The other rebate shoe drops at Costco

Image by KOREA.NET - Official page of the Republic of Korea via Flickr

A piping-hot Korean soft-tofu stew with egg.

On Thursday, I received a rebate check of $151.35 -- 2% cash back on purchases at Costco Wholesale, where I pay an annual fee of $100 for an Executive Membership.

In February, I received a $322 rebate check from American Express for purchases I made in 2010, including 3% back at restaurants and on gasoline purchases, 1% back for Costco purchases; 2% back for travel purchases and 1% everywhere else.

The American Express credit card is called the Costco True Earnings Card. 

Tofu hits the spot

We couldn't wait for the weekend, when we usually dine out, so we returned to our favorite Korean restaurant on Thursday night for a filling meal of spicy tofu stew, vegetable side dishes, eggs and rice.

We don't seem to be able to stay away from Restaurant So Gong Dong in Palisades Park for more than a few weeks. 

We've tried other tofu houses and other Korean restaurants that serve soft tofu, but So Gong Dong remains our favorite. The price of $9.99 for a complete meal -- including tax -- doesn't hurt, either.

Even if you don't choose oysters, clams or shrimp in your tofu stew, this is a healthy meal. The stew is available from not spicy to "more spicy."

The soft tofu is brought to the table is a stone bowl, and it's bubbling furiously. This is when you crack one of the small eggs on the rim and empty it into the hot stew to cook it.

There's nothing like breaking the barely cooked yolk over the rice, and eating them together.

After you place your order, you are brought the eggs and side dishes of cabbage and cucumber kimchi, bean sprouts and a peppery concoction of raw squid.

The stew and a second stone bowl with steamed rice come later.

We also ordered a seafood pancake to share ($10.99), but the tofu stew meal is so generous, it will more than satisfy most people.

The $9.99 and $10.99 include tax, as I said, but they are rounded up to $10 and $11 on the bill.

So Gong Dong, 118 Broad Ave., Second Floor, Palisades Park;

201-313-5550. Open seven days. BYO. Valet parking available.

Restaurant deals 

Many North Jersey restaurants are offering discounts to lure customers, and in some cases, you can sign up for e-mail coupons.

Others arrive in the mail. Today, the Money Mailer contained the following discounts:

• Luka's Italian Cuisine, 238 Main St., Ridgefield Park, is offering $8.95 lunch specials with soup or salad and pasta; 25% off dinner on Mondays and Tuesdays, and 15% off dinner on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
• Restaurant Galapagos, 222 Main St., Hackensack, allows kids to eat free on Thursdays and gives $2 off any Ecuadorian dinner of $10 or more. Breakfasts of $6 or more are cut by $1.
• Uncle Paulie's Puro Sabor, a Peruvian restaurant at 109A W. Pleasant Ave., Maywood, is giving 20% off meal checks of $10, $25 or $50.
• Presto's New York, a brick-oven pizza and pasta restaurant at 772 Main St., Hackensack, is offering a number of discounts, including 15% off the entire check and a free small pie with the purchase of two large pies.

Healthy meal ushers in the new year

Image via Wikipedi

Cabbage kimchi is one of the side dishes at So Gong Dong in Palisades Park.

We welcomed the new year with a healthy, non-meat meal of tofu, vegetables, rice and seafood on Friday night in Palisades Park. My 13-year-old son, who suggested at the end of February 2010 we all stop eating meat, long ago fell off the wagon, and he ordered beef, too.

We've been climbing the stairs to So Gong Dong, a second-floor soft-tofu house, about 10 times a year for belly busting portions of Korean comfort food, and my son has crowned it his favorite restaurant. After we stopped eating meat, our visits increased.

Strictly speaking, soft-tofu stew is not a vegetarian meal, because the broth is made from boiling beef bones. But you can order it with seafood, mushrooms or kimchi, and ask for it "not spicy" to "more spicy." My son ordered his with pork.

You also get side dishes of cabbage kimchi, cucumber kimchi, bean sprouts and spicy, raw squid. You can add a raw egg and then eat the soft-boiled yolk with the rice -- a terrific combination. All of this costs $10, including tax.

We also ordered a rice-flour seafood pancake for me ($9.99) and for my son, thin-sliced prime beef cooked with onions and cabbage ($14.99). I drank hot tea and small glasses of a sweet-potato liquor called soju that I brought from home.

A soft-tofu restaurant on Main Street in Fort Lee apparently is now operated by the same owner, because I noticed the receipt I got Friday night lists the one in Pal Park as "So Gong Dong II." The restaurant stays open until the wee hours. 

So Gong Dong II, 118 Broad Ave., Second Floor, 

Palisades Park. BYO, open seven days for lunch and dinner.

Breakfast salads

For years, I'd eat a sandwich for breakfast -- open-face, traditional or with Syrian pocket bread. The main ingredient was fish: smoked wild lox or sardines or canned tuna-salmon-sardine salad. I spread the bread with homemade soft yogurt cheese, pesto or hummus, and add sliced tomato, za'atar thyme mixture, sliced cheese and organic salad greens.

Now that I've lost 15 pounds by cutting down on bread and pizza, and visiting a gym five days a week, I've deconstructed the sandwich, eliminating the bread and assembling a salad for breakfast that has many of the same ingredients, including Earthbound Farm organic spring mix ($4.49 a pound at Costco). 

I've also added sun-dried tomatoes in oil, yogurt-cheese balls or a simple egg-white omelet. 

Good stuff for sale

I was looking for antibiotic-free Readington Farms chicken for my son on Friday in the ShopRite in Rochelle Park. ShopRite always seems to have a big sale on crappy Perdue chicken, but discounts for Readington Farms poultry are rare.

However, I saw a sign for Readington Farms leg quarters at 99 cents a pound, but couldn't find any on the shelf. Readington Farms drumsticks were $1.89 a pound and wings were $2.89 a pound. (Does anyone know why chicken wings, whether from Readington Farms or Murray's, cost more than other parts?)

I pushed open the door to the meat room and asked an employee if there were any more leg quarters. He seem displeased that I opened the door and interrupted his work day, and barked that whatever was on the shelf is what the store had. Happy New Year to you, too.

I also saw Readington Farms turkeys, and like the chickens, they are raised on a vegetarian diet without animal by-products or antibiotics.

Jenny-brand Kalamata figs from Greece have reappeared at ShopRite, but they are $3.99 for 14 ounces. I believe they were only $2.99 last year.

New bread at Costco

We love Costco's Kirkland-brand, 100% whole-grain bread, made with seeds and flax. And two loaves are only $3.99. But this week, I found a two-loaf package of Kirkland-brand organic whole wheat bread, which I've never seen before. It's more expensive, though, at $5.39 for two loaves.

Shopping, cooking and tasting notes

Image by pkingDesign via Flickr

The red-pepper color of this soft-tofu stew tells you it is very spicy.

I spent more than an hour at Whole Foods Market in Paramus today and it was filled with customers, in contrast to the usually uncrowded weekdays.


Another difference were the free food samples near the entrance -- a delicious squash soup, crisps with non-meat toppings, cheese cubes and pear slices, and real apple cider (with alcohol).

I bought organic and conventional apples and pears, and pasta -- all on sale. The farfalle made with organic durum wheat in Italy is our favorite ($1.29 for a one-pound box). I also picked up 16 ounces of spinach penne for $1.69.

The store is open until 10 p.m. on Sundays.

Pasta with wild-caught shrimp

For dinner last night, I prepared a full box of the farfalle with about a pound and a half of wild-caught Mexican Pacific brown shrimp I bought at Costco in Hackensack. I deveined the shrimp, shelled them and cut them in half to more or less match the size of the bow-tie pasta. 


The sauce was extra-virgin olive oil with chopped fresh garlic and the marinade -- the juice of one and a half lemons, plus dried garlic, red-pepper flakes, salt and black pepper. I added a can of organic diced tomatoes, drained, to a half-cup of oil with garlic, then when it was hot, threw in the shrimp and marinade. 

I started cooking the shrimp about four or five minutes before the pasta was ready, then added the drained bow ties and combined everything thoroughly. I made sure to add grated cheese at the  table for even more flavor.  

A salad of organic spring mix and a glass of red wine completed the meal.


A simple birthday meal


I invited two good friends to join my family Friday for a birthday meal at So Gong Dong, the soft-tofu restaurant in Palisades Park. 

(For my birthday, my wife and son joined me for dinner at Spanish Pavillion in Harrison, where "Kitchen Nightmares" was being taped. See previous post, Our dinner with Chef Gordon Ramsay.)

So Gong Dong serves filling, nutritious Korean comfort food -- soft-tofu stew, steamed rice and side dishes -- for $10, including tax.

We also ordered pork-filled dumplings, a pancake with scallions and seafood, and thin-sliced prime beef, which my son and guests loved. There were five of us, and we couldn't finish the food.

So Gong Dong, 118 Broad Ave., Second Floor, 
Palisades Park; open seven days for lunch and dinner.

Comfort food says you're home

Ripe ackee fruit. The edible portion is inside.

Image via Wikipedia

After a week or so of  hotel breakfast buffets and unfamiliar restaurants, the simple food I had at home today and at one of our favorite spots was even more enjoyable than usual.

This morning, my wife prepared a special breakfast: ackee and saltfish with boiled green bananas. Ackee is a soft, bland Jamaican fruit we buy in cans, and it serves as a foil to the salty cod fish, hot and sweet peppers, and tomato. The soft bananas are a familiar and filling side dish.

I usually warm some Syrian pocket bread and stuff it with ackee, saltfish and banana -- a decidedly un-Jamaican way of eating it.

Tonight, we drove to Palisades Park for a filling dinner of soft-tofu stew with white rice and side dishes of kimchi, bean sprouts and peppery raw squid at So Gong Dong, a second-floor restaurant overlooking Broad Avenue. The tab, including tax and tip, was $36 for three.

I ordered my tofu stew with mushrooms, my wife asked for shrimp and my son rebelled by ordering pork. We asked for all of them to be prepared "more spicy," the spiciest of three choices.

When the stew is brought to the table in a stone bowl, it is bubbling furiously -- just the right time to break a fresh egg or two into the hot broth. I eat around the egg until a soft yolk forms, then break it over the rice in a separate bowl. Delicious, warm and comforting.

I knew I was home.

With food like this, who needs meat?

The crunch of spicy cabbage and cucumber slices. The bubbling broth cooking a freshly cracked egg. The simply steamed rice, a foil for a stew of soft tofu and red pepper.

These are the elements in a meal of Korean comfort  food that is loved by people of all ages. It's also one of my favorite alternatives to meat. Last night, we enjoyed soft-tofu stews and kimchi side dishes at So Gong Dong in Palisades Park after realizing a Korean fried chicken place we had our hearts set on was takeout only.

"It's good for you and it tastes so good," my 12-year-old son Roshane says. "I wouldn't mind eating tofu every day."

We had set out for another North Jersey branch of BBQ Chicken after getting fed up with the slow service the last time we visited BBQ Chicken & Beer in Cliffside Park, where we love the spicy, twice-fried  chicken wings and drumsticks, and the broiled roasted-pepper thighs. But when we saw that it was takeout, we immediately drove over to the second-floor tofu restaurant.

I ordered the oyster tofu stew "more spicy" from the scale listed on the place-mat menu. One of the things I love about the meal is breaking the soft-boiled egg yolk over the steamed rice and eating them together. The complete meal is $10, including tax. When I started eating it a decade ago, it cost $7.

Before we left, my wife ordered another meal to go, so she can take it for lunch next week.

Restaurant So Gong Dong, 118 Broad Ave.,
Palisades Park; 201-313-5550.

BBQ Chicken (takeout), 10 E. Edsall Blvd.,
Palisades Park; 201-461-0201.