the practice's own site or a maintained profile — is not met from published sources. The register showed Hector F. Morales-Medina, DDS, as Active on September 3, 2026.

Souren Gokberk, DDS, and Dr. Anjana Gowda, Long Branch

Two Google profiles share 145 Brighton Avenue and one phone number: Gokberk Souren DDS, and Dr. Anjana Gowda, whose profile Google marks temporarily closed. Neither has a website we could find. On September 3, 2026, the register showed Souren E. Gokberk as Inactive and Anjana Gowda, DDS, as Active with a Plainsboro address of record. With the only Active name attached to a profile marked closed, we could not tell from published sources whether the office is seeing patients.

Kushner Rivkah, Long Branch

A Google profile lists Kushner Rivkah, dentist, at 668 Westwood Avenue in Long Branch, with a phone number and no website. The register returned no dentist under that name on September 3, 2026.

Diamond R DDS, Long Branch

A Google profile lists Diamond R DDS at 675 North Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, with no website. The register showed Richard P. Diamond of Long Branch as Inactive on September 3, 2026.

Richter Richard P DDS, Long Branch

A Google profile lists Richter Richard P DDS at 717 North Ocean Avenue, Condo 501, in Long Branch, with no website. The register showed Richard P. Richter as Expired on September 3, 2026, with an Edgewater address of record.

Common Questions

How do I check a dentist's license in Long Branch, NJ?

Go to the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs license verification site, choose the person search rather than the business search, set the profession to Dentistry and the license type to Dentist, and enter the last name. The result shows the name, the license number, and the current status. The city shown is the licensee’s address of record, which is often a home address, so do not read it as the office.

What does Inactive, Retired or Expired mean on the New Jersey register?

They are statuses the register records against a license: Inactive and Retired are elected by the licensee and recorded by the board, and Expired means the renewal date has passed. This guide prints what the register showed on the date at the top of the table, next to the name the practice publishes, and makes no claim about why.

Does "Part of a group" mean a practice in Long Branch, NJ is worse, or better?

Neither. It means the practice’s own website, or the group’s own list of locations, says the practice belongs to a larger organisation — no practice in the table does, and the one community health center in the market — Monmouth Family Health Center’s dental site — is below the table because its pages name no dentist. Some readers want to know that before they book, which is why the column exists. The guide records the fact and makes no judgment about it.

Does "Not found by us" mean a dentist in Long Branch is not taking patients?

No. It means the practice has no website we could find, so there was nothing to read; the practice’s Google profile publishes a phone number, and a call will answer the question faster than any website. “Not published” means the site exists and says nothing either way.

Which dentists in Long Branch or Oceanport have evening or Saturday hours?

As published on their own sites when we checked: Garden State Healthy Smiles is open to 7 pm every weekday, and Saka Dental Spa to 7 pm on Monday and one Sunday a month. No practice in the table publishes Saturday hours. Below the table, Monmouth Family Health Center’s dental site publishes hours to 6:30 pm Tuesday and Thursday and 8 am to 4 pm on the first and third Saturday. Hours change; the table shows what each site said on the date in its header.

Why are the West Long Branch practices, and the orthodontists, not in this guide?

West Long Branch is its own borough, and this guide stops at the municipal line, though Google’s own answer for Long Branch reaches into it and so do many residents — West Long Branch Dental, SparQ Family Dental, Drs. Damurjian and Nasr, Hanna Elite Dentistry, Joseph DiFazio, DMD, and Dr. Richard Lubitz are the practices there, and they are as close to much of Long Branch as anything in this table. Specialists are different categories with different licenses and permits: Diamond Braces on Route 36 (orthodontic, in West Long Branch) and the dental residency clinic at Monmouth Medical Center, which is a hospital teaching service rather than a practice. Garden State Circle’s oral surgery guide for Hunterdon County is the nearest one published so far.

About This Guide

This guide is produced by Garden State Circle. Practices appear here because they meet the criteria described above — a general dental practice with an office in Long Branch, Interlaken, Oceanport, Deal, Allenhurst or Loch Arbour and at least one named dentist whose New Jersey license the state register showed as Active. That is a test, not a judgment, and it is the only route onto this page. No practice can pay to be included in this guide, to be listed higher, or to change what the comparison table says about it. Practices are listed alphabetically, and every detail in the table was verified against each practice’s own website and against the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs licensee register in September 2026.

Everything under the heading that begins this guide is governed by the rules above, on every guide we publish. Where a sponsor’s message appears above that heading, it is paid for and labelled, and it buys nothing in the guide. Garden State Circle is supported by the businesses that participate in it. Participation pays for our ongoing work: keeping a business’s entry accurate, re-checking its record, and publishing a page of its own details that the business maintains. There is no paid placement in this guide. Participation does not buy a place here, a position here, or anything the comparison table says. Nothing on this page is medical advice. Every treatment described here carries risks that depend on your own health and history, and the person to discuss them with is a licensed provider who has examined you.

Garden State Circle is published in New Jersey by Tiffany and Jake Slowinski and covers Long Branch, Interlaken, Oceanport, Deal, Allenhurst and Loch Arbour, in Monmouth County. Contact the publisher at jake@gardenstatecircle.com. How every guide is made, in one place: how every guide is made.

How We Selected These Practices

A practice appears here if it meets three tests. It is a general dental practice, according to its own website. It has an office you can walk into in Long Branch, Interlaken, Oceanport, Deal, Allenhurst or Loch Arbour, stated on its own website or on the business profile it maintains on Google. And at least one dentist it names holds a New Jersey dental license that the state register showed as Active on September 3, 2026.

That is deliberately a low bar, and it admits nearly everyone. Specialists — orthodontists, periodontists, endodontists, prosthodontists, oral surgeons and pediatric dentists — are not on this list, because each of those is its own category with its own guide. A practice that failed one of the three tests is not deleted: it sits in a labelled section below the main list with its address and the reason, so you can see who we could not check rather than wonder why a name is missing.

Five practices meet the tests. They are listed alphabetically. Six more are listed below the table with the reason each could not be checked the same way — a community health center whose pages name no dentist, a practice whose own site publishes only a Red Bank office, and four Google-only listings whose named dentists show as Inactive or Expired, or are not on the register under the published name. Long Branch has more dental listings than practices that pass the tests, and the table shows only those that did. If any of that has changed, the correction address at the bottom of this page is for exactly that.

What This Guide Cannot Tell You

Two things, and they are worth stating plainly. The state register tells us that a person holds a New Jersey dental license and what its status was on the day we looked. It does not tell us where that person practises, how many days a week they are in a given office, or whether they are the dentist you will actually see. For that, the practice’s own website is the source, and the table shows what each one publishes.

The second limit is the new-patients column. It records how each practice says a new patient starts — an online booking system, a set of new-patient forms, or an appointment request form — and nothing else. Two practices state on their sites that they are accepting or welcoming new patients; we have not checked that with any of them, and a sentence like that can be a year old. The column does not say whether the answer will be yes.

What the Register Statuses Mean

Every dentist named in the table showed as Active on the register; one Google-only name at a table address showed Inactive, and the entry says so. Four names below the table showed as Inactive or Expired, or were not on the register under the published name, and the entries say so. A license marked Inactive or Retired is a status the licensee can elect and the board records; a license marked Expired has passed its renewal date. None of those statuses says anything about the practice as a whole, and none of them means a person is practising without a license — it is a reason to ask which dentist you will see. This guide prints what the register showed on the date at the top of the table, and nothing more.

A Note on Reading the Table

Names are printed exactly as each practice writes them, which is why some carry a degree and some do not, and why two rows carry a name from the business profile the practice maintains on Google rather than from a website, because the practice has none we could find. Where a practice’s own site and the register disagree on the degree letters, the name is printed without letters and the entry explains. Where the register shows a status other than Active against a name, the license cell says which name and what it showed, dated, and nothing else.

Ownership is a fact, not a grade. Independently owned means the practice says so on its own site or names its owner-dentist; Part of a group means the practice’s own site, or the group’s own location list, says so. Not published means the site says nothing either way — and most sites say nothing either way, which is why that value is the most common one in the column; one practice here does say it, in its own words. A practice named after its dentist, or organised as a P.A., is not thereby “independently owned” in this table; the practice has to say it.

Something Out of Date?

This guide is maintained. If anything here is wrong or has changed — a dentist who has joined or left a practice, a license status, an address, a booking method, or whether a practice has closed — tell us and we will check it. Practices listed here are welcome to write in directly, and a practice whose dentist we could not find on the register, or whose site we could not read, is exactly the kind of correction we want.

And if you run a general dental practice with an office in Long Branch, Interlaken, Oceanport, Deal, Allenhurst or Loch Arbour that should be on this list, write to us. The criteria are the same for everyone: a general dental practice, an office you can walk into in one of these towns stated on your own website or Google profile, and at least one named dentist whose New Jersey license shows as Active. If you meet them, you go on.

Something out of date?

This guide is maintained. If anything here is wrong or has changed — a credential, who is at the practice, insurance participation, or whether they are taking new patients — tell us and we will check it. Businesses listed here are welcome to write in directly.

admin@gardenstatecircle.com