Dinner at Bocconi is another reason I don't have to leave Hackensack

Half of a lobster and shrimp with pasta at Bocconi Restaurant in Hackensack.

A half-portion of a chopped salad with bay scallops and avocado.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

We had another great meal on Saturday night at Bocconi Restaurant in Hackensack.

Best of all, we grabbed a bottle of red wine and only had to drive 5 minutes to get to the moderately priced Italian-American BYO.

Bocconi is on Essex Street, next door to another new favorite, Fire Pit, a Portuguese barbecue restaurant.

They share a small L-shaped parking lot that was full when we arrived, but we found a space across the street in the lot of a medical arts building with Starbucks Coffee and Cosi on the ground floor. 

Seafood, salad and pasta

We ordered a salad to share and two entrees, all with seafood, and my wife took home leftovers from her dish, Half Lobster with Clams, Mussels and Pasta in red or white sauce ($23.95).

She asked the kitchen to hold the clams and mussels in favor of shrimp, and had her spaghetti in a white-wine sauce.

My entree was fork-tender Blackened Tuna with a Cherry Tomato and Cucumber Salad ($19.95). 

The wild-caught tuna was cooked more than I requested, but remained moist and delicious under a coating of black pepper.

We started by sharing a tasty chopped Green Salad with Bay Scallops and Avocado ($12.95).

Despite the slight misstep with the tuna, Chef Mario Amon, a native of Ecuador, does a beautiful job with seafood, pasta and salads.

A blackened ahi tuna steak was served with a crunchy salad of cucumbers and cherry tomatoes.

Bocconi is a BYO that adds balsamic vinegar and grated cheese to the extra-virgin olive oil served with crusty bread.

A mural on one wall of the 50-seat restaurant.

At Bocconi, you can usually find a table for dinner without a reservation on weekends, but may not find one of the six regular and two handicapped spaces in the small parking lot.

Two Hackensack favorites, Fire Pit Barbecue and Bocconi Pasta Pronto & More.

Why leave Hackensack?

Adding Bocconi Restaurant and Fire Pit Barbecue to our list of perennial favorites -- Lotus Cafe, Wondee's Fine Thai Food and Noodles, and Rosa Mexicano -- could mean we might never have to leave Hackensack to dine out.

Bocconi Restaurant, 363 Essex St., Hackensack; 201-342-3888. Web site: bocconifood.com

More great food from Costco

How do they get 15 avocados in "every batch"?

Editor's note: Today, I discuss more great food from Costco, and restaurant-quality takeout dinners from Jerry's in Englewood.

Every time we enjoy Wholly Guacamole from Costco Wholesale, I think of another guacamole, this one prepared at your table in Rosa Mexicano, where every dish is made from scratch.

Three pounds of preservative-free guacamole -- divided among three peel-and-serve trays -- cost $9.49 at Costco.

Rosa Mexicano in Hackensack charges $12 for its guacamole -- made with a single avocado -- but includes small corn tortillas fashioned by hand in the dining room and a couple of salsas.

At home, we add bottled salsa and serve the guacamole as a side dish at any meal, dispensing with chips or tortillas.

Extra-virgin Spanish olive oil is a new item at Costco.

Arbequina is the name of an extra-virgin olive oil from Spain with the kind of "protected denomination of origin" you usually find in wine.

Two 1-liter bottles were $11.99. Compare that to the $5.99 you'd pay for a liter of 100% Spanish extra-virgin olive oil at Trader Joe's.

The label says the small Arbequina olive is used, producing "a golden oil characterized by low acidity and a rich, fruity olive flavor with delicious apple notes."

I'm looking forward to using this oil in salads, drizzling it over fish and using it to fry eggs sunny side up.

Black is beautiful.

Black apricots are a fruit I haven't seen before, but I found them at Costco next to the traditional kind.

They are black outside and apricot-colored inside, and very sweet, though I don't agree with the label they are "the sweetest fruit you ever tasted."

A 3-pound package was $7.79.

The biggest jar of capers I've ever seen.

Capers are hand-picked from a Mediterranean bush.

I asked by wife to look for capers at Costco, and she came back with a 32-ounce jar of Paesana Non Pareil Capers for $4.99 that I expect will last us a couple of years.

Tonight, I used 2 or 3 tablespoons of drained capers  to prepare snowy Icelandic flounder fillets I bought at Costco for $7.99 a pound.

The recipe, from Mark Bittman, calls for sliced tomato, capers, chopped red onion and olive oil. I added crushed Aleppo pepper and fresh lime juice.

The Kashi bars on the left contain chocolate and seven whole grains.

In comparing labels at Costco, I found Kashi Go Lean Crunchy variety bars, which contain chocolate, have the same or fewer calories and calories from fat than Kirkland Signature Variety Nut Bars.

The Kashi bars list total fat as 5% to 8%. The Kirkland Signature bars list 15% total fat.

One or two of these and similar bars allow me to skip lunch and maintain my weight loss.

Dinner at Jerry's

Calamari Balsamico.

Grouper with Roasted Peppers.

Roasted Pork Chop.

No. I'm not getting a cut of the profits from Jerry's Meals To Go, the restaurant-quality takeout dinners that cost only $7.99 each -- $5.99 after 4 p.m.

I just think they are a delicious bargain that allows you to put a balanced meal on the table without cooking.

Plate the food, heat it in the microwave for about 2 minutes, pour a glass of wine and go to town.

I had the Calamari Balsamico dinner on Wednesday night and enjoyed the combination of tender rings and baby squid, along with pasta, vegetables and potato.

I tasted my wife's Grouper with Roasted Peppers, and it continues to be one of my favorite fish.

The Meals To Go usually go fast, but after 4 p.m. on two recent Wednesdays, I've found several in a small refrigerated case.

Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood; 201-871-7108.

Do we really need restaurants?

Image via Wikipedia
Parmigiano Reggiano is an aged, part skim-milk cheese from Italy that goes great with crisp apples and other fruit, but try to find it served that way in a restaurant.

Editor's note: Why go out to eat in restaurants when you can dine like a king at home? Today, I also discuss further Can Can Sale adventures at ShopRite.

I had a wonderful Italian dinner on Monday night -- small shrimp and unusually tender squid in a fra diavolo sauce, vegetable frittata, shell pasta with tuna, stuffed mushroom, eggplant caponata and a nice, four-green salad  -- and drank a full-bodied Italian red wine with it.


My wife and mother-in-law ate baked fillet of sole and my son had barbecued chicken wings, all with similar side dishes.


My dessert: crisp apple sections paired with Parmigiano Reggiano cheese. They had ice cream. And we enjoyed all of this in the comfort of our own home.


Why go out?


When I think of our recent restaurant experiences, I wish we could eat like this every night and never leave the house.


That morning, I stopped by Jerry's Gourmet and More in Englewood, and picked up four Meals To Go at a mere $7.99 each -- less than the cost of a restaurant appetizer.


We could have a different meal from Jerry's every night or order takeout delivered to our door from our favorite places.


Then, we wouldn't have to go out and sit in a drafty dining room, as we did recently in settings as diverse as Nanoosh, a casual, organic Middle Eastern restaurant at a mall in Paramus, and Lupa Osteria Romana, a popular Manhattan trattoria where a skimpy meal for three cost more than $100 -- without wine.


Routine gouging


And I wouldn't have to pay $5.50 for a bottle of light beer, $10 to $12 for a glass of wine or $2.95 for a cup of lukewarm coffee.


We long ago started trying to reproduce at home some of our favorite dining-out meals, such as Korean barbecue, which my son refers to as "cook on the table."


For years, we ate what is essentially mystery meat in Korean restaurants before I started buying Nature's Reserve free-range, grass-fed Australian beef at ShopRite, sliced it thin and placed it in a freezer bag with Korean marinade.


Now, we cook this fun Korean meal on a stove-top grill at home and wrap the beef in red-lettuce leaves with spicy bean paste, garlic, rice and kimchi -- just as we did in restaurants.


We don't have to tip or rush because other people are waiting for our table. And a cold beer, which goes great with Korean food, is as close as the refrigerator.


Made to order


I don't know any Italian-American restaurants in North Jersey that serve whole-wheat pasta with a red sauce and sardines, one of our favorite meals at home.


Or would be willing to add a half-pound of fresh spinach to wilt and mix with a pound of pasta with garlic, oil and anchovies.


By eating at home, we can enjoy antibiotic-free poultry and meat, grass-fed lamb and wild-caught salmon -- fresh, frozen or smoked. Our salads are usually made with organic greens. 


For dessert, there are always a few kinds of cheese in the refrigerator to have with fruit and organic black tea.  


At Lupa in Manhattan, the menu tells customers all poultry and meat are from Heritage Foods USA, a network of farms and ranches where animals are raised naturally and not pumped full  of growth hormones to get them to market as fast as possible.


Silent menus


In North Jersey, most restaurant menus are silent on the origin of the poultry, beef and pork served in their dining rooms or the owners cut corners to maximize profits.


Celebrity Chef Bobby Flay's so-called Hamburger Palace in Paramus uses Certified Angus Beef, which is raised conventionally with harmful additives. Flay could buy a more expensive natural line of Certified Angus Beef free of antibiotics or growth hormones, but doesn't.


Restaurant owners seeking maximum profit at the expense of their customers' health are aided by restaurant critics who don't bother to ask about the origin or quality of the food they sample and promote in their reviews.


If reviewers paid for their own meals -- instead of spending their employers' money -- they might pay more attention to the quality of the food they're served and produce critiques that are more consumer-oriented.


When we ate at Lupa, we loved the service. Still, I felt like having wine, but refused to pay $12 for a single glass when I could buy an entire bottle for less.


You can't eat paint


Why go to Sear House, a steakhouse in Closter, where the brothers who own the place claim they spent $5 million to renovate, then served a critic "smelly" tuna sushi and an ordinary, fatty rib-eye for $45? 


Yet, the reviewer still gave the place 3 stars out of a possible 4.


We liked Amici Family Restaurant in Bergenfield until the night we were served a tough, sinewy piece of fish the menu said was red snapper. When we asked, the waitress relayed the chef's insistence it was red snapper.


We won't return.


And if you believe what you read in the newspaper, why go to a restaurant where owners think you're complaining about the food to get a free meal?


Places we love


It would be difficult to kick the restaurant habit altogether, even though we usually eat out only once a week and do takeout on another night. And in retirement, I enjoy meeting friends for breakfast or lunch out.


At Rosa Mexicano, a fine-dining mall restaurant in Hackensack, I had the  wonderful, made-from-scratch fish tacos for lunch on Tuesday and a friend chose the Enchiladas Suizas. The entrees included several side dishes and terrific salsas.


We had to order a la carte, because the fish tacos and his chicken enchiladas weren't included in a $16.50, two-course lunch special. But the two light beers he drank cost $11 and the bill came to $54 and change with tip and tax.


And there are places we've been going to for years we'd have a hard time living without, such as Wondee's and Lotus Cafe in Hackensack, and So Gong Dong in Palisades Park.


Wondee's is a Thai restaurant with terrific prices for whole fish, which you can get steamed and covered with a spicy blend of chili and garlic. (In fact, a whole fish at Wondee's is only a few dollars more than the fish tacos at Rosa Mexicano.) 


Lotus Cafe specializes in big Chinese meals, such as the 11-course Formosa Banquet for Ten at about $31 per person, including tip and tax. And So Gong Dong serves a healthy meal of Korean soft-tofu stew, kimchi and other comfort foods for $10.


All are BYOs, and all are unpretentious, welcoming places where families gather for a good meal at prices that won't break the bank.


I can Can Can


We continue to shop the Can Can Sale at ShopRite with mixed results.


My wife went to the Englewood ShopRite for more Adirondack seltzer and Airwick air freshener, then wiped out any savings with the purchase of Cortizone-10 hydrocortisone cream for $8.27.


I returned the 2-ounce tube for a refund today and managed to find a 1-ounce ShopRite-brand tube of the same anti-itch cream for $2.99, the last one on the shelf. My wife said there weren't any when she shopped.


Today, I also picked up a half-gallon of Smart Balance Fat-Free Lactose-Free Milk with Omega 3 for $1.99 or half-price, compared to $3.39 for the ShopRite brand.


Bottles of VO5 shampoo were 88 cents each, but a can of Progresso soup was $1.25. I bought five of the former, none of the latter.


At last year's Can Can Sale, Progresso soups were $1.19 a can or 10 for $10 with a coupon and store card. 

Our Easter meal was a comparative breeze

Image via Wikipedia

After my wife and son mutinied and refused to order from the Passover menu at Rosa Mexicano, assembling an Easter dinner the next day was easy.

When I ate meat, we'd buy a ham as the centerpiece of the meal, but my 13-year-old son wanted lobster, so my wife went to ShopRite after church. 

But live lobster, usually on sale for $4.99 or $5.99 a pound, was selling for $8.99 a pound on Sunday. My wife called, and when she told me the price, I said I was leaving to buy a ham at Whole Foods Market, a couple of miles away in Paramus.

I found just what I was looking for: A boneless, fully cooked Applewood Smoked Uncured Petite Ham from the Niman Ranch -- pork raised with "no antibiotics ever, no added hormones ever and all vegetarian feeds." It was $7.99 a pound, and weighed about a pound and a half.

I heated up the ham in the oven and found the rest of the ingredients at home -- hand-trimmed French green beans from Costco that needed only steaming and seasoning, and white rice, which I prepared in a rice cooker with Badia-brand Sazon Tropical to make it yellow (no MSG).

My Easter dinner? Old Farmhouse Vegetable Stew, also from Costco, and a big salad with beets, tomato, and some of those steamed green beans. 

I wanted a light meal after over-indulging the night before at the Mexican restaurant.