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.

 

Beef isn't the only choice for Korean BBQ

So Moon Nan Jib is one of the few Korean barbecue restaurants in Palisades Park and Fort Lee that still uses wood charcoal.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Sitting around the charcoal grill at So Moon Nan Jib on Saturday, we were trying to remember the last time we had what my son calls "cook on the table."

For years, cooking thinly sliced beef or ribs over a grill in the middle of the table was one of our favorite meals -- Korean or otherwise -- at So Moon Nan Jib, Madangsui and other North Jersey restaurants.

The meals are filling and full of fun, as you wrap beef, garlic, kimchi, shredded scallion salad, rice and whatever else will fit into red-leaf lettuce leaves, and do your best to cram the whole package into your mouth.

But Korean restaurants don't tell you anything about how the beef was raised and, for more than a year, we prepared the meal at home, using free-range, grass-fed Australian beef sold at ShopRite supermarkets.

Seafood only

Then, in February 2010, we stopped eating meat and poultry altogether. 

My wife and son resumed eating meat several months later, but I'm still eating only seafood.

Luckily, So Moon Nan Jib in Palisades Park is one of the few places offering raw shrimp to cook on the table-top grill, supplemented by seven non-meat side dishes that are part of every Korean meal.

If you want to cook on the table in a Korean restaurant, you have to order a minimum of two portions of meat.

So at So Moon Nan Jib, we ordered the bulgogi, slices of marinated beef ($28.99), and the butterflied shrimp ($24.99 for a dozen). We also ordered pricey translucent noodles called japchae ($17.99), but we couldn't finish them and would have had enough to eat without them.

The restaurant's interior seems to have been freshened, and service was attentive, with the waitresses doing some of the grilling for us and clearing empty dishes.

Side dishes

The seven side dishes included cabbage and radish kimchis, bean sprouts, an American-style salad in a creamy dressing, broccoli and a hot egg souffle you eat with a spoon.

The spicy radish kimchi hid slices of chewy raw fish, and the cabbage kimchi contained a raw oyster. Rice, bean paste and a scallion salad to wrap in the lettuce with the beef or shrimp completed the meal.

Before the recession, waitresses would replace a side dish without asking, but on Saturday night, I had to ask for more radish and cabbage kimchi and more red-leaf lettuce. 

After we finished, an American woman with her husband at the table across the way said, "I'll bet you know exactly how I feel."

We agreed all of us were stuffed.


Then and now

In February 2005, I wrote a review of So Moon Nan Jib for The Record's Dining Out on $50 column, referring to a meal for four people, including tax and tip.

Back then, the restaurant served soup and more side dishes, called panchan, with the meal.

On Saturday evening, three of us spent $94, including a bottle of Korean beer ($5),  Sprite ($1.99), tax and tip. 

Without the al la carte noodle dish, the bill would have been about $76.

So Moon Nan Jib, 238 Broad Ave., Palisades Park; 
201-944-3998. Open seven days, valet parking in rear, sushi bar.

We brake for soft-tofu restaurants

Image via CrunchBase

A video shows how one Korean home cook makes soft-tofu stew (see link below).

Was it my idea to look around for a soft-tofu restaurant that offers better food and service than the second-floor tofu house in Palisades Park that has served us so many satisfying meals in recent years?

We tried Gamasot Restaurant in Fort Lee last April and Book Chang Dong in Palisades Park this month. On Saturday, we waded into the crowded dining room at So Kong Dong in Fort Lee -- and found it differs from our favorite, So Gong Dong, in more than how the second word is spelled.

The Fort Lee restaurant is where I first tried this Korean comfort food six or seven years ago, but I stopped going there after receiving terrible service on a night when the place was packed. I just happened to be comparing So Gong Dong and So Kong Dong for an article on inexpensive restaurants in The Record.

There is conflicting information on whether So Kong Dong and So Gong Dong are affiliated, but the well-dressed woman at the register Saturday evening said they don't have the same owner. I've heard from Korean friends that So Gong Dong is a section of Seoul where soft-tofu houses predominate. 
 

Both interiors resemble traditional inns, but the Fort Lee restaurant has a showcase of beautiful Korean dolls. It is popular with families, and on Saturday, it filled up quickly between 5 and 6 p.m., and people were waiting for tables.

So Kong Dong offers a variety of soft-tofu stews, steamed rice, five side dishes, a fresh egg and tea for $9, including tax, $1 less than its Palisades Park rival. But if the small parking lot is filled, as it was on Saturday evening, you have to pay 50 cents for one hour of parking in the municipal lot across the street.

I liked the taste of my soft-tofu stew with oysters, which I ordered "very hot (spicy)," but it wasn't bubbling as furiously as I prefer for cooking the fresh egg. My wife and son said their pork version didn't taste as good as at our favorite place. 

They also ordered "Korean BBQ ribs" ($14.99), the same price for what the Palisades Park restaurant lists as "prime beef."

Fort Lee doesn't offer Korean dumplings (mandoo) or a rice-flour seafood pancake (pajun) that you'll find in Pal Park for about $10 each. The dining room of the former and the wait staff both seem smaller. Portions at both places are the same, and both are BYO.

Fort Lee serves one more side dish or panchan and that's a delightful, mildly spicy water kimchi. The others are the same at both places -- cabbage and cucumber kimchis, bean sprouts and spicy raw squid. 

Both places uses a beef or beef-bone broth, although I came across a You Tube video showing a woman making a seafood-vegetable broth at home (see link below).

So, our favorite soft-tofu restaurant remains on top. We plan to revisit Gamasot in Fort Lee soon, and that should do it.

Video shows how to make soft-tofu stew

So Kong Dong Restaurant, 130 Main St., Fort Lee; 201-585-1122.

Restaurant So Gong Dong, 118 Broad Ave., Second Floor, 
Palisades Park; 201-313-8900.