Top seafood on both sides of the Hudson: Esca and Hiura

Two of the first-course lunch selections at Esca in Manhattan on Friday were crudo or raw white tuna, with black pepper and extra-virgin olive oil, above, and crispy calamari with parsley and radish sticks, below.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

A short and problem-plagued New York City Restaurant Week is over, but I'm already looking forward to summer discounts on lunches and dinners at some of the city's best spots.

I finally managed to get to Esca Restaurant on Friday -- the last day of the annual winter promotion -- for a three-course seafood lunch that cost only $25, plus tax and tip, the price of an entree at other times.

The natural follow-up on Saturday night was a dinner of high quality raw and cooked seafood at Hiura, a family run Japanese restaurant in Fort Lee.

Winter Restaurant Week usually falls in January, but it was postponed this year until after the Super Bowl game in North Jersey on Feb. 2, and shortened to three weeks from four.

I had to cancel two other Esca reservations because of bad weather.

Esca transformed an entree of inexpensive whiting by pan frying and crisping the fillets and serving them with cauliflower, which, unfortunately, was overcooked and mushy. All the hot, flaky fish needed was a spritz of fresh lemon juice.

Esca's $25 Restaurant Week menu allows no substitutes. I broke my diet and indulged in a sinful panna cotta with citrus, including blood orange, and fresh and candied lemon.

White-bean crostini, above, and olives, below, were complimentary. The crust of the sliced Italian bread served at Esca shattered and tasted as if it was baked in a coal oven. Esca, Italian for "bait," describes itself as a southern Italian trattoria "devoted to celebrating the fruits of the sea." 

Tables off of Esca's main room and a small bar.

All set for dinner

At Hiura in Fort Lee, I was delighted to see the father-and-son team of Noboru and Shoji Hiura working side by side behind the sushi bar, where I sat down for dinner. 

I have been fed well by the Hiuras for nearly three decades, and Saturday night was no exception.

I ordered the Dinner Set, a beautifully composed box of raw and cooked seafood, and tempura with soup, rice, pickles, hot green tea and dessert.

Hiura's Dinner Set includes fat slices of raw bluefin and medium-fatty tuna, left front; juicy Chilean sea bass marinated in sake and sweet miso paste, right front, and perfectly fried shrimp and vegetable tempura, right rear ($32).

Raw seafood in the sushi bar's refrigerated compartment at Hiura.

Miso soup, above; radish pickles, below, and a bowl of white rice are part of the Dinner Set.

I chose a slice of sweet melon instead of ice cream for dessert.

Details

Esca, 402 W. 43rd St., New York, N.Y.; 1-212-564-7272. Web site: A trattoria dedicated to seafood

Hiura Restaurant, 400B Main St., Fort Lee; 201-346-0110. BYO, closed Wednesdays. Valet parking at dinner.

For Japanese cabbage rolls, you're asked to use your imagination

Farm-raised blue-fin tuna sashimi is $49.99 a pound at Mitsuwa Martketplace in Edgewater. Eggs from caged fish are used to raise the tuna without hormones, according to European media. Wild blue-fin tuna are over-fished and endangered, principally to satisfy the demand from Japan and other countries. Blue-fin tuna also contain high levels of harmful mercury, and consumers should consider such alternatives as yellow-fin tuna, albacore or wahoo.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The sales flier from Mitsuwa Marketplace that came in the mail showed appetizing cabbage rolls and, when I looked closer, I saw "meat substitute" as a suggested stuffing -- perfect for a non-meat eater like me.

I once saw stuffed cabbage offered as a lunch special at Hiura, a family owned Japanese restaurant in Fort Lee, and always wondered if the dish was adapted from another cuisine.

So, I set off for the big Japanese supermarket in Edgewater, only to be told no cabbage rolls were being offered, just cabbage at 99 cents a pound.

"You are supposed to imagine them," the woman at Mitsuwa's customer service counter said when I showed her the cabbage rolls on the flier.

Asian cabbage is on sale for 99 cents at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater, but you won't find any cabbage rolls, despite the photo on the sales flier.

  

Farmed blue-fin tuna

I went over to the fish department and looked over farmed blue-fin tuna sashimi and other raw fish, then walked to another part of the store to check out sushi rolls.

I am boycotting blue-fin tuna, but all that fish made me hungry.

Omusubi Gonbei, one of the food stands at Mitsuwa Marketplace, is "cash only," a policy you'll find at most of the other stands. Ramen and full meals also are available at Mitsuwa Marketplace. A stand-alone Japanese restaurant is undergoing renovation.

My two rice balls were made with the palest brown rice I have ever seen.

One of the many plastic models in Mitsuwa's food court.

Rice balls

I snacked on two omusubi or rice balls wrapped in dried seaweed from Omusubi Gonbei, one of the stands in the food court, where tables afforded a terrific view of the Hudson River and Manhattan through dirty plate-glass windows.

One rice ball had spicy pollock roe, and another was stuffed with mustard greens ($2 and $2.20). I asked for them to be made with brown rice.

Raw, wild-caught blue mackerel from Norway was $3.99 for a fillet of one-third or one-half of a pound. Are you supposed to eat the skin, and if not, how do you separate it from the flesh, or are the fillets meant to be cooked?

Seafood rolls include fish eggs.

$1.99 each

I watched Japanese customers filling their baskets or carts with cheap-looking, plastic or metal kitchen items that were on sale for $1.99 each, and wondered what they were thinking.

One young woman put down her hand-held basket, which was brimming with such "convenience" items -- called zakka -- walked outside and returned with a grocery cart.

I stopped for a cup of coffee at a small restaurant just inside the store entrance that offers a Wagyu steak dinner for $24.

Then, I saw a Panasonic store, and decided my old Panasonic 10-cup rice cooker needed a break after at least 15 years of reliable service.

I bought a new one and filled out the order online.

The saleswoman said it would be shipped to me free within a few business days.


Mitsuwa Marketplace, 595 River Road, Edgewater; 201-941-9113. For more information, click on the following link:  Open 365 days a year   

Is your sushi fresh or frozen?

Bluefin-tuna sushi, front, and cooked eel at Hiura in Fort Lee (2013).

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor


You might be surprised to learn the pristine slice of fish that melts in your mouth at a good sushi parlor had been frozen, along with all the other raw fish you eat.

Consumer Reports On Health urges sushi- and shashimi-lovers to "make sure that the fish was frozen before serving, because that kills the parasites sometimes found in fish. (The Food and Drug Administration requires restaurants to take that step, though enforcement can be lax.)"

It says you should prepare sushi at home only using frozen fish.

In other words, it is illegal for a U.S. restaurant to serve fish raw unless it has been frozen first. The publication echoed an article about sushi I read in 2004 in The New York Times' Dining In/Dining Out section, "Sushi Fresh from the Deep ... the Deep Freeze."

The June 2009 Consumer Reports newsletter also says consumers "should choose pieces made with low-mercury fish, such as salmon or shrimp," though doesn't mention that the vast majority of salmon served as sushi is artificially colored farmed fish. 

Tuna and mercury

Tuna, also a popular fish for sushi, has a high mercury content.

I try to limit my raw tuna consumption to the once-a-year carving of giant (frozen) bluefin tunas at Mitsuwa Marketplace, the Japanese supermarket in Edgewater. 

Last year, I purchased a quarter of a pound of the best belly meat ($60 a pound) and enjoyed seven slices of meltingly beautiful, marbled fish at home.

I like raw fluke and other "white" fish as sushi and sashimi. 

Hiura Restaurant

My favorite Japanese restaurant for sushi is Hiura in Fort Lee, a small, family run BYO. Though expensive, the sushi, sashimi, sea urchin, fish eggs and cooked dishes have never disappointed.

If you are going to buy sushi at the supermarket, H Marts in Englewood, Little Ferry and Ridgefield have their own sushi sections and a fourth market from the Korean chain is slated to take over the space once occupied by Kings in Fort Lee. 

Avoid the stuff sold in ShopRite. The sushi at the new Whole Foods Market in Paramus is excellent, but prices are high, compared with H Mart.