We give in to primal instincts, gathering around a fire to eat

Bulgogi, thin slices of beef sirloin, grilling on our table at So Moon Nan Jip in Palisades Park, one of the few Korean barbecue restaurants still using charcoal, below.

We ordered one portion of beef and another of shrimp to grill over the charcoal and eat wrapped in lettuce. The grate was changed after the meat eaters in my family finished the beef.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You can smell the charcoal in the air when you enter the dining room of So Moon Nan Jip in Palisades Park.

Before I stopped eating meat and poultry, we loved going to this popular Korean barbecue restaurant, where you can grill beef, pork, chicken or shrimp on a tabletop grill and eat them wrapped in lettuce.

An array of side dishes, including a fluffy egg souffle, and rice turn this fun meal into a true belly buster.

Late Sunday afternoon, we returned to So Moon Nan Jip, knowing we could order beef for the meat eaters in the family and shrimp for me.

The servers make up one of hardest working restaurant staffs in Palisades Park, and they help you grill the barbecue as well as bring you more kimchi and other side dishes when they run out (you have to ask).

We were in an out of there in under an hour.

A spicy preparation of octopus was one of the half-dozen side dishes that came with our barbecue meal. To grill on the table, the restaurant requires you to order two portions, ranging from $25.99 for chicken breast to $33.99 for ribeye steak.

Vegetable pancakes.

Wilted greens.

Charcoal smoke and mirrors

As I expected, prices have gone up since I wrote a newspaper review of So Moon Nan Jip in 2005, describing it as one of the restaurants in North Jersey where four people could eat for $50, including tip and tax:

"If you eat barbecue the way Koreans do, the fun quotient is high. Just take the red-leaf lettuce and wrap meat dipped in bean paste, shredded scallions, raw garlic, rice and other items into a small ball and pop the whole thing into your mouth. The layers of hot and cold, and the contrasting textures and flavors are hard to beat."

One thing that hasn't changed are waitresses who will try to get you to order more than the minimum two portions of barbecue.

And the number of free side dishes has been cut; we didn't get soup or the whole fried, 6-inch whiting we were served in 2005, when portions of barbecue were under $20 each.

On Sunday, we ordered bulgogi ($31.99) and butterflied raw shrimp ($27.99), and at the insistence of our ravenous teenager, a plate of translucent yam-flour noodles called japchae ($17.99) and another of mixed beef and pork fried dumplings ($14.99).

I had a bottle of OB Beer ($5).

The quality of the beef barbecue is unclear; it is sliced thinly and marinated. But as to quantity, I'm guessing the portion doesn't weigh a half-pound.

A side dish of American-style potato salad.

Cabbage kimchi.

One of the best Korean egg souffles I've ever had.

Raw butterflied shrimp.

Better value elsewhere

In the years we didn't patronize So Moon Nan Jip, we found much better value in a filling Korean dinner at So Gong Dong, a couple of blocks away on the second floor of 118 Broad Ave.

There, you can order a steaming soft-tofu stew with a fresh egg, side dishes and a big stone bowl of white rice for $10, including the tax.

The popular tofu house also serves dumplings, a seafood pancake and barbecue, among other dishes.

At So Moon Nan Jip, a tangle of seasoned scallions and radish to wrap in lettuce with the barbecue. We didn't get the raw garlic served to Korean customers.

So Moon Nan Jip has 7 Grains, a combination of brown rices and beans, if you prefer that to white rice.

A pricey platter of fried dumplings.

No reservations are taken on weekends at So Moon Nan Jip, above and below.

So Moon Nan Jip, 238 Broad Ave., Palisades Park; 201-944-3998. Valet parking in rear lot, but you must tip $1.

This lunch made us forget about dinner

Woochon has a waterfall in the dining room and tanks of live seafood.

Editor's note: Today, I describe two great ethnic meals at restaurants in Palisades Park and Hackensack.

I came across a real eye-opener while looking over the lunch menu at Woochon, a new Korean restaurant in Palisades Park:

Hangover Stew with Clotted Ox Blood. 

We stuck with more conventional food during our lunch on Thursday -- my wife and I shared entrees of Grilled Spanish Mackerel ($13.99) and Soft Bean Curd Stew with Seafood ($9.99).

A large mackerel fillet comes with pickled ginger, watercress and a lemon wedge.

The bean-curd stew is served in an usually large stone bowl.

Menu prices include the side dishes of vegetables, fish and meat Korean restaurants are known for. 

On Thursday, we received 11 small dishes with fish cake, translucent noodles, spring-mix salad, peanuts, dark-green seaweed, mushrooms, kimchi  and other items, and several were replenished during the meal.

The restaurant serves summer water kimchi and white kimchi instead of the spicier mahk kimchi, which is made with a lot of red pepper and garlic.

The entrees came with brown or white rice, and with the side dishes, I was so full, I skipped dinner.


I was happy with tea, fruit and cheese until bedtime.

Some of the seafood in my bean-curd stew --baby octopus and squid -- was chewy, but a large shrimp in the shell couldn't have been more tender.

We also loved the juicy, skin-on mackerel fillet -- which came with a small bowl of soft-tofu stew -- and all the side dishes or panchan were delicious.   

When we walked it, we were greeted with shouts of welcome from the staff.

At the end of the meal, a male waiter bowed and presented the check on a small tray. 

Ten of the 11 side dishes we were served, above and below.

The restaurant, affiliated with another of the same name in the Flushing section of Queens, offers a full menu of sushi, tofu and barbecue.

Woochon customers also can sit at a sushi bar, rear.

An outside sign and a summer specials menu list dishes only in Korean. The restaurant is housed in an old corner bank building on the main street in Palisades Park.

Woochon Restaurant, 280 Broad Ave., Palisades Park; 201-242-9999.

Wondee's 

We had another wonderful dinner of seafood, tofu and vegetables at Wondee's in Hackensack on Saturday night, and the food looked as good as it tasted.

I remembered to grab a bottle of Mexican beer from the fridge, but forgot my iPhone and can't bring you photos of our meal.

Three of us had spicy shrimp-and-mushroom soup or wonton soup, an appetizer of fried tofu with a peanut dipping sauce, green papaya salad, large shrimp in a sweet chili sauce and stir-fried tofu with vegetables.

The shredded papaya is served over dark-green lettuce leaves you can use to wrap it, and the puddle of fish sauce-lemon juice dressing is terrific when eaten with a spoon. 

The wonderful shrimp came with a cabbage salad on the side. We ate white or brown rice.

We dined early, and three servers waited on us.

When we walked in, Chef Wandee Suwangbutra was having something to eat in the dining room before the expected rush of customers.

Wondee's Fine Thai Food and Noodles, 296 Main St., Hackensack; 201-883-1700 or 1715. Parking in rear, BYO.

Web site: Fine Thai Food


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Update for Korean barbecue lovers

Image via Wikipedia

It's happened again. Madangsui Restaurant in Fort Lee, once my favorite Korean barbecue restaurant, was fined $1,033 last week by the borough environmental health specialist "for allowing a rat infestation, with droppings too numerous to count," The Record reported on Friday.

Madangsui was fined $285 on Nov. 10 for defrosting meat on the floor and not covering it.  This was a real surprise, because it  had always boasted of serving fresh beef and was the first Korean barbecue restaurant to offer prime beef, the highest USDA grade, after it opened more than five years ago.

Image via Wikipedia

We love all the vegetables and soy served by Korean restaurants, but I've long been concerned about their "mystery meat" -- sliced extremely thin and marinated to improve flavor and tenderness. So we started buying free-range, grass-fed Australian beef and preparing barbecue at home, with rice, kimchi and other side dishes.

Thankfully, the newspaper Friday also contained a ShopRite circular offering Nature's Reserve free-range, grass-fed whole beef tenderloin for filet mignon from Australia at $3.99 a pound with a store card, $5.99 a pound without (4- to 6-pound average). Make sure you get the Australian beef, because the supermarket chain also has put on sale the same cut of conventionally raised U.S. beef. The sale starts today and ends Feb. 6.

Image via Wikipedia

What I did the last time I bought this Australian beef was to trim it carefully, slice it thin and store it in the freezer in bags with bulgogi marinade, available at H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Little Ferry, Englewood, Fort Lee and Ridgefield. (Illustration shows the tenderloin just below the sirloin.)
 
There are few meals that can match the fun quotient of Korean barbecue, where you use red-lettuce leaves to wrap up meat, hot pepper paste, rice, garlic, kimchi and whatever else you can manage, then stuff the whole package into your mouth.

A great way to break a beef fast

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 I served one of our favorite meals at home last night -- marinated Korean beef barbecue with white rice and side dishes. My 12-year-old son still calls this "cook on the table," a reference to how it is served in restaurants, even though I use a non-stick grill that covers two burners on our stove (photos are generic).

Image via Wikipedia

We started making this meal at home to avoid questions about the quality of the beef served in Korean restaurants in  North Jersey. I used beef I had sliced off of a free-range, grass-fed, whole beef tenderloin from Australia, sold at ShopRite under the Nature's Reserve label. I bought it on sale in December for $4.99 a pound, put the slices in a plastic freezer bag and added bulgogi marinade from H Mart in Little Ferry.

Image by bobafred via Flickr

Yesterday, I returned to the H Mart for red leaf lettuce, scallions, seasoned bean sprouts and hot pepper paste. I prepared four cups of white rice in our rice cooker and set out the lettuce leaves, three kinds of kimchi and the pepper paste. I grilled the beef, scallions and sliced garlic at the same time.
At the table, we dipped a slice of meat in the hot pepper paste and wrapped it a lettuce leaf along with garlic or scallion, rice and kimchi. The goal is to see who can make the biggest package and still fit it into his or her mouth. The beef, which I cooked just past medium, was really tender. It's a delicious and fun meal. Since the first of the year, this was only our second meal of beef.

Korean restaurants in the news

Image by churl via Flickr

Korean food is vibrant and a great source of vegetables and soy, but at least two restaurants have been fined for sanitary code violations recently by health inspectors.

The Record today reports a $960 fine for Gam Mee Ok Restaurant in Fort Lee, one of my favorites for its unique kimchi service and its stone-bowl bibimbap. Two issues the inspector noted were "storing beef in stagnant water" and the "staff's failure to wear gloves when handling hazardous foods."

Madangsui Restaurant, also in Fort Lee, was fined $285 on Nov. 10 for defrosting meat on the floor and not covering it.  This was a real surprise, because it  has always boasted of serving fresh beef and is the only Korean barbecue restaurant I've been to that offers prime beef, the highest USDA grade.

I've long been concerned about the "mystery meat" served at many Korean restaurants, so much so that we started buying free-range, grass-fed Australian beef and preparing barbecue at home, with rice, kimchi and other side dishes.

Maybe the lesson of these fines is to avoid eating meat altogether. With soft-tofu stews, spring-chicken soups and other non-beef  selections, that's easy to do at Korean restaurants.

Two more meatless meals

Image via Wikipedia

Tonight, I plan to serve my wife and son spaghetti with sardines in tomato sauce as a follow-up to last night's meal -- one of Jerry's Neapolitan pizzas with a big salad and Italian red wine.

We're trying to cut down on our consumption of beef, but we're not giving it up altogether. In fact, in the interest of full disclosure, I'm heading to the ShopRite in Rochelle Park today to buy an Australian whole beef tenderloin for filet mignon -- on sale for $4.99 a pound with a store card. The cattle are free range and grass fed, and raised without antibiotics and growth hormones.

I'll trim the fat, slice this beef  thin and store it in freezer bags with Korean bulgogi marinade from H Mart. Then, we'll be able to enjoy Korean barbecue at home without having to fret over the mystery meat most restaurants serve for cooking on the table.

And Sunday night at home, we did enjoy Australian shoulder lamb chops I bought at Pathmark for under $3 a pound. I served them with mashed potatoes and sauteed broccoli.

A frugal, filling, satisfying meal

For our Sunday dinner, I unearthed from the freezer a pound and a half of thinly sliced beef that had been marinating in Korean bulgogi sauce since mid-June, when I bought a whole Australian tenderloin for filet mignon for only $2.99 a pound at ShopRite with a store card.

I am not going to tell you this free-range, grass-fed beef melted in our mouths. But it was tender and flavorful, and cooked in about 10 to 15 minutes on the stovetop. Wrapped in red-lettuce leaves with kimchi,  soybean paste, steamed rice and scallion salad, it made a fun meal last night. We also steamed three kinds of Korean dumplings from Best Dumpling in Englewood, but I failed miserably at making an egg souffle, a traditional accompaniment for Korean barbecue.

To get tender Korean barbecue, I had to trim the tenderloin carefully. Now, I have only a couple of steaks left, but I missed last week's sale on the Australian beef, which was going for $3.99 a pound with the ShopRite card. I'll wait, though, reminding myself that the last time we ate Korean "mystery meat" barbecue at a restaurant, it cost more than $80 for three and the service was just-so-so. See earlier post, "Korean restaurant falls off list of favorites."

Korean restaurant falls off list of favorites

We love Korean restaurants for their outstanding service, abundant side dishes and good value, but we were disappointed during a visit last night to one of our favorite barbecue places, So Moon Nan Jib in Palisades Park.

The last time we had tried to eat there, more than a year ago, we found it closed for renovations. Looking around Saturday night, we couldn't tell what had changed in the dining room, but service was sluggish and I had to keep asking -- for more kimchi, for sliced garlic, for more napkins, for steamed rice.

Other Korean restaurants often replenish your side dishes without asking, at times even before you finish them.

So Moon Nan Jib is one of the few places in North Jersey that still uses charcoal in the table-top grills, and there is often a line out the door. Me, my wife and my son went early, between 5 and 6 p.m., got a table easily and were brought two menus. But no one came over to take our order until I gestured to one of the managers.

We chose marinated raw shrimp and bulgogi, thin-sliced raw beef, both for cooking on the table, and a platter of japchae, translucent noodles with bits of meat and vegetables. I don't know of any other barbecue restaurant serving these butterflied shrimp, which cook in only a few minutes and are bursting with flavor.

Most Korean meals come with an array of side dishes, and So Moon Nan Jib is now serving six: kimchi, steamed broccoli, stewed fish, mushrooms, American-style salad and radish. We also got a salad of shredded scallions, spicy red bean paste and red-leaf lettuce leaves for the barbecue, which you wrap in the lettuce along with as many of the other items as you can manage before stuffing the whole package into your mouth. Near the end, we got an egg souffle in a stone bowl.

It was a messy meal in a noisy dining room, and a lot more expensive than in the past. Our three entrees totaled $75.94, including tax. Ouch. I added a tip of $8.

We won't be returning to So Moon Nan Jib. Better choices are two restaurants where we had barbecue while it was closed: Woo Jung in Palisades Park and Madangsui in Fort Lee, where the beef is fresh and the charcoal comes out after 6 p.m.

More Korean restaurants pop up

We have dozens of Korean restaurants in North Jersey, but more seem to open all the time. Yesterday, I had lunch at Haha Donkatsu, 1630 Lemoine Ave., Fort Lee, which took over the space once occupied by a Korean baby octopus restaurant.

Across the street from Haha Donkatsu is Pho 32, a Korean-owned place specializing in the Vietnamese soup called pho and shabu-shabu, where you cook meat, seafood and vegetables in hot broth on your table. It is around the corner from a Vietnamese-owned pho restaurant called Mo' Pho. Haha Donkatsu specializes in breaded pork cutlets, and I had mine diced and added to a bowl of Korean bibimbap -- steamed rice and julienned vegetables ($8.99 with several side dishes). The sauce you add is truly spicy.

Today, as I returned from ShopRite, I saw what looks like Hackensack's first Korean restaurant (the city already has a Shilla Korean bakery on Main Street, near the Sears parking lots). I didn't catch the name, but signs offer barbecue and shabu-shabu. This is a small place that has housed a number of unsuccessful restaurants, between The Record and Pep Boys.

Fire sale on free-range beef

I rushed out at 8 this morning, without a shower or breakfast, to the ShopRite in Rochelle Park for the sale on free-range, grass-fed beef from Australia for only $2.99 a pound with a Price Plus Card or $4.99 a pound without. This beef is raised without antibiotics or growth hormones and sold under the Nature's Reserve label.

This actually was a fire sale on surf and turf, because live lobsters were going for $4.99 a pound with the Price Plus Card. I picked up three for dinner tonight, all just under 2 pounds each. Sale prices are good until June 20.

The whole beef tenderloin I bought weighs 4.57 pounds and is irregularly shaped, so I'll be able to get some filet mignon steaks from the thick end. I'll cut the rest as thin as possible, place the meat in freezer bags with Korean bulgogi marinade and use it over the next few months to prepare a barbecue meal at home, wrapping the cooked meat in red-leaf lettuce leaves and serving it with rice, kimchi, sliced garlic and an egg souffle.

In search of real beef

My 11-year-old son's favorite meal out is cooking Korean barbecue on a grill in the middle of the table. But because my wife and me are trying to eat as little beef as possible, we often go to a Korean tofu house or a Korean restaurant that doesn't require a minimum of two orders of beef.

I read that Prime & Beyond, an expensive Korean butcher shop in Fort Lee, had added tables with grills. We dropped by today, but they said they don't serve the meat with lettuce leaves, as most Korean barbecue places do. We looked at the price list. Boneless steak started at $39.99 a pound. True, this is prime beef, the highest USDA grade, but it has the most fat and there is no indication whether it was raised with antibiotics and growth hormones. The shop also carries what it calls American Kobe-style beef, raised without antibiotics and hormones ($39 for a ribeye dinner).

Fortunately, one of our favorite restaurants is just down the street. So we had dinner at Gam Mee Ok (Koreans say, "gam-Yo"), which allows you to have only one order of barbecue that is grilled in the kitchen. Gam Mee Ok is unique among Korean restaurants in North Jersey to have a kimchi service but to serve no other side dishes. (Another Gam Mee Ok is in Manhattan.)

After you place your order, a member of the wait staff brings out what looks like a small white vase filled with cabbage and radish kimchi. The radish kimchi is already cubed, but the long cabbage kimchi is cut into bite size pieces and placed in a dish with the radish. This kimchi is so good, it is available for takeout. Gam Mee Ok also is different in that it serves hot green peppers along with cabbage leaves for wrapping your barbecue, kimchi, rice or whatever else you can fit into the package before stuffing it into your mouth. It's a fun way to eat.

Another great dish is the stone-bowl bibimbap: steamed rice topped with julienned vegetables and a little ground beef that you mix up after adding a mildly spicy red-pepper sauce. Gam Mee Ok's version is topped with a raw egg yolk that cooks in the hot bowl as you mix the ingredients.

We also had two small vegetable pancakes and Korean beer. We went out searching for beef and found a filling, delicious meal that was mostly rice and vegetables and just a little beef (shared three ways).