We hope twin-lobster deal comes around again before the year 2020

As part of a Leap Year promotion, two steamed lobsters with two house side dishes were only $29 on Monday at Legal Sea Foods in Paramus, one of the most expensive restaurants in North Jersey. 

Normally, a single lobster with two side dishes is listed on the menu for $34.95.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Monday night, the dining room at Legal Sea Foods in Paramus was filled with the sound of contented customer cracking open steamed lobsters and enjoying the sweet, tender meat.

The Leap Year promotion on the last day of February -- two lobsters with two house sides for $29 -- isn't scheduled to be repeated until 2020.

But our server said the restaurant, one of the most expensive in North Jersey, plans to offer it again before then. 

We hope so, recalling the shocking $81 lunch tab, including tax and tip, on our last visit to Legal Sea Foods in September.

On Monday, our total for four lobsters, four side dishes, wine and ginger ale was $91.04, including tax and an 18% tip.

Despite high menu prices, the service and the complimentary bread leave a lot to be desired.

Our waiter misunderstood our order, and another server brought us only one twin lobster special. 

Although that was easily remedied, the house-made rolls are awful, with doughy interiors that go to waste. They are served with butter, so you have to ask for extra-virgin olive oil.

A flight of red wine -- three 2-ounce glasses of pinot noir, chianti and malbec -- was $10.75.

With her lobsters, my wife chose the excellent coleslaw and delicious sauteed spinach, above. I had brown rice and sauteed spinach with mine.

Not long after we arrived for our 4:30 reservation, and was shown to a booth, the dining room filled up with customers who had read about the Leap Year lobster promotion in a local newspaper -- "an extra day, an extra lobster."

Legal Sea Foods, Paramus (201-843-8483), is part of Garden State Plaza, New Jersey's largest mall. Web site: Fresh fish in landlocked Paramus 

Yo! This sushi comes to your table, but may cost you an arm and a leg

A new food option at Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus is Yo! Sushi, the chain's first restaurant in the United States. A second opened a day later in Sarasota, Fla. Yo! Sushi is based in the United Kingdom, not Japan.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

At a new restaurant in New Jersey's biggest mall, a conveyor belt brings plates and bowls of Japanese-inspired food to your table.

Small portions are $3 and larger ones are $7, meaning you can easily spend $15 to $20 on a lunch that will satisfy only small appetites.

There were many empty tables when I stopped by this afternoon at the Yo! Sushi in Westfield Garden State Plaza in Paramus.

I was tempted by takeout trays of vegetable and fish sushi rolls in a refrigerated case, but learned they were placed on the wrong shelf and cost nearly twice as much as I thought.

This afternoon, takeout trays of sushi rolls were misplaced in this refrigerated case. That misled anyone who stopped to buy one about the price. Instead of being under $5, each tray cost more than $9, like the trays on the middle shelf.

The new restaurant is near the carousel and Macy's.

A buffet of photos to whet your appetite

Non-meat eaters will be disappointed, if they look for catfish and waffles at The Pink Tea Cup, a  restaurant on Sixth Avenue near 14th Street in Manhattan.

Can you guess which low-cost Manhattan restaurant offers this comfortable corner?

A customer of the Paramus ShopRite is on a soda diet.

What's next, the Doo-Wop Apple?

Il Porto is a restaurant at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan, below.

Just when I wanted to use the bathroom at Pier 17, a busload of Chinese tourists ran for the building's front doors.

At Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, there is no extra charge for a second topping.

Beefsteak tomatoes from Costco give the Jersey tomato a run for its money.

Near Manhattan's Madison Square Park, a Cuban sandwich is made with pig's head. Stick with the original at La Pola -- "King of the Cuban Sandwich" -- in West New York.

A lobster roll at this stand will set you back $16.

The food stands will be shutting down on June 3.

Court Street in Brooklyn is lined with food businesses, cafes and restaurants. All of the photos below were taken along Court Street, near Atlantic Avenue.

A single fish taco, made with tilapia, costs $4.50.

A bottle of Singha beer from Thailand is $3 on some days.

This meat market has a beautiful pressed-tin ceiling.

Four-legged residents have their own food store.

A traditional produce market.

A Trader Joe's uses a cavernous former bank building from the early 1920s.

The prices here are the same as at Trader Joe's stores in Manhattan and Paramus. 

Answer to the question posed above: McDonald's, where I stopped for coffee ($1).

How to spend $58 in 20 minutes

After our great lunch at Fuddruckers in Paramus yesterday, I decided to drive a few miles across the borough to Trader Joe's, which stocks bacon, hot dogs and other items without antibiotics, growth hormones or preservatives. We hadn't been there in more than a month to avoid having to fight holiday traffic on Route 17.

It didn't take long -- about 20 minutes -- to spend nearly $60. (Photo shows a Trader Joe's in California.)

I picked up one of my all-time favorite -- a nearly three-pound rack of St. Louis-style pork ribs from the Niman Ranch for $5.99 a pound. They come fully cooked with sauce. What could be easier to prepare?

I also grabbed two 12-ounce packages of Trader Joe's natural bacon ($3.99 each) and one package of uncured, fully cooked  beef hot dogs (also $3.99).

Image via Wikipedia

The rest of our purchases were sliced yogurt cheese with jalapenos ($4.69), three kinds of tortillas, including habanero-lime ($2.69); organic and Greek-style yogurt ($2.99 each), two 100% juices ($3.49 and $3.99) and organic blue agave sweetener ($2.99) that I drizzle over the yogurt. The tortillas can be frozen.


The total with tax: $58.59.

Trader Joe's, 404 Route 17 north, Paramus; 201-265-9624;
open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.
http://www.traderjoes.com/

Angus beef, schmangus beef

It was impossible recently to escape McDonald's TV commercials for its new Angus beef burger. How many times was the word Angus repeated? Did we really learn anything about the quality of the beef used? Burger King and other fast food franchises also have introduced Angus burgers.

The ShopRite circular I found in today's newspaper trumpets: "Don't settle for just any Angus beef." It urges customers to buy the Certified Angus Beef brand of steaks, roasts and ground meat for $2.49 to $4.99 a pound with the Price Club Card. ShopRite says "less than 8% of beef earns the distinctive" Certified Angus Beef brand. This is the same beef that wealthy celebrity chef Bobby Flay uses at his so-called Burger Palace restaurant in Paramus (see earlier posts, "Hear the sizzle, smell the hype" and "The Bobby Flay hamburger mystery").

What Bobby Flay, McDonald's, Burger King, ShopRite and others don't tell you is how their Angus beef is raised -- confined to feeding pens and given antibiotics, growth hormones and animal by-products (feed with bits of kitchen scraps and dead animals in it). And if you believe The New York Times and other sources, a lot of ground beef contains feces. How appetizing.

If you want to eat healthy beef from the Angus breed of cattle, you should look for the word "natural" in the brand name, as in Certified Angus Beef Natural. That one word signifies the cattle never received drugs, hormones or animal by-products. In fact, each animal can be traced back to the ranch where it was raised on vegetarian feed.

I chickened out at Fairway Market

Does anyone understand the pricing of chicken parts from Murray's, the drug-free, free-roaming poultry that fills the cases at Fairway Market in Paramus?

My 12-year-old son loves wings and I planned to pick up some during my visit to the Paramus store yesterday. But the price of the family pack was $2.49 a pound, compared with $1.69 a pound for Murray's leg quarters and $1.49 a pound for skin-on drumsticks or thighs. Smaller quantities of Murray's wings are priced higher and they cost even more at the Harlem store.

Shouldn't wings cost less than other parts? They are mostly bone, so you get less meat pound for pound. And Murray's wings are not especially big.

When I've asked Paramus store employees about the higher price of wings, they've invariably said the other parts must be on sale or part of a special promotion. But there is never any indication on the shelves or packages of a sale or promotion. I didn't buy the wings; I didn't want to feel as if I was taken advantage of, I didn't want to feel cheated.

Podcast on the North Jersey food scene

After sampling the Middle Eastern fare at Whole Foods' Paramus store on Friday, I discussed additive-free food, food shopping, favorite Korean and Middle Eastern restaurants and other topics with Jason Perlow, the food lover behind the Off The Broiler blog. Click on the following link, or if that doesn't work paste and cut it into your browser:

http://www.theuw.net/~perlow/podcast/Off_The_Broiler-%2351%20Victor%20Sasson.mp3

More light shed on Bobby Flay's burgers

If you look at the Web site for Bobby's Burger Palace, the grandiose name for the chef's hamburger restaurants, you'll find that the beef used is less than royal.

I checked out the online menu for the restaurant in Paramus and saw Certified Angus Beef listed. As I reported in the previous post, this is a lower grade than Certified Angus Beef Natural. I don't know what the wholesale price difference is, but can't imagine it would stand in the way of a chef who wants to serve the best to his customers.

Certified Angus Beef, unlike the Natural line, is raised with antibiotics and growth hormones, and the feed contains animal by-products. This is not a hamburger I would be interested in eating. And I guess the local newspaper erred in both the original article about the restaurant and the lavish spread published last month. All in all, lots of bull has been thrown around by the restaurant and the newspaper.

The Bobby Flay hamburger mystery

I just came across the article in the local newspaper reporting that Bobby Flay was building a hamburger restaurant in Paramus. This story was under a one-column headline on the local news pages, in contrast to the far-more-elaborate story and color photos that appeared last month in the feature pages. The stories had the same byline, both written by the paper's restaurant reviewer.

The mystery is why the first story specified that burgers would be made from Certified Black Angus beef and the second story, despite thousands of additional words, was silent on the kind of beef used beyond a few vague phrases such as "chef's quality." It turns out the first story was in error and should have referred to Certified Angus Beef. It's good, but Certified Angus Beef Natural is far better, because it is raised on vegetarian feed and without antibiotics and growth hormones, and each animal can be traced to its ranch of origin.

Is it possible that Flay, the celebrity chef who has a bad habit of biting his fingernails (you can see it in one of the photos), felt even the lower grade Certified Angus Beef would cut into his bottom line too much and went with something cheaper? Or did the restaurant reviewer screw up? Stay tuned. I will try to find out. (This post has been revised.)

Hear the sizzle, smell the hype

On Sunday, the local newspaper had another long article, complete with color photos, glorifying a "celebrity chef." On the occasion of Bobby Flay opening a burger restaurant in Paramus, the paper went all out, providing even more detail about the food, cooking methods and service than I have seen for upscale places that get four stars.

We know Flay is wealthy, but even he wouldn't have paid for all this glorious publicity. He didn't have to. The newspaper treats him royally, seemingly grateful that he's taken pity on we poor, food-deprived North Jerseyans and opened a restaurant here. We learn about his actress wife, their children, his TV shows and books, and even that his mom lives in New Jersey. How does this serve you and me?

One thing the article is silent on is the quality of the meat in his burgers. The headline and article use words such as "high-quality cooking," "fresh" ingredients, and meat of "chef's quality." These are meaningless. However, we're told the meat hasn't been frozen and that it's chuck, with a 20% fat content. But there is nothing about the grade of beef used, where it came from, and whether the animals were raised with growth hormones and antibiotics, what they were fed and whether they were confined in feed lots before slaughter.

The article ends by mentioning that Flay hasn't yet eaten at White Manna in Hackensack, but "wants to visit soon." I happened to drive by Sunday afternoon and saw a line out the door of this tiny burger restaurant, probably the smallest eatery in the city. Those customers likely have one thing in common with people going to Flay's new place: They don't really know what they are eating.

First impressions at Fairway Market in N.J.

The debut of New York's Fairway Market in Paramus was messy, at least when I was there before 2 p.m. Wednesday.

At the Whole Foods Market opening last week, just a few miles away, the store ran out of carts. There were plenty of carts at Fairway, but that proved to be a problem as shoppers struggled to maneuver through the store, often encountering gridlock or getting rear-ended by another shopper. Apologies were profuse.

A newspaper ad promised food samples and music, but none of that was in evidence. There also was a raffle being conducted but I never encountered any entry forms. Check out took a long time and the woman bagging my food just threw the items into my reusable bags. The checkout counter itself was dirty.

Fairway's owners say their store is a cross between Whole Foods and ShopRite, with prices at or below those supermarkets. I didn't have the luxury of looking at all prices, but a half-gallon of Tropicana orange juice was priced at $3.69 in Fairway; I purchased one last week at Whole Foods for $3. I saw organic pork chops at Fairway for $5.99 a pound, $1 dollar under the normal price for drug-free pork chops at Whole Foods that were on sale for $4.99 a pound last week.

The best deal at Fairway that I saw were the wild-caught domestic "jumbo" shrimp for $5.99 a pound; I bought two pounds-plus. Mexican asparagus were $1.49 a pound. Murray's antibiotic-free, free-roaming chicken was under $2 a pound for leg quarters, thighs and drumsticks with the skin on; my friend, Jay, complained that his wife Sue paid $3.49 a pound for drug-free thighs at Whole Foods. I also got two pounds of Fairway coffee beans, ground to my order, for $6.99 and $6.49 a pound (and an argument from the employee on how to spell Habanero; Fairway spells it Havanero).

There has been a lot of discussion of how Fairway, Whole Foods and ShopRite compare, but no one is talking about the great food and prices at Costco in Hackensack, where I shop once a week. I didn't get a chance to see if Fairway had smoked, preservative-free wild salmon, but I doubt that store could beat Costco's price, under $14 a pound. The organic salad mix at Costco ($4.49 a pound) is $1.50 cheaper than the non-organic mix I saw at Fairway.

Costco also has great 100-percent and organic juices at prices lower than I've seen elsewhere; fresh wild salmon for about six months of the year at around $8.99 a pound; drug-free chicken sausage; herbicide-free tomatoes, free-range Australian lamb and many other items. Where Costco lags is in not offering much organic poultry. I once bought organic ground beef for around $4.99 a pound, but the store had discontinued it when I returned for more several weeks later. (Corrected April 1, 2009)

I've shopped in Fairway's Harlem store since it opened, stopping there almost every time I was in the city. I'm glad Fairway is now in New Jersey, after years of delay, but it's new home is in my least favorite mall, the Fashion Center, which is difficult to get into and out of. Whole Foods is much closer to my home and it has superb seafood and a much wider selection of drug-free poultry and meat.