The Costco Wholesale experience starts in the parking lot

One of my favorite summer dishes is fresh, wild sockeye salmon from Costco Wholesale grilled on the stove top and smothered in a reduction of organic diced tomatoes, chopped garlic, red wine and fresh herb. Here, I served it with mashed Korean sweet potatoes.

Today, I discuss the bad manners some Costco Wholesale shoppers exhibit in the parking lot, some of my favorite items from the warehouse store, elusive Jersey Fruit and more.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

You can separate Costco Wholesale shoppers by those who want to park as close to the front door as possible -- and will slam on their brakes and block the entrance to the lot -- and those who don't mind walking from spaces in the back.

The lazy shopper also thinks nothing of leaving the big Costco shopping cart between cars or up against a fender.

Other Costco shoppers I have spoken to complain most about the lot, which one woman described as "a zoo."

In Hackensack, the entrance to the lot leads almost directly to the front doors. But in Wayne, the entrance to the lot is far from the doors, meaning less congestion.

At the Costco Wholesale in Hackensack this afternoon, a lazy shopper left this shopping cart between two cars.

I enjoyed leftover wild salmon and a baked sweet potato for dinner tonight, followed by a salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix.

Wild salmon, nuts and spring mix

Fresh, wild sockeye salmon continues to top my list of Costco favorites, now selling for $9.99 a pound.

I have been grilling the fillets skin side down on top of the stove and smothering them in a reduction of Kirkland Signature Organic Diced Tomatoes, garlic, red wine and fresh herbs cooked separately.

A 1.57-pound fillet I bought on Monday yielded six serving pieces.

I also bought a 3-pound bag of sodium-free Kirkland Signature Almonds ($14.99), roasted them at home for 1 hour and 20 minutes at 275 degrees and dusted some of them with Ground Saigon Cinnamon from Costco.

Today, I picked up another 1-pound tub of triple-washed Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix ($4.99) with an expiration date of Aug. 13, 2014.

At the ShopRite in Paramus on Monday, I couldn't find any Jersey peaches and settled for fruit from South Carolina, on sale for 99 cents a pound. But they were listed on my receipt as "PEACH JERSEY." At Costco Wholesale in Hackensack later in the day, the 2-pound container of blueberries ($4.79) was from Michigan, not New Jersey.

Both of these bottles from the Italian Wine Club (Giordano) contained 750 milliliters of wine.

As seen from the car

On Wednesday, I drove by Pine Hill, a Korean restaurant in Paramus, and saw a huge dumpster near the door and scaffolding against the building's glass front on Paramus Road.

Pine Hill, where I have enjoyed lunches and dinners in recent years, looked as if it has been closed for months.

Driving east on Route 46, I looked across the highway and a new Chinese restaurant called Lan Garden appears to be open after many months of renovation to the building, a former truck-stop diner that once housed China 46.

The cyclone fence blocking the parking lot was gone and I saw three or four cars parked head on in front of the building at 88 Route 46 west in Ridgefield.

The large red sign that said the restaurant specializes in seafood and dim sum has been changed.

China 46, which had a liquor license, closed in 2007. Before that another Chinese restaurant, Phoenix Garden Too, operated there.

Couldn't this place be a little more generous?

Spicy Kalbi Tang at Pine Hill Restaurant in Paramus.

The Korean restaurant serves grilled mackerel pike among the free side dishes.

Pine Hill Restaurant is the only Korean restaurant I know in Paramus -- which is the mall capital of North Jersey -- and it's far from the dozens of places that jockey for customers along Broad Avenue in Palisades Park.

Pine Hill also sets itself apart by serving at least 10 of the free side dishes that make a Korean meal so special.

But when four of us had dinner there on Saturday night, I began to wonder if serving more side dishes than most other Korean restaurants is enough.

Pine Hill has seen better days. Though clean, the interior was carried over from another restaurant, and hasn't ever been updated. 

The dinner menu lists a lot of sushi rolls and raw fish, but not that many entrees for non-meat eaters such as myself. 

No grilled fresh fish is available outside the mackerel pike in one of the side dishes.

Translucent Korean noodles are made from yam flour, not wheat.

After a waitress took our order, a tray was brought over and the small side dishes were arrayed on the table -- vegetables, fish and meat.

Pine Hill has some of the best cabbage kimchi around, both spicy and crunchy. The two mackerel pike were delicious.

Greens included fresh spinach. But the salad was iceberg, not the spring mix I've seen elsewhere. And slices of ham came with another cabbage side dish.

One of the complimentary side dishes or panchan.

A good Korean restaurant staff doesn't wait for the customer to ask for more panchan, but at Pine Hill our empty side dishes weren't replaced until I called over the waitress, who was chatting with other servers near the register.

I asked specifically for more kimchi and greens, but was disappointed we didn't get another set of the fatty mackerel pike.

For my entree, I ordered translucent noodles with vegetables called japchae, but asked the kitchen to hold the meat ($11.95).

A side dish of vegetable tempura.

The others had Stone-Bowl Bibimbap ($13.95), a rice, vegetable and ground-beef dish topped with a fried egg. A squeeze bottle of gochuhang, red-pepper paste, allows the diner to vary the spiciness.

The bibimbap came with a small bowl of soup, and an egg souffle in a stone bowl was brought for the table.

My teenage son asked for Spicy Kalbi Tang (also $13.95), a stew with beef short ribs, as hot as the kitchen could make it. It came with a small bowl of steamed white rice.

The food was good, and we had a filling dinner for about $16 each, including tip and tax.

But the relatively new Woochon Restaurant in Palisades Park serves as many side dishes, and they are of higher quality, so we might be going there the next time we want Korean food. 


Pine Hill Restaurant, 123 Paramus Road, 
Paramus; 201-843-0170. Open for lunch and dinner.

Woochon Restaurant, 280 Broad Ave., Palisades Park; 201-242-9999. Open for lunch and dinner.

 

Pizzeria is displacing Vietnamese restaurant

Image by aldenjewell via Flickr

Fort Lee street scene in 1951.

Mo' Pho in Fort Lee was the second Vietnamese restaurant from Chef K.T. Tran, specializing in the anise-flavored soup called pho.


But the restaurant at 212 Main St. has closed, and the facade is being renovated by the owner of a pizzeria and restaurant.


I described a bowl of pho this way:


"When Joe the waiter set down my bowl of pho with shrimp, I leaned close to the anise-scented beef broth and breathed deeply. Wonderful. You'd be hard put to find a soup that matches the aroma of this one." 


An Italian-American restaurant replacing a Vietnamese one is counter to the trend in Fort Lee, where Korean restaurants have proliferated in recent years.


Several blocks down Main Street, the facade of So Kong Dong also is being renovated, but the Korean soft-tofu restaurant remains open for business.


Side dishes galore 


On the way to a Suzanne Vega concert on Thursday at Bergen Community College in Paramus, we stopped for a soft-tofu stew dinner at Pine Hill Restaurant.


I continue to be impressed by how many free side dishes this Korean restaurant serves, while others have cut back noticeably.


After we ordered seafood soft-tofu stews ($10.45 each), the waitresses set down 10 small dishes on the table between me and my wife.


Our side dishes included fish cake, stewed tofu, kimchi, bean sprouts, iceberg-lettuce salad, yams in sweet syrup, steamed greens and half of a broiled small fish.


Unlike Korean restaurants specializing in soft tofu, Pine Hill serves a stone-bowl egg souffle, instead of a fresh egg to cook in the soup. 


And the waitress brought us a bowl of nutty brown rice, instead of usual steamed white rice, plus a second dish of cabbage kimchi when we asked for them.

Pine Hill Restaurant, 123 Paramus Road, Paramus; 
201-843-0170. Open for lunch and dinner.

Costco Wholesale's accent is becoming much more pronounced

A quiet day at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack. (February 2013)

Editor's note: A lot has changed since I wrote this post in 2011. Pine Hill, the Korean restaurant in Paramus I mentioned, has closed. And I no longer buy the farmed shrimp from Costco; I pay more for wild-caught, usually from the Gulf of Mexico (January 2016).

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On my first visit to Costco Wholesale since Sept. 9, I was surprised at two of the items I saw on the shelves.

Imported items from Korea are nothing new. After all, there are eight Costco warehouse stores in Korea, and thousands of Korean-Americans living in North Jersey.

But the 3-kilo tub of spicy red-pepper paste stopped me in my tracks. Koreans call it gochujang, and use it in many dishes or like ketchup. The other day, I used leftover Chinese takeout brown rice, kimchi and gochujang to make kimchi fried rice.

Unfortunately, this imported brand lists corn syrup as the first ingredient, and it's rated only medium spicy. I buy smaller containers of the vinegared red-pepper paste made with sugar at H Mart in Little Ferry.

Costco gets an "A" for effort, but this brand isn't the best available. I recall when refrigerated jars of cabbage kimchi showed up at the Hackensack Costco, and MSG was listed as an ingredient.

I continued to buy my artisanal, all-natural Arirang-brand kimchi in Englewood. 

I did pick up a box of Korean roasted, seasoned seaweed at Costco. Twenty-seven packages -- each .18 ounces -- were $9.99 or 37 cents each. They make great snacks.

The other item that stopped me in the aisle today was a jar of tahina or tahini from Lebanon, and this popular sesame paste is possibly the first imported Middle Eastern item I've seen at the Hackensack warehouse store. 

Tahini is an essential component of hummus, and can be used as a salad dressing with the addition of lemon juice and garlic.

Around the world

The gochujang and tahini extend Costco's already impressive global reach.

In my basket at checkout today were:

A wedge of Grana Padano cheese from Italy, $9.99 a pound; two 2-pound jars of Kalamata olives from Greece, $2.24 a pound. 

Wealthy Greeks have said "no" to taxes for so long, the country is on the verge of collapse, but the olives keep on coming.

The refrigerated soups are back in the cold case, and I picked up Alaskan King Crab and Sweet Corn Chowder from Legal Sea Foods, $9.79 for two 20-ounce containers; and CedarLane brand Chopped Vegetable and Barley Soup, $8.99 for two 2-pound containers.

I also picked up a new item from Kirkland Signature, the Costco store brand: three, generous 32-ounce jars of Marinara sauce at $2.09 each. The ingredient list is short, and no sugar or corn syrup is used.

I usually add a can of anchovies with their oil to bottled pasta sauce, along with dried herbs. The anchovies cook away, but leave behind a robustness.

My last two items were U-15 farmed shrimp from Vietnam for dinner tonight, $10.99 a pound; and Oliveri brand 7-Cheese Tortellini, $9.39 for 3 pounds, not 4 pounds, as I wrote originally.

The shrimp, tortellini and Marinara made a great dinner, with a salad of organic spring mix and a glass of wine.

Exploring our options

If you avoid beef, Korean restaurants offer a wide variety of healthy food, including tofu, vegetables, seafood and bracing stews that can be prepared from mild to spicy.

One of our favorite dinners is a stew of soft tofu, accompanied by a fresh egg that you cook in the bubbling broth, side dishes and steamed rice. 

Breaking the  softly boiled yolk over rice and eating them together is a highlight of the meal, which is available for under $10.

For many years, our go-to place has been So Gong Dong, a second-floor soft-tofu house on Broad Avenue in Palisades Park, where about 10 varieties of soft tofu (pork, beef, oyster and so forth) are available, in addition to dumplings, seafood pancakes and barbecue. 

But as I've done periodically in recent years, I am trying soft tofu at other restaurants just to make sure So Gong Dong is still the best for Korea's beloved comfort food.

Soft-tofu stew at So Gong Dong in Palisades Park.

Two Korean restaurants

On Tuesday night, I stopped at Pine Hill, a Korean restaurant in Paramus to try its soft-tofu stew or soondooboo jigae.

It's listed on the full Korean menu for $10.95, compared to So Gong Dong's $9.99, which includes four side dishes, rice and tax.

After I ordered, a waitress brought me seven side dishes, but I sent back cabbage with slices of boiled ham, because I am not eating meat, though I acknowledge the broth used in most soft-tofu stew is beef based.

There were a couple of problems at Pine Hill. 

The side dishes were terrific, including cabbage kimchi, bean sprouts, seaweed, chunks of yam in a maple syrup-like sauce and stewed tofu, but the waitress didn't bring me a fresh egg with the soft-tofu stew.

When I asked for one, she went away and didn't return until long after my stew had stopped bubbling, and then she brought me an egg souffle, not a fresh egg. 

The broth of the tofu stew was nothing special, certainly no match for So Gong Dong's spicy version, which I enjoyed last weekend.

The search continues.

Pine Hill Restaurant, 123 Paramus Road, Paramus; 201-843-0170. Parking lot, liquor license.

So Gong Dong, 118 Broad Ave., Second Floor, Palisades Park; 201-313-5550. Valet or street parking, BYO.

Comparing two meals out for $20 and under

Image via Wikipedia

A cookie-cutter chain restaurant in Seattle, Wash.

We had dinner out for about $18 each on Saturday night at Pine Hill, a Korean restaurant in Paramus, and took home leftovers.

A few days earlier, I had lunch with two friends at a chain restaurant, The Cheesecake Factory in Hackensack, and forked over $20 in splitting the bill three ways. (Both figures include tax and tip).


For dinner at Pine Hill, I had a large bowl of spicy soup filled with codfish and vegetables ($14.95), served with steamed rice, and shared 11 complimentary side dishes that are part of every Korean meal.


My wife had a stone bowl of soft-tofu stew with shrimp  ($10.95) and my son had a large bowl of spicy soup with short ribs ($13.95). They had juice ($2 each) and I drank water.


My son said he "couldn't move" after finishing his soup, rice and side dishes.


Our healthy side dishes, or panchan, included cabbage and radish kimchis, bean sprouts, tofu, sweet yam, an egg souffle, shredded radish, acorn gelatin, an iceberg lettuce salad and a small, whole grilled mackerel.


When I asked, the waitress brought us more of the sweet-and-spicy cabbage kimchi and two more pieces of tofu. 


Pine Hill is off the beaten path for Korean food -- far from the dozens of places in Palisades Park. But it serves more side dishes with dinner than the others.


What did $20 get me at The Cheesecake Factory? I ordered a large salad with blue cheese and walnuts, but asked the waiter to hold the chicken ($13.95). I drank seltzer and a large cup of black coffee.


At another chain restaurant, Joe's Crab Shack in Clifton, we ordered a $29.99 pot of three kinds of crab and the kitchen overcooked them. Our total bill was nearly $100.


The crab meat I was able to extract from the soft shells was tasteless.


Both The Cheesecake Factory and Joe's were crowded and noisy. Joe's doesn't even take reservations.


Pine Hill Restaurant, 123 Paramus Road, 
Paramus; 201-843-0170.

A restaurant makes you forget the recession

Image via Wikipedia

A selection of panchan or banchan, side dishes served with every Korean meal.

When I first started going to North Jersey's Korean restaurants nearly 15 years ago, the value was outstanding.

Lunches and dinners often included six or more side dishes or panchan -- small, colorful portions of vegetables, tofu, fish and meat that were arrayed around your main dish.

Yong Su San in Englewood Cliffs served 10 such dishes, including a small broiled mackerel, until it closed.

But as food prices rose and especially after the recession hit, the number of side dishes declined. 

So Gong Dong, our favorite tofu house in Palisades Park, now serves four, which is pretty much the norm nowadays, though I occasionally encounter six or seven. 

Though the value isn't as good as in the past, a belly busting meal of soft tofu with seafood, rice and side dishes is only $10, including tax.

So I was bowled over Thursday night, when we made an unplanned stop at Pine Hill, a Korean restaurant in Paramus, and the waitress brought out 10 side dishes after we placed our order. That wasn't all.

My bibimbap, a rice dish made in a stone bowl, came with miso soup, and a waiter later brought us a stone-bowl egg souffle.

Only two of the side dishes disappointed -- some iceberg lettuce with dressing and a portion of tired-looking corn kernels that was a poor imitation of mixed vegetables. 

I loved the taste of the cabbage kimchi, and the waitress brought a second dish when we finished the first. There also was cooked tofu in batter, shredded radish, greens and, yes, a small, whole mackerel.

Image via Wikipedia

Sone-bowl bibimbap with a raw egg yolk.

I asked the waitress to hold the ground beef from my rice-and-vegetable dish, which was topped with a fried egg and cost $13.95. I couldn't finish it.

My wife's soft-tofu stew with seafood was $10.95, but she complained there wasn't enough shrimp in it. My son loved his spicy soup of egg, noodles and bone-in short ribs ($13.95). Both of those dishes came with steamed rice.


Pine Hill Restaurant, 123 Paramus Road, Paramus; 201-843-0170. 
Open for lunch and dinner.