A fresh take on hand-made noodles

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Dozens of Korean restaurant line Broad Avenue in Palisades Park, above, and some are on the second floor of buildings or enclosed malls, like the one on the right.

Two Korean restaurants, Son Ja Jang and Bunsik Nara, share the same address on Broad Avenue in Palisades Park. 


I walked into the latter in error on Sunday evening, but didn't have to go back out into the rain. A waitress pointed me to a door in the back that leads to Son Ja Jang, a Korean-style Chinese restaurant known for its hand-made noodles.


The simply decorated, L-shaped dining room has only one window -- into the kitchen, and through it you can see a cook stretching and pounding the noodle dough on a counter, loud enough to be heard through a closed door.


I ordered a big bowl of spicy soup with hand-made noodles and seafood ($9.99), and started eating my side dishes, cubed radish kimchi and half-moons of Korean pickles.


Then I saw a waitress deliver two large, divided bowls to men at a table across the way. My waiter said the bowls hold hand-made noodles on one side and seafood or meat on the other, so I know what I'm going to have next time.


My soup had a beautiful, deep-red broth perfectly seasoned with red pepper, and hand-made noodles with shredded vegetables and seafood -- one large mussel, one large clam, a shrimp and several pieces of chewy squid.


This was a deeply satisfying dish and I lifted the bowl to my lips to drain every last drop of the spicy broth. Another seafood noodle soup, labeled "very hot" on the menu, is $10.99, and may be a larger portion.


The noodles were thicker than the hand-made ones at Chinese Mandarin Restaurant, but not as elastic or as chewy. (See post, My order causes a commotion.)


I dipped some of the noodles into a small portion of salty black bean paste that came with my kimchi.


A specialty at Son Ja Jang is jajangmyun -- hand-made noodles bathed in spicy black bean paste with onions and ground meat.


Son Ja Jang Restaurant, 232 Broad Ave., Palisades Park;
 201-944-7777. Look for a sign over a glass door leading
 to doctors' offices. 

Free-range, grass-fed steaks go on sale

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Boneless beef rib-eye steaks and boneless shell steaks from Australia are on sale today through Aug. 20 at ShopRite supermarkets north of Trenton.


This beef is sold under the Nature's Reserve label. It is free range and grass fed. The price is $3.99 a pound with a store card.


Grass-fed beef is not as fatty as beef raised conventionally, usually on grain. It also cooks faster and tastes best when cooked rare to medium rare.


Third Gammeeok


A new branch of Gammeeok, a Korean restaurant known for its unusual kimchi service, has opened on the second floor of a building at 110 Broad Ave. in Palisades Park (201-945-6300).


The first Gammeeok in North Jersey opened at 485 Main St. in Fort Lee (201-242-1333). The original is in Manhattan. The name is pronounced GAM-yo.


At the stylish Fort Lee restaurant, kimchi is brought to the table in what looks like a vase, and the long pieces of cabbage coated with red pepper are cut and served to customers.


The new Gammeeok offers an $11.95 lunch special of soup, fish, rice and side dishes, which I saw displayed on a table near the entrance. The space is smaller than in Fort Lee, but beautifully renovated with heavy beams of wood.


A popular dish in Fort Lee is bibimbap -- a combination of rice, vegetables and ground beef topped with a raw egg, all served in a hot stone bowl.


You add hot sauce to this comfort food and mix up the ingredients with a spoon before eating it. You can ask the restaurant to hold the beef and cook the egg.

Eating out tonight? Don't go here

You may see "scampi" on many North Jersey menus, but the real things, above, are rare.

       
In the 32 years our waitress has worked at Barcelona's Restaurant, she has served enough canned vegetables to fill an entire supermarket -- maybe two.


Fish and other seafood are frozen, and the small salad that comes with entrees  has iceberg lettuce and a couple of slices of tasteless tomato straight from the fridge.


She brings oil and vinegar, and a basket of spongy bread, as afterthoughts. What am I doing here?


A famously frugal friend said he read a favorable appraisal of the place in The Record, and wanted to try it. 


Under $10


I looked at the extensive, a la carte menu online, saw that most entrees are well under $10, and figured there was no way we would get in on a Saturday night. 


But there were plenty of empty tables in the dated interior of this 78-year-old Garfield restaurant, which allegedly serves Italian-American food. It's not clear if the waitress was born before the restaurant opened or the other way around.


The reviewer said the restaurant serves big portions of "traditional southern Italian cooking" at startlingly low prices, adding the food was "nicely done," but after I had dinner there Friday night, those statements don't ring true.


Then, I remembered the reviewer was a man of gargantuan proportions who never met a morsel of food he didn't like.


No lies


The food served at Barcelona's is a cruel joke on southern Italian cooking --  which prizes fresh seafood and vegetables -- and doesn't even come close to the Italian-American dishes served at so many other places in North Jersey.


I asked the waitress about the filet of sole "with potato and string beans" for $8.75.


"It's frozen and deep fried," she said. "I'm not going to lie." She also turned thumbs down on the frozen scallops, and told me to have the "shrimp scampi" for $8.50.


The string beans are from a can, she said, and other veggies, available for $1 more, are canned peas with sliced carrots. Broccoli rabe, escarole sauteed with oil and garlic? Forgetaboutit. 


I ordered the "scampi," which bear no resemblance to real scampi -- Dublin Bay prawns with narrow bodies and small pincer claws similar to lobster, like the ones I had in Venice last September.


My friend chose a rib steak and pasta for $8.50, and both of us asked for a cup of escarole-and-bean soup from the list of specials ($3.25). 


I got eight small, soggy shrimp swimming in a puddle of sauce, and two plates of lifeless vegetables. The soup, which came in a small crock, was the best thing we had.


We turned down an offer of dessert.


This is cheap?


And it turned out not to be cheap. I gave my friend $19 for my lousy shrimp, extra veggies, soup and club soda, plus tip and tax. I can think of a lot of Italian-American restaurants where the same amount would have bought me a really decent meal.


The restaurant is in a drab, working-class residential neighborhood, and it's facade is not even real stone. Awaiting me inside was one of the worst meals I have ever had.


There's an American flag painted on the wall out front and many patriotic signs inside and out -- all suggesting the food is not that far above Army chow.


Barcelona's Restaurant, 38 Harrison Ave., Garfield;
973-778-4930. Cash only, street parking.


Web site: Certainly not worth the detour

It's a great time to eat your veggies

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My outdoor, charcoal grill has been gathering dust since I stopped eating meat more than 18 months ago, but I haven't missed a beat by grilling vegetables on an indoor, stove-top grill to go with pasta and seafood meals.


I'm also using a small food processor to puree vegetables, including cucumbers from my garden, into a cold soup.


This afternoon, I grilled a few onions and a nice bunch of Asian greens on the grill with extra-virgin olive oil, salt and some red-pepper flakes, and stored them in the refrigerator for dinner.


They joined grilled Japanese eggplant, small sweet-potato slices, squash, plumb tomato and thin-sliced organic carrot.


My All-Clad grill covers two burners on my stove and its ridges leave nice grill marks on the vegetables. It's also perfect for prawns or shrimp. I use cooking spray and turn both gas flames to "Medium" or "Medium Low."


In the past, I've used the grill to cook thin slices of marinated, free-range  beef from Australia; garlic cloves and onion for Korean barbecue meals at home. 


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The greens I grilled today have thick stalks and leafy, slightly bitter leaves -- similar to Chinese broccoli. They turned bright green, and I removed them after about 10 minutes.


Grilled eggplant and sliced potatoes turn creamy inside their skins, and the stalks of the greens keep their crunch.


For a cold soup today, I cut up skinned cucumber, two small tomatoes, watermelon and some onion, processed them and poured the liquid into a small bowl.


Recalling a TV cooking segment I had seen at the gym, I added a little extra-virgin olive oil, wine vinegar and salt, stirred it up, and garnished it with more chopped cucumber.


After I had the soup, I plated grilled squash and potato slices and heated them up in the microwave while I prepared a simple egg-white omelet, drinking iced tea flavored with lemon and garden mint.


Tonight, I'll plate more grilled vegetables to accompany leftover whole-wheat pasta in a red sauce filled with salted fish and cabbage. (See A robust pasta sauce without meat, Aug. 3, 2011.)

What makes Greek yogurt so pricey?

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You have to dig deep for some Greek-style yogurts.

Greek-style yogurt is strained to make it thicker, but what makes it so expensive?

Fage, Oikos and Chobani are not only hard to pronounce, their inflated prices are hard to stomach.

At ShopRite supermarkets, a 32-ounce container of Chobani Greek-style yogurt is $5.99. Trader Joe's own brand of non-fat Greek yogurt is $4.99 for 32 ounces and $2.99 for 16 ounces. 

They're made here, not in Greece.

Now, Costco Wholesale in Hackensack has brought the price of Greek-style yogurt down to earth -- $6.49 for two 32-ounce containers of Kirkland Signature non-fat yogurt (about $3.25 each).

I tried a free sample with honey before I made the purchase and could not believe this thick, mouth-filling yogurt has no fat.

Up and down prices

Also at Costco, Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix is up to $4.99 for 16 ounces, but those incredible, small, round Campari tomatoes  are down to $4.49 for a 2-pound package.

Fairway Market in Paramus sells two 1-pound packages of these same Sunset-brand Campari tomatoes for $5, but their taste doesn't compare to the ones from Costco.

On Tuesday, I bought a large seedless watermelon at Costco for $4.99, the lowest price so far this season. 

Today, ShopRite put seedless watermelons on sale for $3.99, a $2 discount.

Not recommended

I drove to Trader Joe's in Paramus this morning to check Greek yogurt prices and pick up a few pounds of its imported Organic Whole Wheat Spaghetti ($1.39 for 16 ounces).

As good as that product is, I was disappointed with a can of Wild Pink Shrimp that I tried for the first time ($1.99 for 4 ounces).

The label says, "Crisp, tiny Oregon shrimp."

They are tiny -- about the size of the nail on my smallest finger -- but I found them far from "crisp" when I ate them over a big salad. "Mealy" is more like it.

Yuck.

In mall capital of Paramus, IKEA's four-letter days spell 'free food'

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IKEA offers a real alternative to fast food.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

The restaurant-cafe in the IKEA store in Paramus has always been known for good food at reasonable prices. 

Now, the store is offering a free breakfast on Mondays and free meals for kids on Tuesdays, plus a lower price for its traditional Swedish meatballs. 

As you'd expect, a line of about 15 to 20 people formed not long after 9:30 a.m. opening today. 

There were young, old, white, black, Hispanic and Asian customers, some with kids in tow -- reflecting the demographics of North Jersey.

The free breakfast -- usually 99 cents -- includes scrambled eggs, potatoes and bacon or sausage, as well as unlimited coffee, and it's served until 11 a.m.

I got two ice-cream scoops of eggs and a large metal spoon's worth of potatoes, but I asked the counter guy to hold the meat.

A dish of organic pasta with sauce -- normally $1.99 -- is 99 cents on Mondays after 11 a.m.

On Tuesdays, kids can get any of three combination meals for free -- meatballs, chicken tenders or mac and cheese -- including a drink. Normally, they are $2.49. 

In Paramus, free meals for kids are available every day through Aug. 21, according to the Web site.

A hot dog and soda in the Bistro is $1 on Fridays -- a price cut of 50 cents. 

Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes, cream sauce and ligonberries are now $2.99, compared to $3.29 last year.

For $4.99, you can get cold-smoked and marinated salmon with lime-accented vegetables, and 69 cents buys coffee and a Swedish coffee roll.

You're expected to clear your own table, but the dining room is a pleasant space, flooded with natural light from a 15-foot-high glass wall.

The IKEA in Elizabeth has an outdoor dining space opposite the runaways of Newark Liberty International Airport.

On Aug. 19, I won't miss the all-you-can-eat Crayfish Party at the Paramus store, starting at 6 p.m.

Crayfish, cheese, shrimp, boiled potatoes and other items will be $9.99 a person, $2.49 for kids. Advance tickets are recommended.

An employee on the breakfast line this morning said the free breakfast is designed to lure customers into the store on the slowest day of the week.

But you can also see it as IKEA trying to make amends for driving customers crazy with all the furniture that requires assembly.


IKEA Food, 100 IKEA Drive, Paramus; 201-843-1881.

Restaurant-cafe hours: 9:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.
Mondays-Thursdays; 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Fridays-Saturdays. Closed Sundays.