Day in and day out, food shoppers love to hate the H Mart in Little Ferry

At the H Mart on Bergen Turnpike in Little Ferry, two of the biggest complaints among shoppers are the potholes and mini lake of water in the parking lot, above, and the dual wheelchair ramps customers must use to reach the entrance, below.

Inside, the shabby entrance way, below, wouldn't be out of place in the third world.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Food shopping can be good exercise, especially if you park your car far from the store entrance.

At the H Mart in Little Ferry, the Korean management doesn't give you much choice. 

On Sunday, the parking lot was flooded from a recent snowfall, and I didn't want to splash through the water in my car, which I had had cleaned the day before.

Employees say H Mart doesn't own the property, and can't force the landlord to repair the parking lot.

Korean specialties

Still, I shop at this H Mart -- the shabbiest major supermarket in North Jersey -- for fresh fish, a wide selection of fresh Asian greens, fruit and California-grown white rice, usually at low prices, and because it is relatively close to my home.

I also love such prepared Korean specialties as stewed pollack, japchae and kimbap, though prices for them have risen dramatically in the past year or so.

The weekends also mean free samples of seafood, noodles and other items, but they tend to come and go at the whim of the managers or you might be scolded for taking more than one piece of a grilled rice-flour pancake.

Many complaints

Shoppers have complained about the Little Ferry H Mart on Yelp:

A woman from Palm Harbor, Fla., said this about her visit in December:

"I'm giving this place three stars because they are smaller than the other HMARTS I have been to. I'm not sure if it was just me, but I couldn't find their prepared foods. I feel like this location definitely needs a renovation as it looks exactly the same as it did fifteen years ago. Their selection is okay but again not the best. I would only recommend coming here if it is the closest Korean market to you, and there is no way you can go to another location. As for me, I don't think I would ever be returning to this location."

A man from Rutherford visited last April and praised only the fruit:

"I think they use The H-Mart parking lot for the filming of 'Battle of Stalingrad', craters, drowning pools with dead sea gulls floating, decaying desolation everywhere to go along with the rundown exterior of the H-Mart building, which itself still contains the closed down hulk of the old Valley Fair department store. Than you need to climb a giant ramp to enter the store, past a dingy liquor store and then, and then, then you find yourself in a oases of colorful fresh fruits. Korean Melons and Pears, Japanese Persimmons, Dragon fruit. Kumquats, Chinese Litchi and Star fruit. Beautiful just beautiful.
This is the best part of the market. After this, it begins to run down again and if you walk to the other end you have the fishy smelling fish market. BLAH.
Who is running this place? Only the produce manager cares; the only reason I come here is for the fruits."

All the other Bergen County supermarkets in the Korean chain (Fort Lee, Ridgefield and Englewood) are newer or have been renovated.

And there have been rumors for the last couple of years that a new store and food court will be built in the vacant half of the sprawling former Valley Fair building at 360 Bergen Turnpike, Little Ferry.

But so far, H Mart has only announced that a new store will open on Route 17 north in Paramus.

Still, there have been signs of construction on the Little Ferry building.

Work on the enormous former Valley Fair building began last year, above and below, but so far appears to be confined to the foundation, which looks like it was built on stilts to avoid floodwaters.

Shoppers put up with the Little Ferry H Mart in hopes of finding bargains on produce, such as two heads of red-leaf lettuce for 99 cents, above.

A 5-pound box of Spanish Clementines was $3.99 on Dec. 4, but on Sunday, the price was back to $7.99. The day before, Whole Foods Market in Closter also was selling a 5-pound box of clementines for $7.99. A 15-pound bag of California-grown Kokuho Yellow Label Rice was $9.99 at H Mart.

Korean-style Stewed Alaskan Pollack is a long-time favorite, but I was alarmed to see for the first time that monosodium glutamate, a controversial ingredient, is being added to the prepared fish dish I brought home on Sunday from the Little Ferry H Mart. Jinga of Queens, N.Y., also is adding corn syrup to the pollack (see label below), so I'll have to look for the dish from another outside Korean food company.

H Mart bargain hunting, Costco-inspired dishes, a new salad

Jun's Tofu is made with non-GMO soybeans and sold at H&Y Marketplace, a Korean supermarket at 1 Remsen Place in Ridgefield. I like the tofu with wild sesame and sea salt, eaten hot or cold. A 28-ounce package is $5.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

H Mart is the biggest chain of Korean supermarkets in New Jersey, but the North Jersey stores don't seem to be run by the same owner.

Last week at the H Mart in Englewood, a 15-pound bag of California-grown Kokuho Yellow Label White Rice was on sale for $9.99, a savings of $5.

The catch: You need the store's Smart Card coupon and must buy more than $30, excluding coupon items.

The next day, I stopped at the H Mart in Little Ferry and found the same 15-pound bag of rice for $10.88, with no strings attached.

This H Mart put the regular price at $15.99 -- not the $14.99 quoted in Englewood -- and my receipt showed a savings of $5.11.

I also found a large seedless watermelon in the Little Ferry store for $4.99, compared to $7.99 in Englewood.

The Englewood store did have Chinese broccoli on sale for 98 cents a pound.

Kirkland Signature Wild Alaskan Smoked Sockeye Salmon from Costco Wholesale in an open-face omelet of 100% Egg Whites, also from Costco, served with mashed sweet potatoes from Trader Joe's. 

Good ingredients from Costco

Cold-smoked wild sockeye salmon from Alaska, refrigerated basil pesto, salted pollock, pignoli nuts, organic quinoa -- the list of quality ingredients from Costco Wholesale is long.

Supplement them with a few key items from other stores, such as whole-wheat pasta, and meal preparation is a snap.

Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto from Costco Wholesale is a wonderful dressing for whole-wheat pappardelle, mouth-filling pasta ribbons from Italy, with added pignoli nuts and fresh basil, two of the ingredients in pesto.

An egg-white frittata made with sweet peppers, garlic, shredded cheese and salted Alaskan pollock, a cousin of the cod. I served it with a mixture of organic brown rice and quinoa with salsa verde.

A salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix with organic beets, Campari tomato and pignoli nuts -- all from Costco -- dressed with extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

New salad from Earthbound Farm

I picked up a new organic salad from Earthbound Farm at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

The blend of tender baby kale, chard and spinach -- called "POWER" -- can be used in salads, smoothies and as a pizza topping.

A 1-pound bag is $5.99, compared to $4.49 for a 1-pound tub of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix.

The resealable plastic bag is similar to the one the spring mix was sold in at one time, and it is easier to store in the refrigerator than the bulky plastic tub.

I tried the assertive greens in a salad with spring mix, reduced-fat Jarlsberg Swiss Cheese, Jersey blueberries and Campari tomatoes, all from Costco (photo below).

Say cheese at least 54 times

Image via Wikipedia

Costco sells Parmigiano-Reggiano and more than 50 other cheeses.

Or maybe 55 or 56 times. This afternoon, I tried to count all the cheeses offered in a long refrigerated case at Costco in Hackensack, but now remember, as I write this, there is more cheese in another case I didn't look at.

So let's just say the warehouse store with the high-quality food at low prices -- on everything from soup to nuts -- carries more than 50 cheeses, in slices, wedges, wheels and blocks, as well as grated and shredded.

They are imported from Italy, Ireland, England, France and other countries or made in the United States for foreign dairies.

I love cheese, but have tried to avoid the full-fat ones, so I've gravitated toward skim-milk Parmigiano-Reggiano ($11.99 a pound) and Grana Padano ($8.99 a pound), both from Italy, and reduced-fat Jarlsberg Lite slices ($8.99 for two pounds).

Occasionally, I've brought home sheep's milk Manchego from Spain ($8.29 a pound), but I don't think I'm ready for a French cheese I saw today -- La Delice Saint Faron Triple Cream cow's-milk cheese ($9.49).

I plan to try a new cheese every two weeks, now that I have cut down on bread and pizza, and lost more than 20 pounds. So I bought Bufala Mozzarella from Italy, four balls of buffalo-milk cheese in milky water, for $11.99 (17.6 ounces).

Others I noticed today were Smoked Gouda ($5.49 a pound); Cave-Aged Taleggio from Italy ($8.29); and Cabot White Cheddar, aged for 14 months ($7.99 a pound). 

Fresh mozzarella was $3.99 a pound and grated Pecorino Romano from Italy was $10.99 for two pounds.

Image via Wikipedia

Price fluctuations

Costco's smoked wild sockeye salmon, sold under the Kirkland Signature label, is now $15.39 a pound, and Earthbound Farm organic spring mix has edged up to $4.99 a pound, but no other food store can match these prices.

Items that have held the line include fresh, wild-caught haddock fillets from Iceland ($8.49 a pound); Legal Sea Foods Alaskan King Crab and Sweet Corn Chowder ($9.79 for two 20-ounce containers) and organic, triple-washed spinach ($3.99 a pound). 

Annoying practices

I stopped at H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Fort Lee, did my shopping, waited in the checkout line and started to leave the store when I noticed all the large bags of rice against the window.

A 20-pound bag of Kokuho Yellow Label, a California-grown rice we use, was on sale for $10.99, almost half-price, and the sale ended that day. Even though we needed white rice, I didn't want to wait on line again, and left, thinking if I returned in a week, this rice or another one would be on deep discount.

No such luck when I returned Wednesday, so, after keeping an appointment, I drove to H Mart in Little Ferry. The best I could do was the same 20-pound bag for $16.99.

A friend looking for snow melt said Home Depot in Hackensack only had 50-pound bags -- too much for him to handle. So he went to Pathmark in the same shopping center to do some food shopping and checked out, only to find smaller bags of snow melt on the other side of the register.

When he asked, he was told the store wasn't big enough to display them inside. Give me a break.