Tell us more -- much more

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Fairway Market says the cattle may have been sick but the beef tastes great.

The latest Fairway Market flier offers wild Alaska salmon fillet for $9.99 a pound, but doesn't tell you whether it is coho, sockeye or another type.


The Paramus store devotes a full page to its butcher shop and its USDA Prime 21-Day Dry-Aged Beef, but you won't find any discussion of how the cattle were raised.


You can imagine Master Butcher Ray Venezia talking to the people who write the flier:


"OK. This stuff tastes great, because it has more fat than other grades, but it's a living hell for the animals. Hey. That's between you and me, right?


"We don't want any mention of how they are crowded into feed lots in Chicago and other places, and how they're stuffed full of grain, antibiotics, growth hormones and bits of dead animals to get them to grow fast and to turn them into cash.


"Their stomachs are designed to convert grass into protein, so the steady diet of grain can make them sick, and sometimes they collapse and have to be dragged into the slaughterhouse. But again, that's between you and me, right?


"Just call it, 'The tenderest, best-tasting beef on the planet,' and leave the rest to me."


Mama mia


Mama Mexico in Englewood Cliffs was the first fine-dining Mexican restaurant in North Jersey, and it has prices to match.


Rosa Mexicano in Hackensack was the second. If you attended one of its cooking demonstrations, you saw everything was made from scratch using good ingredients.


Now, Mama Mexico is offering 40% off "the entire menu," as well as lunch specials starting at $7.95, through Sept. 5. The coupon was stuck to the Better Living section of The Record today.


Mama Mexico, 464 Sylvan Ave., 
Englewood Cliffs; 201-871-0555.
Web site: High-end Mexican


Bibi'z in Westwood


On June 9, Bibi'z was reviewed in The Record, rating only a half-star away from "Outstanding." Elisa Ung, the reviewer, said all of the food she tried "was fantastic."


Today, a friend whose judgment I trust said, "Don't waste your time."


She said she ordered one of the expensive restaurant's "small plates," and the portion was thimble-sized. 


And she was disappointed in the dish, which was made with chickpeas, even though the Lebanese owner should know a thing or two about them.

Confusing information on Australian lamb

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All lamb isn't created equal, but it is getting harder to find naturally raised meat.

I found a sales flier from Fairway Market in my newspaper today and on the front, the Paramus store offers whole Austral-American semi-boneless leg of lamb for $6.99 a pound.

I thought: This is the first time Fairway is offering Australian lamb, which traditionally is grass-fed and raised without antibiotics and growth hormones, but then I turned to the second page of the flier and read this from Ray Venezia, Fariway's master butcher:

"This [Austral-American lamb] is the finest example ... on the planet -- an Aussie breed mated with an American sheep, and the lamb born and raised here in America, in Utah. Enormously delicious, but not gamey like Aussie or Kiwi lamb."

Gee. I've eaten a lot of both Australian and New Zealand lamb in the past, because it is grass-fed and drug- and hormone-free, and never found it "gamey."

Venezia and Fairway say nothing about antibiotics and growth hormones.

Image via Wikipedia

Searching the Internet, I came across a Web site that discusses Austral-American lamb and states -- contrary to what Fairway says -- the cross-bred sheep are raised in Australia "without unnecessary hormones or antibiotics."

From a Web site called Alibaba.com:

Country Meadow Austral-American Lamb is truly the next generation of lamb. By applying the best of both American and Australian lamb industries, Country Meadow Lamb sets a new standard of value. Their lambs are raised on the unspoiled pastureland of Australia, without unnecessary hormones or antibiotics. The cross of Australian and American genetics results in a lean, flavorful, all-natural product.

Costco also sells Australian lamb under its Kirkland Signature store brand, but there is no information on the packages about how the sheep are raised. 

More hype from New York-based Fairway Market

Fairway Market on opening day in Paramus.(Wikipedia)

If you're not reading the Fairway Market sales flier, you are missing out on one of the slickest marketing campaigns for a supermarket in North Jersey.


Farm-raised shrimp, conventionally raised prime beef -- all of it looks terrific, and there are photos of the humans behind each department at its Paramus store with a quote or two for good measure. 

None of this can obscure the truth -- that Fairway is selling a lot of pretty ordinary food, except for Murray's drug-free chicken, wild seafood  and organic items.


There are some gems, though. 

Whole porgy and whiting for $2.99 a pound is the lowest price I've seen on these fish (the sale starts today). Organic, Fair Trade coffee at $4.99 a pound is a steal. Three pounds of herbicide-free, Campari tomatoes for $5 is another great buy.

Capt. Tony Maltese, a licensed commercial fisherman, is shown and identified as the director of seafood. 

But above his name there is a quote from R.W. Apple Jr., a reporter for The New York Times whose appetite was legendary and who roamed the world to write about food. 

What is this quote doing in the flier and who is the "we" Apple refers to? 

The quote is in bigger type than the attribution, so unless you look closely, you may think the "we" is Fairway and the person being quoted is Capt. Maltese. It's not clear. (Could Apple have covered the opening of a Fairway store in New York before he died and spoken to Maltese?)

"We pay serious attention to the fact that where a fish was caught, how a fish was caught and when it was caught is at least as important as how it is best cooked."

It gets better. Ray Venezia, Fairway's third-generation butcher, also is pictured in the flier.

"It's really very simple. We cut every piece of meat as if we were going to serve it to our own family."

That doesn't say he actually brings home the conventionally raised beef, pork and lamb Fairway sells. In fact, the store sells only American lamb, not the grass-fed, drug- and hormone-free lamb from Australia that you can find at Costco and ShopRite, generally at lower prices than American lamb.


Fairway also doesn't carry naturally raised beef from Australia.

Fairway Market, 34 E. Ridgewood Ave., Paramus; 201-444-5455. Open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.