A restaurant makes you forget the recession

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A selection of panchan or banchan, side dishes served with every Korean meal.

When I first started going to North Jersey's Korean restaurants nearly 15 years ago, the value was outstanding.

Lunches and dinners often included six or more side dishes or panchan -- small, colorful portions of vegetables, tofu, fish and meat that were arrayed around your main dish.

Yong Su San in Englewood Cliffs served 10 such dishes, including a small broiled mackerel, until it closed.

But as food prices rose and especially after the recession hit, the number of side dishes declined. 

So Gong Dong, our favorite tofu house in Palisades Park, now serves four, which is pretty much the norm nowadays, though I occasionally encounter six or seven. 

Though the value isn't as good as in the past, a belly busting meal of soft tofu with seafood, rice and side dishes is only $10, including tax.

So I was bowled over Thursday night, when we made an unplanned stop at Pine Hill, a Korean restaurant in Paramus, and the waitress brought out 10 side dishes after we placed our order. That wasn't all.

My bibimbap, a rice dish made in a stone bowl, came with miso soup, and a waiter later brought us a stone-bowl egg souffle.

Only two of the side dishes disappointed -- some iceberg lettuce with dressing and a portion of tired-looking corn kernels that was a poor imitation of mixed vegetables. 

I loved the taste of the cabbage kimchi, and the waitress brought a second dish when we finished the first. There also was cooked tofu in batter, shredded radish, greens and, yes, a small, whole mackerel.

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Sone-bowl bibimbap with a raw egg yolk.

I asked the waitress to hold the ground beef from my rice-and-vegetable dish, which was topped with a fried egg and cost $13.95. I couldn't finish it.

My wife's soft-tofu stew with seafood was $10.95, but she complained there wasn't enough shrimp in it. My son loved his spicy soup of egg, noodles and bone-in short ribs ($13.95). Both of those dishes came with steamed rice.


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

A second bite of Sik Gaek Seafood Grill

Image by vasta via Flickr

If you're a jazz fan, you might think of "Jumpin' at The Woodside" during your visit to Sik Gaek BBQ & Seafood Grill in the Woodside section of Queens, but that tune by the Count Basie Orchestra would be drowned out by the loud, pulsing Korean and American rock that gives this restaurant such energy.

Let me be quick to say we didn't see customers eating live, wriggling octopus tentacles -- a signature dish at this Sik Gaek and the original in Flushing, as you can see in a You Tube video by clicking on the Web site link below.

I've even read customer reviews on the Internet that describe a live octopus thrown on a seasoned hot plate to make it "dance" or "jump."

My son and I stuck to conventional seafood and had a delicious meal, but we ordered way too much and took home plenty of leftovers. The turn-off here might be the obscene lyrics of some of the American hip-hop songs, not the all-out, red-pepper assault on your senses. 

We love spicy food, so we ordered everything hot and weren't disappointed. My sniffles were drowned out by the loud music as my paper napkins piled up at the side of the table.

Right after we were seated, a server turned on the gas burner in the middle of the table and fried us two eggs, over easy. After we placed our order, we got a plate of spicy rice cakes and an egg souffle commonly served in Korean barbecue restaurants. 

Still, I had to ask for kimchi, and it wasn't as good as the fermented cabbage we loved at the Flushing restaurant. 

Our first entree was barbecued mackerel -- a whole, butterflied fish about a food long and slathered with a thick, spicy sauce ($14.99). The fish was moist, with crunchy bits at each end. My son ordered stir-fried crabs and a pot of them in the same sauce was placed over the burner ($29.99).

I sucked on a few shells and legs, but my son was delighted and able to find some crab meat. 

It was clear we couldn't finish the fish or crabs, so we asked a waitress for some rice, and she came over, spooned out the crabs and stir-fried cooked rice, vegetables and what I think were small cubes of cooked octopus into the spicy sauce  ($4.99).

The few spoonfuls I could manage to eat were fantastic. Our meal ended with refreshing cups of cucumber juice.

The Woodside Sik Gaek is a smaller than the Flushing location, but the shouted greetings and farewells from the staff are no less enthusiastic, the menu is the same and it's easier to get into. Sik Gaek offers $99 pots of mixed seafood if you come with a group.

When we arrived, we pushed and pulled on the door between the vestibule and dining room, but it didn't budge until a waiter came over and slid it open. The restaurant is next to a taxi garage, in the shadow of the elevated subway tracks, in a neighborhood of Irish pubs and taco joints.

The walls in Woodside are covered with newspaper pages, photos of customers and staff, and dollar bills covered with Korean and English writing. I saw, "So hot" and below that, "Go for it."  

Sik Gaek BBQ & Seafood Grill, 49-11 Roosevelt Ave. 
(near 49th Street), Woodside, Queens; 718-205-4555. Also,
161-29 Crocheron Ave., Flushing, Queens; 718-321-7770.
Web site: 


Anthony Bourdain and David Chang eat wriggling octopus

Sik Gaek BBQ & Seafood Grill

 My 12-year-old son's eyes bulged as he watched a waiter pluck a live octopus from a tank, slap it on a plate and serve it to a customer.

We were seated at a table with a skillet of shrimp cooking over a round gas burner last night at Sik Gaek BBQ & Seafood Grill in Flushing, N.Y. -- a few hours before we picked up my wife at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Hey, if we had to go through the hassle of driving to JFK, we might as well reap a food reward on the way there.

Sik Gaek pulses with shouted greetings from the servers and loud Korean rock music. Many customers gather around huge pots of steaming seafood cooking on their tables and wash down shellfish, lobster, shrimp, squid and more with Korean beer, soju or sake.

As my son watched the tanks of live seafood, including lobsters and sea urchins, I faced a line of hungry people that began forming soon after we arrived around 7:30. One of the waiters brought over a platter of Korean dumplings for them.

After we were seated on short stools, a waiter turned on the table burner, put a frying pan with oil over the flame and cracked two fresh eggs into it, cooking them over easy. That was our first side dish. Following that were rice cakes in spicy sauce and some of the best cabbage kimchi we have ever had. We got two more kimchi refills during the meal, plus white rice, which costs $1 a serving.

We couldn't manage one of those big pots of seafood (photo above is generic), which run from $30 and up, so we ordered barbecued shrimp ($19.99) and a whole mackerel in spicy sauce ($14.99) and drank iced water from a bottle on the table.

The shell-on shrimp, with heads and tails, cooked on a bed of coarse salt in a glass-covered pan. They were terrific, head and all, dipped in mild or spicy sauce. The mackerel -- which was butterflied and grilled in the kitchen -- was mild, juicy and fresh, the skin nicely charred. We took home leftovers of both entrees. The meal ended with small cups of refreshing cucumber juice.

I asked a waiter the meaning of the restaurant's name and he replied it would too complicated to explain. In any language, it's a wild scene, with great seafood and service.

Sik Gaek BBQ & Seafood Grill, 161-29 Crocheron Ave.,
Flushing, N.Y.; 718-321-7770; open seven days. 
Web site is in Korean.