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 fish tales from eating out and eating in

Lotus Cafe in Hackensack's Home Depot Shopping Center does a brisk takeout business. The Chinese BYO, which opened in 1993, offers free delivery within 3 miles, with a $12 minimum (450 Hackensack Ave., Hackensack; 201-488-7070).

Seafood Soup for 2 is filled with tender shrimp, squid, fish cake and vegetables in a perfectly seasoned broth ($7.50).

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On Saturday morning, I discussed with my wife eating out at either Wondee's or Lotus Cafe, two favorites near our home.

By mid-afternoon, my wife informed me that, on the one day we eat out, everyone had made other plans.

I flirted with the idea of driving to Fort Lee for sashimi -- which no one else in the family touches -- but decided it was time for a simple Chinese meal of soup, vegetable and rice.

I drove to Lotus Cafe, ordered Seafood Soup for 2, Chinese Broccoli Stir Fried with Fresh Garlic and brown rice.

Chinese Broccoli Stir Fried with Fresh Garlic is both deliciously leafy and crunchy ($9.95). Brown rice is available at no extra charge.

At home on Saturday morning, I prepared a smoked wild-salmon and Swiss cheese frittata with bottled Mexican green salsa and prepared pesto, above and below. The basic mixture included egg whites, whole organic eggs, shredded cheese, organic low-fat milk and sun-dried tomatoes, with most of the ingredients from Costco Wholesale, as was the salmon, reduced-fat Swiss cheese and pesto. 

Ackee and Salt Fish, the Jamaican national dish, can be made even spicier with Valentina Mexican Hot Sauce (Black Label). The bland ackee fruit and boiled green banana are foils for salted fish from Costco Wholesale (Canadian cod or Alaskan pollock), and sweet and hot peppers, garlic, onion and scallions, below.

Seasoned and pan-fried fresh, wild haddock fillets from Costco Wholesale ($8.99 a pound) are especially good covered in sauteed sweet peppers and onions.

Enjoying a great meal in a familiar setting

Steamed Whole Fish with chili pepper at Wondee's in  Hackensack.

Fresh Green Papaya Salad.

"Where do you want to eat tonight? Jamaican? Cuban ...?"

My teenage son surprised me by picking not Jamaican, his favorite, but Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles in Hackensack.

OK. It was no surprise. We've loved Wondee's for years, and often, we go there when we can't reach a consensus on our weekly meal out.

I grabbed a bottle of Dos Equis Mexican dark beer from home and drove to Wondee's on Main Street, parking in a rear lot and entering through the back door.

Wonton Soup with roast pork.

Often, we see Chef Wandee Suwangbutra eating her dinner at a table between the register and kitchen doors, but we arrived about an hour later than usual on Saturday night.

I ordered salad and a whole fish to share with my son, and for him, soup and dessert.

I almost always have Som Thum, the Fresh Green Papaya Salad, which to me is the essence of Thai cuisine -- sweet, sour and spicy with an emphasis on vegetables ($8.50).

I asked Wandee about the dressing, and she listed lime juice, fish sauce and palm sugar from the coconut tree.

The salad is crunchy with strands of green papaya,  green beans and ground peanuts, and it's so good, it elevates the iceberg lettuce leaves that embrace it on the plate.

My son had Geuw Nam, Wonton Soup with roast pork and vegetables ($3.50), but I skipped my usual spicy shrimp-and-mushroom soup, Thome Yum Koong.

My son drank coconut juice ($3).

Whole red snapper

We ordered and shared a second favorite dish, Pla Ma Now or Steamed Whole Fish with chili pepper, garlic and lemon juice ($18).

We chose red snapper -- one of three kinds of fish available -- and found it perfectly cooked with firm pieces that easily separated from the bones.

The fish, swimming in a spicy broth, is served in a metal, fish-shaped dish heated from below.

I spooned the wonderful broth over brown rice, but when the bill came, I was surprised to see a charge of $2.50. A bowl of white rice is free.

Still, Wandee recognizes that her food is meant to be shared, and provides serving spoons and, with the whole fish, a serrated knife.

It's maddening how few restaurants do likewise. 

Fried Bananas with Vanilla Ice Cream ($6).

Go for the great food, not the dated interior.

At home, watching a movie on TV, I had a full, satisfied feeling from our meal at Wondee's until I went to sleep.

Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, 296 Main St., Hackensack; 201-883-1700.

BYO. Parking in rear. Closed Mondays. No delivery.

Related articles

• One town's hit-and-miss food scene
• For Chinese food, why go anywhere else?

One town's hit-and-miss food scene

A painting inside Boomerangs on Main Street in Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

If you want to find a good restaurant on Hackensack's Main Street, you'll have to ask one of the many lawyers who have offices along the street or jurors who spill out of the nearby courthouse in search of lunch.

I've seen lots of articles recently in the local daily newspaper about grand plans to revive the street, but hardly anything on the many changes in the food scene during and after the recession.

A rodizio steakhouse is slated to replace a low-quality Chinese buffet restaurant.

 

Hookah Paradise and DiMaria's Deli are across the street.

Main Street's strength is affordable ethnic food: Two Thai restaurants, two Indian restaurants, Cuban,  Colombian, Ecuadorian, Greek, Turkish, Jamaican and others I am sure I've overlooked.

Main Dish replaced Naturally Good, a onetime favorite of employees at The Record.

Main Dish and Wondee's Thai restaurant have parking in the rear.

  

In mid-July, I had a wonderful meal at Casual Habana Cafe at 125 Main St., and discovered the interior of the BYO had been completely renovated.

Several blocks north, Casual Habana is planning to open a catering business on Main Street, across from the Johnson Public Library.

Pollos Mario is a Colombian restaurant that has prospered on Main Street.

A recent addition is Super Rico -- Colombian fast food.

I'm eager to try a Caribbean and soul food restaurant called Boomerangs at 136 Main St. -- on the other side of the street from the Cuban restaurant. 

It replaced Mangos Restaurant about 2 years ago.

Boomerang retained the front counter and rear bi-level dining rooms of Mangos, with the kitchen in the middle. 

The takeout menu lists Boomerangs' Famous Jerk Chicken ($12), Curry Goat ($10 and $12) and other Jamaican dishes. 

But it also offers steamed Tilapia with Coconut Sauce ($13) for customers looking for a break from fried food. 

Super Rico opened at 75 Main St. next to Greek Island Grill, where I've had a couple of good meals.

But the Colombian fast-food place offers only a few items for non-meat eaters. 

Across from Super Rico, an outpost of a well-known Italian deli is planned.

Being close to the Bergen County Courthouse doesn't guarantee success.

For many years, John's Coffee Shop operated just off Main Street, but its successor failed even though it's opposite Courthouse Plaza and near the courthouse itself.

This Main Street tavern echoes with ghosts of the many newspaper workers who held their going-away parties there before The Record left Hackensack for Woodland Park.

Most of the changes in the food scene appear to be on the blocks nearest the imposing, century old Bergen County Courthouse.

Farther up Main, toward the face-lifted Sears building, Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, a BYO at 296 Main St., has served me and my family one great meal after another.

Wondee's, opened in 1997, is celebrating 15 years in Hackensack.

Aladdin, a pricey Middle Eastern restaurant with live music and belly dancing at 382 Main St., is another success.

Related articles

• A quiet success on Main Street
• On two sides of the food tracks
• Cuban restaurant replaces Fuddrucker's

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. 

Calling all soft-shell crabs

Image by spiralmushroom via Flickr

A soft-shell crab served in a bowl of noodle soup.

The appeal of a soft-shell crab is clear: You enjoy all the meat without the bother of cracking open all that shell. 


The crab does the work for you by shedding its shell several times between late May and September as it grows larger.


Crabs are my son's favorite food, so for a celebratory lunch after his 8th-grade graduation ceremony on Monday, we drove over to Lotus Cafe, the Chinese restaurant in Hackensack.


We wanted to have soft-shell crabs at Lotus Cafe for dinner on June 18, but they ran out of them early that evening. 


A few weeks ago, we had them prepared in Wondee's great Panang curry, but the Thai restaurant in Hackensack was out of them on Sunday, June 19.


Lotus Cafe prepares them three ways: in a spicy garlic sauce, with ginger and scallion or fried -- a preparation called pepper and salt.


We ordered them in garlic sauce and fried, along with water spinach in fresh garlic, soup and bowls of white and brown rice. 


It was a big lunch, but I was happy with canned vegetable soup, and fruit and cheese for dinner.


Lotus Cafe says it uses three crabs in each entree ($19.95). 


The delicious garlic-sauce crab was cut into bite-size pieces and sauteed with crunchy pieces of celery and water chestnuts, and strips of seaweed. 


The second crab entree also was cut into pieces, beautifully fried, and served with bits of garlic and hot pepper. The plate was garnished with a "flower" made from radish, I believe, using toothpicks and a rubber band.


Although soft-shell crab entrees at restaurants are a sure sign of summer, I haven't seen any in the market. 


At Whole Foods Market in Paramus, soft-shell crabs are sold breaded and fried for $5.99 each, an employee at the seafood counter said Tuesday. 


You can buy them online. One Web site is offering a dozen frozen soft-shell crabs for $99.95.


The official Maryland Seafood site says the Chesapeake Bay blue crab increases "by one-third in size" during shedding.


Lotus Cafe, 450 Hackensack Ave., 
in the Home Depot Shopping Center, 
Hackensack; 201-488-7070. BYO.


Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, 
296 Main St., 201-883-1700;  BYO, parking in rear,
http://www.wondeenj.com/ 

Fire sale on Copper River wild salmon

Image via Wikipedia

The Columbia University campus in Manhattan, above, is expanding to the Riverside Drive viaduct near Fairway Market in Harlem.

Fresh Copper River salmon for $8.99 a pound?

That's got to be a mistake, I thought as I looked at the label of a shrink-wrapped foam tray holding a fillet in Costco on Saturday evening.

On May 21, when the first fresh wild salmon of the season from the famed Alaskan river arrived at the Hackensack warehouse store, it was priced at $13.99 a pound. The second fillet I bought a week or so later also was $13.99 a pound.

Usually, the Copper River salmon is gone in a couple of weeks and is replaced by fresh wild salmon from the northwestern United States, though often the place isn't specified, but last year, it was priced at $8.99 a pound.

I asked an employee, and he said as far as he knew, the label was correct. I mentioned the price for Copper River salmon was $13.99 a week ago, and he shrugged.

My deep orange-red fillet of sockeye salmon weighs 1.66 pounds, and was only 49 cents a pound more than the insipid, pale, artificially colored farmed salmon at the other end of the refrigerated seafood case.

Fairway's Harlem store

We attended a graduation in upper Manhattan on Saturday morning, so it was only natural to stop at Fairway Market on the way home -- the store I shopped in now and then before the Paramus outpost opened its doors in March 2009.

The New York store has old-fashioned outdoor produce displays -- there was a  big box of watermelons in the parking lot -- but this is no longer the store of $4.99 a pound coffee beans or $2.99 store-label pasta sauce.

Of course, you can say that about prices at just about every supermarket.

I hadn't shopped here in more than a year, but for a mid-afternoon Saturday, I was surprised at how uncrowded the store was.

Still, expecting a crush, I had dispatched my wife to the unique cold room -- essentially, a large, refrigerated room with the butcher and fish counters, dairy and other products -- for goat meat, while I went to get a couple of pounds of custom-ground coffee beans.

We always bought our goat meat at the Harlem store, usually frozen for under $3 a pound -- a better price than anywhere in North Jersey -- but the Parmaus store never carried it. On Saturday, we found fresh goat meat on the bone for $4.79 a pound, but only one package.

I also picked up two pounds of coffee beans (Turkish grind) for $7.99 and $8.49 a pound, and two, 32-ounce jars of Fairway vodka sauce for $4.49 each.

After I got my coffee, I went to the cold room to discover it had been completely made over. At the fish counter, I saw wild salmon on ice for around $15 a pound, but none labeled with the place of origin.

A woman mentioned she had a second home in Canada, near a salmon farm, and added: "You wouldn't believe what they put in there," a reference to feed pellets that color the fish artificially and antibiotics to prevent the salmon from getting sick in close quarters.

Mirroring changes inside the store, the neighborhood is being remade. The biggest potholes have been rearranged, catching us unawares as we left the store and drove to the West Side Highway.

And east of the parking lot, a huge construction project by Columbia University force the relocation of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que to 125th Street, from under the shadow of the Riverside Drive viaduct, and the demolition of many buildings.

Restaurant prices

Two of our favorite restaurants in Hackensack have raised their prices.

We had dinner Saturday night at Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles, and were handed new menus with higher prices, but the new takeout menus haven't arrived yet.

For example, one of our favorite dishes  -- steamed whole fish with chili pepper, garlic and lemon juice -- is now $18, compared with $14.95 before.

With Greek fish houses charging $32 for a whole fish, this still is a bargain.

We had a great meal of spicy shrimp-and-mushroom soup; mock duck salad with fruit in a piquant tamarind dressing; soft-shell crabs in Panang curry, and vegetable fried rice.

Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles,

296 Main St. Hackensack; 201-883-1700.

Lotus Cafe

I stopped at Lotus Cafe for a copy of its special fixed-price and banquet menu, and noticed dinners for four to 10 people have gone up, the former to $66 from $59 and the latter to $238 from $208. 

If you leave a 20% tip, a six-course dinner for four now is $20.95 per person, including tax. An 11-course banquet for 10 -- including Peking duck, prawns, filet mignon and a whole fish -- is $30.25 per person, tax included. 

This is among the best Chinese food in North Jersey. I've enjoyed the dinners for four and six people a number of times; the food is wonderful and the portions are generous.

I didn't look at the regular menu, which reflects the same quality, but expect prices have been adjusted there, too.

Lotus Cafe, 450 Hackensack Ave., in the Home

Depot Shopping Center, Hackensack; 201-488-7070.