One street's rich ethnic stew

Image by juancardenes@verizon.net via Flickr

Bergenline Avenue is lined with a rich variety of ethnic restaurants and markets.

I drove to West New York today to drop off photos I took of Belarmino Rico and his sons at La Pola, where I picked up a traditional Cuban Christmas dinner the day before the holiday.

Rico, a native of Spain who describes himself as "King of the Cuban Sandwich," served soup to me and my wife to ward off the day's chill. My wife had chicken soup and I enjoyed caldo Gallego, the Galician white-bean soup made with potato, collard green, chorizo and ham (I ate around the meat).

First, we visited the West New York Post Office on Bergenline Avenue to see a circa 1930s mural showing eight or nine people enjoying a beautiful day from atop the Palisades, with the Empire State Building and the rest of the Manhattan skyline in the distance.

Then, we walked and drove along Bergenline, which has an incredible variety of ethnic restaurants and markets. At a Latino supermarket, we picked up the root vegetable called yuca, which we'll boil and eat with La Pola's garlic sauce, the one that moistens every Cuban sandwich sold there.

In the space of about 15 blocks in West New York and Guttenberg, we saw Peruvian restaurants and a Cuban seafood place, an Italian trattoria, a Japanese restaurant; Las Palmas, another Cuban restaurant with addictive chicharrones or pork rinds; Pollo Campero, a popular fast-food, fried-chicken restaurant that originated in Guatemala; and Jerusalem Bakery.

We're planning a return visit soon to sample the restaurants we haven't tried yet.  

La Pola, 5400 Palisade Ave., West New York; 201-867-6028.
Las Palmas, 6153 Bergenline Ave., West New York; 201-861-1400.
Pollo Campero, 6425 Bergenline Ave., West New York, 201-662-6190.
Jerusalem Bakery, 6901 Bergenline Ave., Guttenberg; 201-868-2253.

Costco v. ShopRite

My wife picked up four 2-pound packages of salted pollack, the fish we have been using instead of pricier cod for her Jamaican breakfast of ackee and salt fish, in which the bland fruit serves as the  perfect foil for a strong, flaky fish and hot peppers.

Costo's price is $6.39 a package, or about $3.20 a pound, compared to $4.99 a pound for salted pollack at ShopRite. Salted cod at ShopRite is $9.99 a pound. 

More Can Can Sale

I continue to shop the 40th anniversary Can Can Sale at ShopRite, but it is losing its allure now that I've stocked up on Adirondack seltzer, Progresso soup, Air Wick air freshener and White Rain shampoo.

Many things I usually buy are not on sale, including canned Alaskan red salmon and imported olive oil, sparking 100% juice and other items from Italy and Spain sold under the ShopRite name.

At the Palisades Park ShopRite on Wednesday, I bought a package of ShopRite lemon-flavored lady fingers from Italy that go great with espresso for $2.99 (six dozen).

Loose garlic was $3.99 a pound and a net bag of garlic from China was $2.99, but weighed only about 6 ounces. I bought elephant garlic for $3.49. Marked 3 ounces, it weighed twice that.


The best buy I found on extra-virgin olive oil was a three-liter tin from Greece for $15.99 (Kalamata brand). 

Three-culture breakfast

I've been trying to eat filling breakfasts since I cut down drastically on bread, which I once enjoyed three or four times a day.

On Tuesday, I plated leftover ackee and salt fish, stewed tofu in red pepper sauce from H Mart, and homemade fava-bean salad and warmed them in the microwave. Then, I fried an organic brown egg in extra-virgin olive oil, sunny side up, and slid it on top of that trio. It was  just wonderful -- even without bread.

So many fish in the sea

This week, I've been eating a lot of wild-caught fish and enjoying it immensely. I'm thinking I could be very happy on a diet of seafood and hardly touch poultry or meat.

I started off the week with the smoked wild salmon I get from Costco as the main ingredient in my breakfast sandwich, with pesto, sliced tomatoes in za'atar, Parmigiano-Reggiano shavings and fresh arugula.

When that ran out, I tweaked my canned fish salad. Last time, I combined red salmon, sardines and yellowfin tuna. This time, it's albacore tuna, Moroccan sardines from Fattal's (one tin of boneless and skinless and another in spicy oil), smoked herring from Trader Joe's and Japanese-style mackerel. This salad got lots of chopped red onion, some olive oil and teaspoons of powdered cumin, and it's great stuffed into pita halves with organic salad greens and fresh arugula and basil.

Dinner on Tuesday night were those New Zealand Greenshell Mussels with sun-dried tomatoes and pesto (see post, "Here's a natural for dinner"). Last night, I had a fillet of fresh wild halibut from Costco ($10.99 a pound), seasoned with fresh oregano and parsley, cumin and Aleppo pepper. I bought the halibut because there was no wild salmon to be had that day.

Tonight, I'll have leftover mussels and halibut and two freshly baked whiting I picked up today at H Mart in Little Ferry ($2.99 a pound). I'll also have a chunk or two of Korean-style Alaskan pollack ($5.99), stewed in a sweet and spicy sauce with carrots and hot and sweet peppers that I found in the long refrigerated case of side dishes, or panchan.