Big plates of food, early bird discount for cash at Giovanni's Restaurant

Filet of Sole alla Tagame at Giovanni's Restaurant in Elmwood Park is made with black olives, tomatoes, garlic, marsala wine and balsamic vinegar, and served with pasta or potatoes and vegetables, above.

Gamberi alla Scampi are large shrimp sauteed in a sherry garlic sauce over linguine or capellini.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

New Jersey may have more Italian-American restaurants than any other kind, but that doesn't make it any easier to find a good one.

Our last favorite BYO for moderately priced salads, pasta and fish, Bocconi Restaurant in Hackensack, closed suddenly last October.

On Saturday, in our search for a replacement, we returned to Giovanni's Restaurant, a storefront in Elmwood Park, where we ate twice before many years ago.

I noticed the long, rectangular dining room had been renovated and, when we got the menu, a three-course early bird dinner special at a discounted cash price of $14.95 per person.

You have a choice of eight appetizers (plus a salad) and 23 entrees (with pasta or potato and vegetable), and you also get coffee or tea and dessert.

That sounds like a great deal for a lot of food, but we decided to order one of the moderately priced a la carte entrees, which come with a side salad (all but one under $20). 

Enough for 2

Filet of Sole is available francese or broiled, but I asked whether the kitchen could prepare the fillets alla Tagame, the style listed for broiled salmon ($19.50 each).

There was enough white, flaky fish for two in marsala wine and balsamic vinegar, plus potatoes and mixed vegetables -- a perfect one-dish meal.

My mother-in-law ordered the Filleto di Salmon alla Tagame, and my wife had Gamberi alla Scampi, large shrimp in a rich sherry garlic sauce over linguine ($18.50).

She couldn't finish the al dente pasta, which I sampled, but I'd like to see this dish made with less sauce.

I loved my food, and we plan to return to Giovanni's when we're in the mood for Italian again.

When you ask for anchovies with the Cesare Romana side salad, you actually get anchovies.

Sweet green pepper sections cooked in balsamic vinegar come with the warm, crusty bread.

The Early Dinner Menu is served from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

The dining room at Giovanni's in Elmwood Park.

Details

Giovanni's Restaurant, 430 Market St., in Marketplace of Elmwood Park, Elmwood Park; 201-791-3000. BYO, parking lot, closed Mondays.

Open from 11:30 a.m. Tuesdays to Fridays, and from 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Reservations recommended for dinner. 

When favorite Italian closes, Hackensack's Green Olive comes through

Shrimp and Clams over Risotto ($18), above, and Whole Wheat Penne with Broccoli Rabe ($16) were among the dishes we enjoyed on Saturday night at Green Olive, our consolation prize after we discovered Bocconi Restaurant in Hackensack had closed.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Little did we know after we enjoyed another terrific meal at Bocconi Restaurant in mid-September the Italian-American BYO in Hackensack would close suddenly a couple of weeks later.

This message appeared on the restaurant's Facebook page on Oct. 2:

"We are sad to inform everyone that Bocconi is permanently closed! We appreciate all of our customers. You will be greatly missed by Frank [an owner], Mario [the chef] and staff."

Empty dining room

But we hadn't seen the Facebook entry, and late Saturday afternoon, we parked in the lot of the medical building across Essex Street, and then crossed on foot, carrying a bottle of Italian red wine and a pound of organic whole wheat spaghetti Frank had said he would cook and serve to us.

Then, we saw the restaurant was empty of all of its furnishing, and one of the letters in the "bocconi" neon sign was burned out.

Frank's message on Facebook didn't even hint at why Bocconi had closed.

Was it the impossibly small parking lot, the rent or another issue?

I immediately thought of an alternative, The Green Olive, an Italian-American restaurant on Passaic Street in Hackensack we've never tried. 

We drove over and had a nice dinner of salad, whole wheat pasta and seafood, sharing all of the dishes, and our son ordered a dessert with ice cream.

Green Olive prices are moderate, as they were at Bocconi, but the latter served bigger portions and also had the edge on preparation of the food.

Details

The  Green Olive, 455 Passaic St., Hackensack; 201-487-0759.

Web site: 

The Green Olive, A Restaurant

Our last meal at Bocconi:

A leisurely dinner with our wine

At The Green Olive, three of us shared two salads, above and below ($10 and $11).

Sole Florentine stuffed with spinach ($22).

The Green Olive served us complimentary crostini and olives, but not bread.

No Italian wines were available by the glass. I ordered a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon for $8, and then another, but the second glass wasn't served before I finished eating.

The Green Olive is a restaurant with a dining room and bar, which are separated by a glass-topped partition, below.

The shocker. All of the furnishings have been removed from Bocconi on Essex Street in Hackensack. In better days, below. 

A half-portion of Bocconi's Fettuccine Putanesca.