Day trip to the Jersey shore: Viking Fresh seafood, a stop in Red Bank

This seafood shack is part of Viking Village, the name given to a lobster-fishing co-op Norwegians founded in the 1920s in Barnegat Light, on Long Beach Island. When the lobsters got scarce, the co-op evolved into today's scallop, gill-net and long-line fishing operation.

From the lunch menu at Viking Fresh Off the Hook, I ordered these beautifully fried wild-caught sea scallops with house-made coleslaw and a side salad instead of french fries ($14.95), above, and my wife chose a Fried Soft-Shell Crab Sandwich with a side salad ($12.95), below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

BARNEGAT LIGHT -- I've been in love with the Jersey shore since I was a kid growing up in Brooklyn who luckily got to spend every summer in Bradley Beach.

Now, one of my favorite places to visit is this fishing port on the Atlantic Ocean, where you can sample seafood fresh off the boats that dock at historic Viking Village.

We drove down on Friday for lunch under an umbrella at Viking Fresh Off the Hook, which is strictly takeout, but which serves those incredibly delicious sea scallops the fishery is best known for.

The informal setting at Viking Fresh Off the Hook didn't stop three women at another table from washing down their lunch with a bottle of prosecco, a sparkling wine from Italy.

Inside Viking Fresh Off the Hook, you can find prepared seafood, including a lobster salad for $36.95 a pound, right rear. The takeout shack is at 1905 Bayview Ave., Barnegat Light; 1-609-361-8900. Open until Labor Day.

Barnegat Light is one of New Jersey's biggest fishing ports, above and below.

Viking Village includes a fresh-fish market.

Jumbo crab cakes -- "made with love" -- were $8.50 each.

The best sea scallops are "dry," such as these in the Viking Village market. If you see scallops in liquid, avoid them and the preservative they are swimming in.

A sign of the times in Viking Village.

Viking Village is at 1801 Bayview Ave., Barnegat Light. Nearby, old fishing shacks have been converted into gift shops.

Even the tolls can't diminish the beauty of the Garden State Parkway.

Fridays during the summer are not the best time to visit the shore, as you can see from traffic on Route 72 heading for the bridge to Long Beach Island. This backup was caused by an accident, but on the way home Friday afternoon, we saw four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic on the southbound Garden State Parkway.

On the way home, we stopped at the Oyster Point Hotel in Red Bank, with vistas of the Navesink River, above and below.

At the hotel, Tesla Motors threw a reception for owners of the all-electric Model S, Model X SUV and Roadster, and their guests, and served Jersey specialties, including sausage-and-pepper hero sandwiches, pizza and salt water taffy.

Falling for the Jersey shore, local seafood all over again

Dolphins hunting for a breakfast of oily bait fish on Saturday off the New Jersey shore resort of Wildwood Crest, below. Tourists enjoy an abundance of locally caught seafood, but busy restaurant kitchens may overcook it, as we discovered at three meals last weekend in Cape May and Sea Bright.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

You don't have to live in the Garden State to fall in love with Jersey shore, its clean ocean air and its abundance of locally caught seafood.

My love affair with the shore dates to the 1950s and 1960s, when we'd pile into the car in Brooklyn and drive to our summer home on Third Avenue in Bradley Beach.

My father would take the train five or six days a week to his Grand Street dry goods store, A. Sasson, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

When we'd pick him up in the afternoon, I would put a nickle or quarter on the rail, where it would be squashed by the locomotive, and then he would shop for a 50-pound bag of potatoes and other produce at the farmers' market just across the tracks.

Our house had eight bedrooms, and most of them were filled with Brooklyn relatives who took turns spending a week or two at the shore, gathering for big meals in our dining room.

I'd walk barefoot the three blocks to the beach, staying mostly on the grass to avoid the hot shale sidewalks.

I also remember a Mr. Haber, who took the train to Bradley Beach and would hawk fresh Syrian bread from a baby carriage he pushed down the middle of sleepy, sun-splashed streets, which were lined with homes that had wraparound porches.

Crab cakes at the Pier House were topped with a fried tortilla, mashed potatoes and a breaded shrimp -- much too fussy for my taste -- and there was more breading than crab.

Our server at the Pier House didn't mention that the dressing for a lunch salad topped with scallops contained bacon, and when I sent it back, she returned in minutes with a bacon-free dressing, but with the same scorched, overcooked scallops from the original.

The retail fish market at the Lobster House in Cape May on Saturday offered fresh medium flounder fillets for $6.95 a pound, as well as locally caught swordfish, tuna, scallops and other seafood.

At The Lobster House, a case holds the shell of a 37.25-pound lobster caught in July 1985 by Capt. Arne Jensen of the F/V Courageous at George's Bank.

In recent years, we've made day trips to Bradley Beach, and spent weekends in Barnegat Light, which has one of New Jersey's big commercial fishing ports.

Most of the local seafood I ate there came from Kubel's Restaurant and Off the Hook, a takeout shop with outdoor tables affiliated with the Viking Village commercial fishing dock, all in Barnegat Light.

New Jersey fishing ports land sea scallops, swordfish, tuna, flounder and lots of other seafood. Clams are another Garden State specialty.

This past weekend, my wife and I attended the 52nd annual meeting of the American Littoral Society, a coastal-conservation non-profit based in Sandy Hook. 

We stayed at the comfortable La Mer Beachfront Inn in Cape May and ate at its restaurant, the Pier House, on Friday and Saturday. 

The annual meeting was held at The Lobster House in Cape May after a big seafood dinner on Saturday night, and, on the way home Sunday, we stopped for a seafood lunch at Woody's Ocean Grille in Sea Bright. 

At the Cape May restaurants, we encountered servers and kitchens that couldn't keep up with the 40 to 65 members that attended meals.

At dinner on Friday, Pier House crab cakes tasted like crab, but had too much breading. The next day, the kitchen badly overcooked and scorched scallops that crowned a lunch salad.

At The Lobster House on Saturday night, we had a wonderful broiled seafood platter with scallops; a stuffed clam with bacon I didn't eat; and tasty crab meat-stuffed half lobster, shrimp and fillet of local flounder, but the fish spent too much time on the fire and lost all of its normal flakiness.

The Littoral Society meal plan was prepaid, limited and allowed no substitutes. 

My server at The Lobster House said there was no "regular milk" for the coffee, and that I couldn't get fruit instead of artery clogging cheesecake for desert.

Perfect fish on top of a perfect salad at Woody's Ocean Grille in Sea Bright.

Also at Woody's, the shrimp on top of a Caesar salad were leaden and overcooked.

The freshly made salsa at Woody's was so good we asked for and received another bowl.

Woody's reopened about five months after it was flooded by Superstorm Sandy on Oct. 29, 2012.

On Sunday, at Woody's Ocean Grille in Sea Bright, the cozy ground-floor dining room, which has a bar and working fireplace, was full when we arrived, and we were seated upstairs, in what turned out to be exile.

The waitress, Ali, handed us lunch menus of salads, tacos and sliders, but forgot to recite the specials.

We ordered two salads, one topped with the perfectly rare, sesame-seed encrusted ahi tuna I requested ($18), and the other with leaden, overcooked shrimp in their shells ($14).

My wife said the shrimp tasted as if they were prepared the day before, and when I mentioned that to the waitress, she apologized and said she would inform the chef.

But there was no offer to prepare the dish again or adjustment of the check. 

And I only learned of the specials, at the end of our meal, when I overheard another serving reciting them to other customers.

If you are seated on the second floor at Woody's, you can amuse yourself trying to count the fish on the unusual lighting fixture that hangs over the main dining room.

The view from La Mer Beachfront Inn in Cape May.

Amid Cape May's Victorian architectural splendor are custom-built homes, such as this one on Beach Avenue that appears to be topped with the smokestacks of an ocean liner.

The lighthouse in Cape May Point is the third at this location and dates to 1859. The  park is perfect for viewing the fall bird migrations.

Salt marshes are easy on eye.

You'll find a boat filled with flowers at Coral and Lighthouse avenues in Cape May Point.

Returning from a futile search for whales.

Another beautiful day in paradise: Sunrise on Sunday.

Pier House Restaurant, 1327 Beach Ave., Cape May; 1-609-898-0300.

The Lobster House, 906 Schellengers Landing Road, Cape May; 1-609-884-8296.

Woody's Ocean Grille, 1 E. Church St., Sea Bright; 1-732-936-1300.

North Jersey's pita bread wars

I have been eating pita bread all my life and can recall the enterprising salesman who hawked bread baked in Brooklyn from a baby carriage he pushed through the sun-splashed streets when we summered in Bradley Beach, part of the annual migration of Sephardic Jews. We called it Syrian bread back then and the loaves were a foot across.

When I moved to North Jersey three decades ago, I naturally gravitated to the Middle Eastern food bazaar in the South Paterson section of Paterson that straddles the Clifton border. As the years passed, great pita bread bakeries came and went, including Amir's, which formed the bread by hand and turned out a deliciously chewy loaf that stood up to stuffing with meat, salad, hummus and whatever else you could cram into it. In those days, no preservatives were used -- just flour, yeast, water and salt.

Today, only a few bakeries in Paterson sell the bread, including Fattal's and Nouri's. But for a decade or more, I have noticed a preference at some restaurants for the thinner, Lebanese-style pita over the slightly thicker Syrian-style loaf. No big deal you would think, but some Lebanese restaurants refused to buy freshly baked local pita and served thinner bread imported from Canada that often was cardboardy and didn't stand up to stuffing with food.

Fattal's loaf, although it is no longer baked in Paterson, has been my preferred bread since Amir's handmade, preservative-free, Lebanese-stlye pita disappeared. Despite the addition of calcium propionate to retard spoilage, Fattal's pita is pliable and stands up well to heating in the toaster. (Calcium propionate is an organic salt that inhibits the growth of mold and is considered one of the safest food additives, according to science.jrank.org.)

This week, I purchased a bag of Nouri's pita and found it is thinner and doesn't heat as well or stand up as well to stuffing. And since any meal can be eaten stuffed into pita, a pita you can't stuff is a pita you don't want.