Eating out tonight? Don't go here

You may see "scampi" on many North Jersey menus, but the real things, above, are rare.

       
In the 32 years our waitress has worked at Barcelona's Restaurant, she has served enough canned vegetables to fill an entire supermarket -- maybe two.


Fish and other seafood are frozen, and the small salad that comes with entrees  has iceberg lettuce and a couple of slices of tasteless tomato straight from the fridge.


She brings oil and vinegar, and a basket of spongy bread, as afterthoughts. What am I doing here?


A famously frugal friend said he read a favorable appraisal of the place in The Record, and wanted to try it. 


Under $10


I looked at the extensive, a la carte menu online, saw that most entrees are well under $10, and figured there was no way we would get in on a Saturday night. 


But there were plenty of empty tables in the dated interior of this 78-year-old Garfield restaurant, which allegedly serves Italian-American food. It's not clear if the waitress was born before the restaurant opened or the other way around.


The reviewer said the restaurant serves big portions of "traditional southern Italian cooking" at startlingly low prices, adding the food was "nicely done," but after I had dinner there Friday night, those statements don't ring true.


Then, I remembered the reviewer was a man of gargantuan proportions who never met a morsel of food he didn't like.


No lies


The food served at Barcelona's is a cruel joke on southern Italian cooking --  which prizes fresh seafood and vegetables -- and doesn't even come close to the Italian-American dishes served at so many other places in North Jersey.


I asked the waitress about the filet of sole "with potato and string beans" for $8.75.


"It's frozen and deep fried," she said. "I'm not going to lie." She also turned thumbs down on the frozen scallops, and told me to have the "shrimp scampi" for $8.50.


The string beans are from a can, she said, and other veggies, available for $1 more, are canned peas with sliced carrots. Broccoli rabe, escarole sauteed with oil and garlic? Forgetaboutit. 


I ordered the "scampi," which bear no resemblance to real scampi -- Dublin Bay prawns with narrow bodies and small pincer claws similar to lobster, like the ones I had in Venice last September.


My friend chose a rib steak and pasta for $8.50, and both of us asked for a cup of escarole-and-bean soup from the list of specials ($3.25). 


I got eight small, soggy shrimp swimming in a puddle of sauce, and two plates of lifeless vegetables. The soup, which came in a small crock, was the best thing we had.


We turned down an offer of dessert.


This is cheap?


And it turned out not to be cheap. I gave my friend $19 for my lousy shrimp, extra veggies, soup and club soda, plus tip and tax. I can think of a lot of Italian-American restaurants where the same amount would have bought me a really decent meal.


The restaurant is in a drab, working-class residential neighborhood, and it's facade is not even real stone. Awaiting me inside was one of the worst meals I have ever had.


There's an American flag painted on the wall out front and many patriotic signs inside and out -- all suggesting the food is not that far above Army chow.


Barcelona's Restaurant, 38 Harrison Ave., Garfield;
973-778-4930. Cash only, street parking.


Web site: Certainly not worth the detour

Tell us more -- much more

Image via Wikipedia

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.

Too little, too late

After virtually ignoring for at least two years how the food she writes about has been raised or grown, restaurant reviewer Elisa Ung of The Record has a column on the Better Living front today listing places that serve organic items, wild fish or meat and poultry free of antibiotics. She lists five eating places in all of North Jersey.

This past Friday, her restaurant review displayed no such sensibility. She is an inconsistent voice for the consumer. She has spent far more time obsessing over the quality of desserts she has encountered in her reviewing and feature stories.

The Record could be of even more service to readers by listing supermarkets that sell naturally raised food, but that might run afoul of the drive for advertising revenue.