Where everything on the menu is good

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Wondee's can vary the heat of its dishes, but don't ask for "extremely spicy."

We've been going to Wondee's in Hackensack for years, but we haven't made a dent in its extensive Thai menu. We always seem to order our favorite dishes, but recently we've started to explore the many wonderful listings on the regular and vegetarian menus.


In the past, a typical meal for me, my son and my wife would be dumplings, soup, salad and steamed whole fish with chili peppers.


On Saturday night, however, we went shrimp crazy.


For the first time, we ordered Pad Suki-Yaki with shrimp ($9.95) from the section of the menu called stir-fry noodles, and Keang Panang -- large shrimp with Panang curry and coconut milk ($14.95) -- which we found under Thai curry.


The fine, bean-thread noodles in the former were red, and the dish included preserved bean curd, greens and crunchy vegetables. The large shrimp were served in an oval platter, swimming in a generous puddle of Panang curry, which I ate with a large spoon.


On our previous visit, we had a special of soft-shell crabs in this spicy curry sauce, only one of the many curries at Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles. And we tried Salted Fish Fried Rice ($9.95), which was moist and full of tender seafood.


My wife and I also had our favorite soup, Thome Yum Koong, shrimp and mushroom soup with lime and chili paste ($3.75 for small). 


A word about the shrimp at Wondee's. They invariably are fresh-tasting and tender, some of the best I've had.  


My son ordered Geu Nam (won-ton soup, $3.75) and Karnom Jib (steamed shrimp and pork dumplings, $5.95), and we all shared a Yum Rod Pedt ($8.95), a mock-duck salad listed under the vegetarian menu that is made with iceberg lettuce, crispy tofu and fruit.




Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, 296 Main St., Hackensack; 
201-883-1700. Free parking in rear, BYO.

Food gifts from Jamaica

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My wife returned from Jamaica on Saturday night with island specialties in her suitcase.

She unpacked a container of fried parrot fish, four plastic bags of fresh ackee from trees in the yard, breadfruit wrapped in aluminum foil, large avocados and two, 12-ounce bags of roasted Blue Mountain coffee beans ($19 for 12 ounces). 
 
But it wasn't Jamaican food she wanted before we drove home. With our son, we stopped at Wondee's Thai restaurant on Main Street in Hackensack for a wonderful dinner of vegetarian duck salad (made with tofu, not poultry), spicy Panang curry with large shrimp, a special of Chinese watercress and rice.

This morning, she prepared Jamaica's national dish: ackee and salt fish with sweet and hot peppers -- the bland fruit serving as a foil for salted codfish. On the side, she served the roasted breadfruit, which had been sliced and fried in canola oil. A great breakfast.
 

Why buy any other beef?

ShopRite has another sale on Nature's Reserve-brand beef, a product of Australia that is free range and grass fed. There is a minimum purchase of four pounds at $4.99 a pound with a Price Plus store card. 


The cut is whole beef tenderloin for filet mignon, which I've sliced thin for Korean barbecue or served as small steaks. When I bought this in the past, it required some trimming of fat.




The sale starts today and runs through Sept. 4. With such a low price for Australian beef , it doesn't make sense to buy beef raised conventionally with antibiotics and growth hormones, and fed who knows what.

Another great (meatless) meal at Wondee's

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We didn't get to Wondee's until 8:45 or so Saturday night, but we were lucky to get the last vacant table. My wife and I ate only seafood or vegetarian dishes at the Thai restaurant in Hackensack, where we pledged to go meatless on Feb. 28. But our 13-year-old son, celebrating his birthday, ordered wonton soup with sliced pork (he says it's the best he's ever had).

It was another great meal at one of our all-time favorites and we didn't miss meat. The value is outstanding. Wondee's is one of the few restaurants in North Jersey where a whole fish is priced at $16.95 (up recently from $14.95).


We ordered fried shrimp dumplings with a tasty plum sauce, mock duck salad (with crispy tofu instead of crispy duck), soft-shell crabs in Panang curry (a special) and pineapple fried rice with shrimp.


Everything was terrific, but we especially like the two big crabs (cut in four pieces) in the spicy curry, which was flecked with red pepper ($16.95). The dish included some crisp green beans and sweet pepper.


The fried rice dish is so much bolder than Chinese fried rice, which often is made from leftovers. Wondee's version includes big chunks of canned pineapple and three or four crunchy shrimp.


Our son didn't eat all of the sliced pork in his soup -- only the second or third time he has had meat in the two and a half months since we decided to give up meat and eat seafood.

Wondee's has a vegetarian menu and offers vegetarian versions of dishes with meat. For example, another special was a Thai summer roll with or without sweet sausage in tamarind sauce. But we got there too late; the kitchen was out of the meatless version.




Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, 
296 Main St., 201-883-1700;  parking in rear
http://www.wondeenj.com/