Tell us more -- much more

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Fairway Market says the cattle may have been sick but the beef tastes great.

The latest Fairway Market flier offers wild Alaska salmon fillet for $9.99 a pound, but doesn't tell you whether it is coho, sockeye or another type.


The Paramus store devotes a full page to its butcher shop and its USDA Prime 21-Day Dry-Aged Beef, but you won't find any discussion of how the cattle were raised.


You can imagine Master Butcher Ray Venezia talking to the people who write the flier:


"OK. This stuff tastes great, because it has more fat than other grades, but it's a living hell for the animals. Hey. That's between you and me, right?


"We don't want any mention of how they are crowded into feed lots in Chicago and other places, and how they're stuffed full of grain, antibiotics, growth hormones and bits of dead animals to get them to grow fast and to turn them into cash.


"Their stomachs are designed to convert grass into protein, so the steady diet of grain can make them sick, and sometimes they collapse and have to be dragged into the slaughterhouse. But again, that's between you and me, right?


"Just call it, 'The tenderest, best-tasting beef on the planet,' and leave the rest to me."


Mama mia


Mama Mexico in Englewood Cliffs was the first fine-dining Mexican restaurant in North Jersey, and it has prices to match.


Rosa Mexicano in Hackensack was the second. If you attended one of its cooking demonstrations, you saw everything was made from scratch using good ingredients.


Now, Mama Mexico is offering 40% off "the entire menu," as well as lunch specials starting at $7.95, through Sept. 5. The coupon was stuck to the Better Living section of The Record today.


Mama Mexico, 464 Sylvan Ave., 
Englewood Cliffs; 201-871-0555.
Web site: High-end Mexican


Bibi'z in Westwood


On June 9, Bibi'z was reviewed in The Record, rating only a half-star away from "Outstanding." Elisa Ung, the reviewer, said all of the food she tried "was fantastic."


Today, a friend whose judgment I trust said, "Don't waste your time."


She said she ordered one of the expensive restaurant's "small plates," and the portion was thimble-sized. 


And she was disappointed in the dish, which was made with chickpeas, even though the Lebanese owner should know a thing or two about them.

Food editor's days are numbered

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The Record of Woodland Park is looking for a new food editor. The successful candidate would replace Bill Pitcher, who has been in the job for only four years and one month.


The job posting -- on the Web site of the University of Miami School of Communication -- reads almost exactly like the one the newspaper ran after Patricia Mack was forced to retire in 2006.


But the address for cover letters and resumes is now 1 Garret Mountain Plaza in Woodland Park, not 150 River St., Hackensack, former home of the newspaper and North Jersey Media Group. Here is one line from the July 20 posting:

"This editor must have a boundless enthusiasm for and a vast knowledge of food, dining, nutrition, fitness, diet and health issues."

Pitcher, who is being paid more than $71,000 a year, never put his stamp on food coverage. He took over the job in June 2006 -- several months before the Food section was folded by Publisher Stephen A. Borg -- and has been little more than a recipe editor. In the past six months, he has reviewed restaurants while Elisa Ung is on leave.

The brash, young publisher promised "every day" food news in the Better Living features section that Pitcher never was able to deliver, despite the assistance of Ung and other young staffers.

The successful candidate likely will be in their early 30s -- in keeping with Features Director Barbara Jaeger's desire to work with young people who won't challenge her authority.

To read the full posting, go to the university Web site (below) and click on "Career Connection" in the header, then "Jobs":


com.miami.edu 

Too little, too late

After virtually ignoring for at least two years how the food she writes about has been raised or grown, restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung of The Record has a column on the Better Living front today listing places that serve organic items, wild fish or meat and poultry free of antibiotics. She lists five eating places in all of North Jersey.

This past Friday, her restaurant review displayed no such sensibility. She is an inconsistent voice for the consumer. She has spent far more time obsessing over the quality of desserts she has encountered in her reviewing and feature stories.

The Record could be of even more service to readers by listing supermarkets that sell naturally raised food, but that might run afoul of the drive for advertising revenue.

Hold the swordfish, please

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In Friday's restaurant review, Elisa Ung of The Record says the owner knows what will sell to his "primarily senior citizen clientele ... fish selections like swordfish and grouper, not something like wahoo."

Wahoo? I had never heard of it and had never seen it listed on a North Jersey menu, so I did some internet research. I learned it is an "eco-sustainable alternative to swordfish," which is a fish so high in mercury that young women and children are warned not to consume it. I'm a senior and would order wahoo every time to avoid  mercury and certainly would patronize a restaurant that served it over one that served swordfish. Learn more about wahoo at this Web site:

www.tobagowild.com

Returning to the restaurant's name, Ung reports it is named for the owner's daughter, Davia, and son John wanted "no part of the name." Imagine if he did. It could be called Davohn, Daviohn, Javia, Javian, Johnia, Jia, Davia-John or John-Davia. 

Tell me more about food, less about decor

Few restaurants in North Jersey tell you where the food they serve comes from, perhaps fearing that if you knew, you'd run for the exit. Exceptions include Tasteatery in Fort Lee and Green Door Cafe in Tenafly.

That's one of the reason I almost always choose seafood, preferably wild-caught seafood, when I dine out with my wife and son. Where seafood is not available, I take a leap of faith, figuring one meal of mystery meat or poultry won't kill me and trusting that most restaurateurs put their customers first and profits second.

Now, The Record of Hackensack reports in its Starters feature, Bistro 55 has opened in Rochelle Park, in the space once occupied by South City Grill. Yes, this is part of the South City [Restaurant] Group, which has been the subject of nearly overwhelmingly positive stories in the newspaper since restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung slammed South City Prime in March 2008 for "too-rare steaks and rotten sushi."

In today's Better Living article about Bistro 55, writer Amy Kuperinsky tells us a great deal about the origin, or provenance, of some of the food served, quoting the chef: drug-free chicken from the Goffle Road Poultry Farm in Wyckoff; sea scallops from Viking Village, the fishing cooperative in Barnegat Light; and antibiotic-free veal from Vineland. Still, the restaurant serves burgers made from grain-fed -- not grass-fed -- beef.

On the very next page of the Better Living tabloid today, Ung reviews Bazzini in Ridgewood, and in typical fashion, tells us virtually nothing about the origin of the food, except to note one entree she tried was "organic or free-range chicken." The veal in the meatballs? The New York strip steak? Your guess is as good as mine.

News flash: Peruvian opens restaurant

The Record of Hackensack ran a news article on Wednesday about the tens of thousands of Peruvians in North Jersey who began migrating here in the 1950s, drawn by textile mill jobs in Paterson.

The newspaper said the Peruvian-American community in the state is the largest in the U.S. and that Peruvians own 45 restaurants in Paterson alone.

Then, on Friday, The Record's restaurant reviewer, Elisa Ung, declared that a Peruvian-Cuban couple who opened a Peruvian restaurant in Clifton "aim to introduce Peruvian culture to the North Jersey dining scene."

Peruvian food may be new to Ung, but not to me and thousands of other non-Peruvians who have enjoyed dining at Peruvian restaurants in the city of Passaic and Clifton for many years. Jaimito's in Clifton and the El Chevere restaurant group in Passaic are my personal favorites.

For example, Pollos El Chevere on Washington Place in Passaic, just steps from Main Avenue, is a busy, clean, well-run restaurant with a liquor license and a full menu of Peruvian specialties, including the signature marinated rotisserie chicken. The restaurant's Japanese-Peruvian business partners have another place nearby that offers anticuchos, the beef heart loved by Peruvians.

One of the great dishes at Jaimito's is tallerin verde, linguine in pesto sauce topped with a large, fried fillet of fish. The chef-owner is Chinese-Peruvian.

Uncle Paulie's Puro Sabor is a new Peruvian restaurant in Maywood that serves large portions of tasty food at reasonable prices.

Greek restaurant executes fish

A Greek restaurant in Ramsey appears to be lopping off the heads of fresh fish with a guillotine or maybe lining them up in front of a firing squad.

That's what I understood from The Record's report today on Varka Estiatorio, where, the reviewer writes in the data box, the food is "exceptionally executed." I think she meant to say "well-executed," but her copy editor was probably out to lunch.

It's unclear why The Record's Elisa Ung reviewed this restaurant, which has undergone no major changes since the initial, three-star review in 2005, or why it got a three-and-a-half-star rating, despite some poorly prepared dishes, farmed fish for up to $29 a pound, and one of the waiter's dropping a fresh pompano on the floor and then returning it to the display.

Could it be that the restaurant is a regular advertiser and asked for another review after Ung gave three-and-a-half stars in April to a new, competing, Greek fish house in Englewood, Nisi Estiatorio?

The Englewood restaurant charges up to $38 a pound for whole fish (which I thought was outrageous), but the Ramsey fish house has the chutzpah to ask for up to $50 a pound. You should know fish is a cheap commodity -- routinely flown halfway around the world and retailed for well under $10 a pound at Korean fish markets.

But Ung doesn't question the prices, just says they are "high, though justified given the quality of the food." Farmed seafood isn't quality; wild is. Even the sea scallops are farmed, according to her report. There's no explanation why the Ramsey restaurant doesn't serve wild scallops from the fleet at Barnegat Light, which is famous for that shellfish.

A poor job of food journalism

The Record of Hackensack carried a column today by its restaurant reviewer, Elisa Ung, who criticizes "silly cliches" on menus. In a previous column, Ung highlighted typos, misspellings and other language problems on the menus of the places she has reviewed.

Unfortunately, her supervising editor and copy editors do a poor job of catching and fixing the typos, errors and wordy prose in her own columns and stories. In a restaurant review data box this past Friday, she listed $21.95 as the top price for entrees, but panned a paella for two at $41.95. On June 5, she noted "a casual relaxation from an easy dinner out." Once, she said a room in a restaurant was "chandelier-clad." In a story about Bobby Flay's hamburger restaurant in Paramus, she was just plain wrong on the type of ground beef used.

Ung is a woman in her 30s who demonstrates her limited knowledge of food and language with every column she writes. Rarely does she discuss how menus omit the origin of food and whether poultry and meat were raised with antibiotics and growth hormones. It is no longer enough to say a steak tastes good and was cooked to a customer's order. What I and many others want to know is whether the animal was 100% grass fed or confined in a feed lot and given grain, animal by-products and hormones to speed up its growth. And we also want to know whether the seafood we are ordering is wild-caught.

The $24.07 lunch menu Friday at Del Posto in Manhattan said the tomatoes were heirloom and the pork loin came from a breed of black pigs that are vegetarian-fed and raised without antibiotics and growth hormones. Other items were described similarly, as in the free-range chicken listed. Ung should start writing about whether the menus she sees in New Jersey show the same sensibility. (Revised Monday, Aug. 3, and Tuesday, Aug. 4.)