Confusing information on Australian lamb

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All lamb isn't created equal, but it is getting harder to find naturally raised meat.

I found a sales flier from Fairway Market in my newspaper today and on the front, the Paramus store offers whole Austral-American semi-boneless leg of lamb for $6.99 a pound.

I thought: This is the first time Fairway is offering Australian lamb, which traditionally is grass-fed and raised without antibiotics and growth hormones, but then I turned to the second page of the flier and read this from Ray Venezia, Fariway's master butcher:

"This [Austral-American lamb] is the finest example ... on the planet -- an Aussie breed mated with an American sheep, and the lamb born and raised here in America, in Utah. Enormously delicious, but not gamey like Aussie or Kiwi lamb."

Gee. I've eaten a lot of both Australian and New Zealand lamb in the past, because it is grass-fed and drug- and hormone-free, and never found it "gamey."

Venezia and Fairway say nothing about antibiotics and growth hormones.

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Searching the Internet, I came across a Web site that discusses Austral-American lamb and states -- contrary to what Fairway says -- the cross-bred sheep are raised in Australia "without unnecessary hormones or antibiotics."

From a Web site called Alibaba.com:

Country Meadow Austral-American Lamb is truly the next generation of lamb. By applying the best of both American and Australian lamb industries, Country Meadow Lamb sets a new standard of value. Their lambs are raised on the unspoiled pastureland of Australia, without unnecessary hormones or antibiotics. The cross of Australian and American genetics results in a lean, flavorful, all-natural product.

Costco also sells Australian lamb under its Kirkland Signature store brand, but there is no information on the packages about how the sheep are raised. 

Keep your hands off the fruit, please

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Costco shoppers are by and large a weird bunch, and watching them during my once- or twice-a-week visits to the Hackensack warehouse store isn't amusing. Why does saving money bring out such bad behavior?


Their frenetic driving in the parking lot may be familiar to you, but they're lazy, too, leaving those big shopping carts up against parked cars rather than walking the carts a few steps to keep them  out of the way.


Now, their behavior inside the store is deteriorating. Never mind that fickle shoppers will abandon their selections almost anywhere except where they found the items, including under the checkout counter, perishable food or not. Just look over the carts employees fill with rejects near the first registers.

I've also started to notice that some shoppers open packages of produce and seem intent on examining every tomato, orange, strawberry and even blueberry. True, I hate to buy produce and discover soft or moldy pieces, but the store's return policy is so generous, you can always get your money back. The other day, my wife ate two imported tangerines she bought at Costco, said they weren't sweet and asked me to return them for a refund, which I did.


To me, opening produce and touching it is taboo. I plan to speak to the store managers next time I'm there.


Good buys at Fairway Market


The sales flier from Fairway Market in Paramus is heralding "club store pricing" on 8,000 grocery items every day. Here are examples: Florida Natural orange juice (64 ounces), two for $5; Kozy Shack rice pudding (six pack or 22-ounce tub), $1.99; and Barilla pasta, 80 cents. Among specialty items, a three-liter tin of Fairway extra-virgin olive oil is $14.99.

Punch up your pasta sauce 

I don't have the time or inclination to make my own pasta sauce, especially when there are such great bottled sauces available at Fairway Market and Costco at low prices. But I do add a few things to my bottled sauce to make it really special: olive oil, dried Italian seasoning, dried garlic and crushed red pepper. 

Still, my sauce isn't complete without adding a can of anchovies, including oil (and capers, if any), and boiling it until the fish and anchovy taste disappear, leaving behind a distinctive, robust flavor. I'm not sure why, but the sauce with anchovies is not salty at all (I don't salt my pasta water, and use as little water as possible).

Last night, I added a can of anchovies to a little more than half of a 32-ounce bottle of Fairway tomato-and-basil pasta sauce ($3.49), and added about half a package of al dente fusiloni (oversize corkscrews from Italy that I buy at ShopRite). Delicious. And  I love to have crusty bread to soak up the sauce left on the plate.

Australian beef takes center stage

Tenderloin in the beef cut chart.

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There is good news for meat eaters in the ShopRite sales flier: Free-range, grass-fed filet mignon from Australia for only $4.99 a pound with the PriceClub Card. The sale starts Sunday.


You'll have to buy the whole beef tenderloin sold under the Nature's Reserve label, probably a minimum of four pounds. And when you get it home, you'll need to trim it well. The last time I bought this beef, I sliced all of it thin and put it in freezer bags with marinade for Korean barbecue at home. But you can also cut it into small steaks.


The same cut of conventionally raised American beef also is on sale at ShopRite for $6.99 a pound with the card.


ShopRite can sell foreign beef for $4.99 a pound, compared with $10 or more a pound for American, grass-fed beef, because costs are so much lower in Australia. The same goes for naturally raised Australian lamb. Why Australian beef isn't served more in American steak houses is a big question.


Free-range, grass-fed beef has less fat than beef from cattle confined to pens and fed only grain; it cooks faster and probably shouldn't be prepared past medium.

More hype from New York-based Fairway Market

Fairway Market on opening day in Paramus.(Wikipedia)

If you're not reading the Fairway Market sales flier, you are missing out on one of the slickest marketing campaigns for a supermarket in North Jersey.


Farm-raised shrimp, conventionally raised prime beef -- all of it looks terrific, and there are photos of the humans behind each department at its Paramus store with a quote or two for good measure. 

None of this can obscure the truth -- that Fairway is selling a lot of pretty ordinary food, except for Murray's drug-free chicken, wild seafood  and organic items.


There are some gems, though. 

Whole porgy and whiting for $2.99 a pound is the lowest price I've seen on these fish (the sale starts today). Organic, Fair Trade coffee at $4.99 a pound is a steal. Three pounds of herbicide-free, Campari tomatoes for $5 is another great buy.

Capt. Tony Maltese, a licensed commercial fisherman, is shown and identified as the director of seafood. 

But above his name there is a quote from R.W. Apple Jr., a reporter for The New York Times whose appetite was legendary and who roamed the world to write about food. 

What is this quote doing in the flier and who is the "we" Apple refers to? 

The quote is in bigger type than the attribution, so unless you look closely, you may think the "we" is Fairway and the person being quoted is Capt. Maltese. It's not clear. (Could Apple have covered the opening of a Fairway store in New York before he died and spoken to Maltese?)

"We pay serious attention to the fact that where a fish was caught, how a fish was caught and when it was caught is at least as important as how it is best cooked."

It gets better. Ray Venezia, Fairway's third-generation butcher, also is pictured in the flier.

"It's really very simple. We cut every piece of meat as if we were going to serve it to our own family."

That doesn't say he actually brings home the conventionally raised beef, pork and lamb Fairway sells. In fact, the store sells only American lamb, not the grass-fed, drug- and hormone-free lamb from Australia that you can find at Costco and ShopRite, generally at lower prices than American lamb.


Fairway also doesn't carry naturally raised beef from Australia.

Fairway Market, 34 E. Ridgewood Ave., Paramus; 201-444-5455. Open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

Fresh or frozen? And from where?

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The latest sales flier from Fairway Market in Paramus is filled with a lot of information -- some of it totally useless. And when the flier raises questions, it doesn't always answer them.

For example, the flier that came in the paper today offers wild-caught salmon for $9.99 a pound. However, shoppers can't tell where the fish is from and whether it is fresh or had been frozen, or even what kind of salmon it is (king, sockeye and so forth). The flier is silent on these questions.

This also is the case with the prime beef that is on sale frequently at the Paramus store (rib steak is $8.99 a pound). Prime is the highest of three USDA grades, but merely denotes the fattiest beef. There are no details in the flier on how the cattle were raised and what they were fed, so it's likely they were raised conventionally with antibiotics, growth hormones and animal byproducts while confined to feed pens.

One good buy is two pounds of Sunset-brand, herbicide-free Campari tomatoes for $4 -- about a dollar less than Costco's price for the same tomatoes. Another consistently good buy is the weekly, freshly roasted coffee selection for $4.99 a pound. The sale starts Friday.

Fairway's flier is filled with photos of the baker, butcher, cheese monger, coffee roaster, organics director and even the rabbi that certifies kosher meat. Two employees appear on the same page with their chins resting in their hands. How cute. What is the shopper to conclude? Do they stand behind the quality of the food they sell? Can you take any item back for a refund, as you can at Costco and Whole Foods Market? The flier doesn't say.

The flier trumpets: "The World's Greatest Food Store." I don't think so.