For fresh fish, good food and more, shop and eat where Koreans do

For dinner on Sunday night, I enjoyed a whole fresh black sea bass from H Mart -- baked in an aluminum-foil pouch for 30 minutes at 450 degrees with fresh tomato, onion, garlic and lime juice. You'll also need a spoon to enjoy the resulting soup.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The biggest H Mart in Bergen County also is the busiest, and parking in the big lot can be tough.

But on Sunday afternoon, to my surprise, there were plenty of empty spaces at the Super H Mart in Ridgefield.

The shopping challenge was inside -- narrow aisles and customers with carts stopping for free food samples -- every four or five feet it seemed -- more than at the other H Marts in Fort Lee, Englewood, Leonia and Little Ferry (weekends only).

If you've never tried Korean food, here is an ideal place to sample cooked and dried fish and other seafood; tofu, soup, cold or hot noodles, dumplings, meat, sausage and the traditional side dishes that accompany every meal.

Adding to the shopping experience, Korean-American college students and other food samplers call out what they are offering in Korean.

But when I had questions -- such as, "Is there any meat in that?" -- all of the ones I spoke to on Sunday were bilingual.

The night before, we drove to Palisades Park for dinner at So Gong Dong, a popular restaurant for Korean comfort food -- soft-tofu stew with all the trimmings for only $10.

The fresh seafood selection is so big fish is displayed on plenty of ice on both sides of the counter, and customers can chose what they want with tongs, put their purchase in a plastic bag and hand it over for free cleaning. Fish can be left whole, cut into steaks, filleted or prepared in other ways.

A confusing sign on fresh wild salmon lists two species, Sockeye and Coho.

Among the many free food samples on Sunday was cooked top shell, also called whelk or sea snail, dipped in a spicy sauce.

Wild-caught red snapper.

Whole Monkfish Tail was $5.99 a pound. So was the Black Sea Bass, and the four I purchased for our Sunday dinner averaged a little over 1 pound each. 

Organic lettuce

My other purchases included Organic Red Leaf Lettuce for $1.99, a better buy than the same lettuce grown conventionally for $1.49.

A 15-pound bag of Kokuho Yellow Label Rice, grown in California, was $9.99, a savings of $7.

A large, heavy watermelon was $6.49, and three bunches of scallions were 99 cents.

We love kimbap, a sliced seaweed-and-rice roll stuffed with vegetables and fish cake, but a small package prepared in the store was pricey at $5.49.

H Mart Smart Card

If you forget your ShopRite Price Plus Club Card, you can enter your phone number into a terminal and get the deals associated with it on the spot.

But if you forget your H Mart Smart Card, you have to return to the store with your receipt to be credited for the 1% rebate associated with it ($10 after your purchases total $1,000, and special coupons).

A few days after I wrote this, I took back two receipts, but was given credit for only one. I was told no credit is given for receipts more than a month old.

Also, the large Super H Mart lot has only three parking-lot corrals for shopping carts, and your car could be damaged by another customer who doesn't bother returning a cart to one of them.

The biggest H Mart in Bergen County is in Ridgefield.

Details

Super H Mart, 321 Broad Ave., Ridgefield; 1-201-943-9600. Open 7 days, free parking in large lot.

This H Mart is in a shopping center with other Korean businesses, including a bakery, restaurants and an appliance store.

So Gong Dong in Palisades Park specializes in complete soft-tofu dinners, but you also can find B.B.Q. Squid with Spicy Sauce, an unusually hot gochujang, for $12.99, including two kinds of kimchi and three other side dishes. The squid was very tender, but I needed a pair of scissors to separate the rings.

Pajun, a grilled seafood-and-scallion pancake made from rice flour, is $11.99, and can be shared by four to six. 

Clockwise from top, pickled radish, bean sprouts, cucumber kimchi, cabbage kimchi, a dipping sauce for the grilled pancake and seaweed in gochujang, a red-pepper paste.

My wife's stone bowl of soft tofu was bubbling furiously when brought to the table, ideal for poaching the fresh egg that comes with it. This bowl of Pork Soft Tofu is Medium Spicy, one of the spice levels you can specify.

So Gong Dong offers 11 soft-tofu stews with a fresh egg, steamed rice and five side dishes, a complete meal for $9.99 (rounded up to $10 on the check, including tax).

Big tables are designed to accommodate multi-generational families or groups of men.

Details

So Gong Dong, 118 Broad Ave., Second Floor, Palisades Park; 1-201-313-5550. Free parking on side streets. 

If meals could speak, mine would tell tales of the sea

A breakfast of leftover organic whole-wheat linguine with bottled marinara and added sardines, anchovies, red wine and seasoning, served with two small wedges of pesto-and-cheese frittata. Most of the ingredients come from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Life, cooking and food shopping are so much easier when you don't eat meat and poultry.

You never have to worry about whether the food you are eating was raised with antibiotics and hormones that are harmful to humans or what the animal was fed before it was slaughtered.

You never have to imagine the horrors of the slaughterhouse or wonder if that steak came from a sick animal that collapsed, only to be dragged to its death.

None of those issues arise with wild-caught seafood.

Fresh fish is cheap, and you can avoid ingesting a lot of mercury by sticking to the smaller species, including anchovies, sardines, whiting and so forth.

Canned-fish salad includes yellow-fin tuna, pink salmon and Moroccan sardines with chopped celery and sweet peppers. The dressing is Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice and ground cumin, all to taste. Costco carries the mustard, limes and all three canned fish.

Cholesterol drops

I stopped eating meat and poultry more than four years ago, and my cholesterol has dropped to where I plan to ask my doctor if I can discontinue the statin I have been taking for decades.

The other members of my family still eat meat and poultry, meaning we often have to prepare two dinners.

I try to steer them to organic or grass-fed beef and antibiotic-free chicken and lamb at Whole Foods Market, Costco Wholesale and ShopRite.

Kimchi from Costco

I do eat organic chicken stock from Costco Wholesale, using it instead of water when I prepare brown rice and lentils in an electric cooker.

This morning, my wife called from Costco to ask if I wanted a large jar of kimchi for $7.99, but when she read the ingredients I noticed it included beef-bone extract.

I told her not to buy it.

Our favorite kimchi comes from the Oh family, which closed their Englewood business, but haven't re-opened yet in Ridgefield.

We always had a jar of their Arirang Kimchi in the refrigerator, but now, we only eat the spicy, fermented cabbage and other types of kimchi when we go out to a Korean restaurant.

Escoveitch of fish.

Ackee and salt fish, the Jamaican national dish, accented with Valentina Mexican Hot Sauce and served with garlic mashed sweet potatoes. My wife used salted Alaskan pollock from Costco instead of the Canadian dried cod the Hackensack warehouse store no longer carries.

Taking small bites out of the Garden State

Imported from Italy, Organic Whole Wheat Shells from Whole Foods Market's 365 Everyday Value brand are $1.39 a pound at the Paramus store. They are thick and shaped to catch the sauce, in this case bottled marinara with sweet pepper, onion, garlic, anchovies and sardines.

Fresh Icelandic haddock fillets were $8.99 a pound at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack. Here, we prepared the wild fish in coconut milk with organic diced tomatoes, sweet pepper, onion and garlic, and served it with a baked sweet potato. Haddock, a member of the cod family, cooks in about 5 to 8 minutes, and flakes beautifully.

I went looking for Kirkland Signature fruit, seed and nut bars and found this: Nature's Bakery Fig Bar in three flavors. They are non-GMO, kosher and dairy free. A 3-pound box with 24 twin packs was $8.59 at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack. I carry snack bars with me so I can skip lunch.

A cart full of favorites from Costco: smoked wild sockeye salmon ($15.59 for 1 pound), Jarlsberg Lite Reduced Fat Swiss Cheese ($8.59 for 2 pounds), sodium-free almonds ($12.99 for a 3-pound bag), fat Persian Limes from Mexico ($4.99 for a 5-pound bag), and Sunset-brand hothouse cucumbers from Canada (2 pounds for $3.49).  

I cooked Japanese buckwheat noodles in Kirkland Signature Organic Chicken Stock, and topped them with chopped kimchi from H&Y Marketplace in Ridgefield and Kirkland Signature Roasted Seasoned Seaweed.

Garlic lover's pasta, wild pesto salmon

Two full bulbs of California garlic -- at least a dozen and a half cloves -- go into a simple sauce for organic whole wheat spaghetti, above.

A second version of Garlic Lover's Pasta uses organic whole wheat fusilli and adds fresh organic baby spinach.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Garlic -- and lots of it -- chopped fresh or canned diced tomatoes, and extra-virgin olive oil are all you need to prepare a simple and satisfying sauce for pasta. 

You can add grated cheese to the pot as well as at the table for the finishing touch.

I use Trader Joe's organic whole-wheat pasta ($1.39 for 16 ounces). The California garlic and organic diced tomatoes come from Costco Wholesale.

For breakfast, I crowned Garlic Lover's whole wheat fusilli and spaghetti with an organic brown egg.

Wild for salmon

Another simple and simply delicious dish is wild salmon fillets that get a squirt of fresh lime juice and a pinch or two of Aleppo pepper before they go into the oven.

I roast salmon in a 375-degree oven for  8 to  12 minutes, depending on whether I want it rare for me or cooked through for other family members.

Once they come out of the oven, all you have to do is spoon on Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto from Costco Wholesale.

Kirkland Signature Basil Pesto is a refrigerated product that you can use at room temperature for wild salmon, above; or as a sandwich spread and pasta sauce.

Canned-fish salad -- pink salmon, yellowfin tuna and sardines -- is great in sandwiches, but when you're on a no-bread diet, you can pile it high for breakfast with organic spring mix, kimchi, olives, tomatoes and cucumbers. I dress the canned fish in Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice and ground cumin.

Why I cook in large batches. When dinner is as easy as plating and reheating leftover wild salmon with pesto and organic fusilli with garlic, tomato and spinach, followed by a salad, what's not to love?

Searching for the best kimchi in North Jersey

At H&Y Marketplace in Ridgefield, fresh fish are displayed on plenty of ice.

Women making kimchi in the store offer samples to customers.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

Several weeks ago, the Oh family closed their celebrated kimchi factory in Englewood, promising to reopen at a Korean supermarket in Ridgefield.

The family chose H&Y Marketplace, not the much larger Super H Mart down the road.

The Oh family's handmade kimchi is preservative- and MSG-free, and the best commercial product in North Jersey.

I've been eating their spicy, fermented cabbage, radish and cucumber kimchis for more than a decade, and always had a bottle in the refrigerator.

So, on Saturday, I drove to H&Y Marketplace, which I haven't visited since the store opened a couple of years ago, and discovered it's the perfect place for Arirang Kimchi.

The smaller market is far more manageable than H Mart, and on weekends, customers are offered free samples of Korean food made in the store -- including pork sausage, seaweed-wrapped brown rice and kimchi.

Other samples were raw conch, and homemade tofu, also available with black sesame seeds.

Fluke Tang ($9.99) is a container of fresh fish and other seafood, as well as vegetables, for making soup at home.

I saw kimchi being made in the store, but it wasn't Arirang kimchi.

At customer service, I was told the store had invited Arirang kimchi to set up shop, but it still hadn't happened.

I purchased a half-gallon of the Kimganae Kimchi being made in the store ($9.99), and jumped in the car to buy rice and spicy soup at the Super H Mart.

I had to park in the back of the large lot, and the store was a madhouse, compared to H&Y Marketplace.

I usually shop at H Marts in Englewood and Little Ferry, and it took awhile to find the rice and soup I wanted, fighting the crowd all the way.

At the Super H Mart, a 15-pound bag of Kokuho Yellow Label Rice from California was on sale for $10.99, a savings of $3, but other H Marts discount it more.

A 16-serving box of Shin Ramyun spicy instant noodle soup was $11.99, also a savings of $3. Previously, I wrote the box contained 20 servings.

Update

Vicky Oh of Arirang Kimchi says construction in one of the stores at the H&Y mall in Ridgefield has just started.

She expects Arirang Kimchi to open in December or January.

H&Y Marketplace is at 1 Remsen Place, off Broad Avenue, in Ridgefield. Telephone: 201-943-7400.

Putting a Korean accent on raw fish

Raw fish over rice at Woochun Restaurant in Palisades Park is dressed with a mildly spicy red-pepper paste from a squeeze bottle on the table, and served with six meatless side dishes and a small bowl of soup, below.

 

Editor's note: Today, I discuss the Korean way of decontructing sushi, and a great bowl of clam chowder at Fairmount Eats in Hackensack.

Those Japanese rolls of fish, rice and seaweed called sushi are terrific, but the Koreans have managed to deconstruct and improve on this healthy combination.

Order raw fish over rice at Woochun Restaurant in Palisades Park, and the sushi chef will send over a large bowl of fresh salad greens, bean sprouts, cucumber and seaweed topped with a few ounces of fluke, salmon and tuna ($15.99).

The rice is served on the side, and I asked for brown instead of white.  I also told the waitress to hold the tuna to cut down on mercury consumption.
 

Woochun keeps metal chopsticks and spoons in a box on the table.

 


I also ate the rice on the side, but I think I was supposed to put it in the big bowl, add lots of the red-pepper paste called gochujang and mix everything up like the classic Korean dish bibimbap -- rice, vegetables, ground meat and a fried or raw egg.

Along with the bowl of fresh spring mix and fish, I got six free side dishes: kimchi, greens, fish cake, radish, potatoes and ginger with hot pepper, plus soup and hot tea.

I couldn't finish all of that, plus a few more free side dishes I asked for, and took salad home.

The fluke in the dish may come from the live fish in large tanks at the back of the restaurant.  

The next time I order raw fish over rice I'll ask only for the wild-caught fluke, which is terrific eaten cooked or raw.
 

Near the rest rooms at the back of Woochun is a swinging door that leads to a Korean bar. The bar is BYO, serves food and is said to be a separate business.

 

Woochun Restaurant, 280 Broad Ave, Palisades Park; 201-242-9999. Free parking on side streets.

Manhattan Clam Chowder and a cup of organic coffee at Fairmount Eats.

A briny bowl of soup

On Saturday, I stopped at Fairmount Eats in Hackensack for coffee and a bowl of soup, and was served a wonderful Manhattan Clam Chowder with fresh, tender clams ($3.45).

I liked it so much I ordered a second bowl and a second cup of organic coffee ($1.65 with free refill).

The light, briny broth was filled with potatoes, clam pieces and other ingredients.


Fairmount Eats, 641 Main St., Hackensack; 201-489-3287.

Couldn't this place be a little more generous?

Spicy Kalbi Tang at Pine Hill Restaurant in Paramus.

The Korean restaurant serves grilled mackerel pike among the free side dishes.

Pine Hill Restaurant is the only Korean restaurant I know in Paramus -- which is the mall capital of North Jersey -- and it's far from the dozens of places that jockey for customers along Broad Avenue in Palisades Park.

Pine Hill also sets itself apart by serving at least 10 of the free side dishes that make a Korean meal so special.

But when four of us had dinner there on Saturday night, I began to wonder if serving more side dishes than most other Korean restaurants is enough.

Pine Hill has seen better days. Though clean, the interior was carried over from another restaurant, and hasn't ever been updated. 

The dinner menu lists a lot of sushi rolls and raw fish, but not that many entrees for non-meat eaters such as myself. 

No grilled fresh fish is available outside the mackerel pike in one of the side dishes.

Translucent Korean noodles are made from yam flour, not wheat.

After a waitress took our order, a tray was brought over and the small side dishes were arrayed on the table -- vegetables, fish and meat.

Pine Hill has some of the best cabbage kimchi around, both spicy and crunchy. The two mackerel pike were delicious.

Greens included fresh spinach. But the salad was iceberg, not the spring mix I've seen elsewhere. And slices of ham came with another cabbage side dish.

One of the complimentary side dishes or panchan.

A good Korean restaurant staff doesn't wait for the customer to ask for more panchan, but at Pine Hill our empty side dishes weren't replaced until I called over the waitress, who was chatting with other servers near the register.

I asked specifically for more kimchi and greens, but was disappointed we didn't get another set of the fatty mackerel pike.

For my entree, I ordered translucent noodles with vegetables called japchae, but asked the kitchen to hold the meat ($11.95).

A side dish of vegetable tempura.

The others had Stone-Bowl Bibimbap ($13.95), a rice, vegetable and ground-beef dish topped with a fried egg. A squeeze bottle of gochuhang, red-pepper paste, allows the diner to vary the spiciness.

The bibimbap came with a small bowl of soup, and an egg souffle in a stone bowl was brought for the table.

My teenage son asked for Spicy Kalbi Tang (also $13.95), a stew with beef short ribs, as hot as the kitchen could make it. It came with a small bowl of steamed white rice.

The food was good, and we had a filling dinner for about $16 each, including tip and tax.

But the relatively new Woochon Restaurant in Palisades Park serves as many side dishes, and they are of higher quality, so we might be going there the next time we want Korean food. 


Pine Hill Restaurant, 123 Paramus Road, 
Paramus; 201-843-0170. Open for lunch and dinner.

Woochon Restaurant, 280 Broad Ave., Palisades Park; 201-242-9999. Open for lunch and dinner.

 

Korean food is ready for its close-up

Fresh, crunchy cabbage kimchi is one of four side dishes served at So Gong Dong.

So Gong Dong -- a popular soft-tofu restaurant in Palisades Park -- has been making a number of changes, from adding new dishes to changing servers' shirts from burgundy to red.

But the signature soft-tofu stew, rice, fresh eggs and four side dishes are as good as ever, and a complete, filling meal costs only $9.99. 

The second-floor entrance to So Gong Dong.

I ordered my soft tofu "more spicy," and broke two eggs into the bubbling broth.

A seafood pancake comes with a soy-based dipping sauce.

The Korean table is one of the most approachable, especially if you don't eat meat, but I see only a handful of non-Asians at So Gong Dong and other restaurants in Palisades Park, a center of the cuisine.

There is a good selection of non-spicy dishes, and an abundance of healthy tofu and vegetables.

The broth for soft-tofu stew is made from beef bones, but on request, So Gong Dong will use hot water, and make the stew as spicy or mild as you like.

A second kimchi is made from cucumbers, but you also get fresh bean sprouts.

Korean beef ribs are available for carnivores.

The four complimentary side dishes served with the tofu stew include three vegetables and highly spiced raw squid.

In addition to soft tofu, available plain and with meat or seafood, So Gong Dong is now serving rice-based bibimbap, and cold and hot noodle soups.

We've always had great service, but a button on each table allows you to ring a buzzer (or is it a bell?), and summon a server.

So Gong Dong, 118 Broad Ave., 2nd Floor, Palisades Park; 201-313-5550. Valet parking and free parking on side streets.

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