Pizzeria is displacing Vietnamese restaurant

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Fort Lee street scene in 1951.

Mo' Pho in Fort Lee was the second Vietnamese restaurant from Chef K.T. Tran, specializing in the anise-flavored soup called pho.


But the restaurant at 212 Main St. has closed, and the facade is being renovated by the owner of a pizzeria and restaurant.


I described a bowl of pho this way:


"When Joe the waiter set down my bowl of pho with shrimp, I leaned close to the anise-scented beef broth and breathed deeply. Wonderful. You'd be hard put to find a soup that matches the aroma of this one." 


An Italian-American restaurant replacing a Vietnamese one is counter to the trend in Fort Lee, where Korean restaurants have proliferated in recent years.


Several blocks down Main Street, the facade of So Kong Dong also is being renovated, but the Korean soft-tofu restaurant remains open for business.


Side dishes galore 


On the way to a Suzanne Vega concert on Thursday at Bergen Community College in Paramus, we stopped for a soft-tofu stew dinner at Pine Hill Restaurant.


I continue to be impressed by how many free side dishes this Korean restaurant serves, while others have cut back noticeably.


After we ordered seafood soft-tofu stews ($10.45 each), the waitresses set down 10 small dishes on the table between me and my wife.


Our side dishes included fish cake, stewed tofu, kimchi, bean sprouts, iceberg-lettuce salad, yams in sweet syrup, steamed greens and half of a broiled small fish.


Unlike Korean restaurants specializing in soft tofu, Pine Hill serves a stone-bowl egg souffle, instead of a fresh egg to cook in the soup. 


And the waitress brought us a bowl of nutty brown rice, instead of usual steamed white rice, plus a second dish of cabbage kimchi when we asked for them.

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

A better deal on drug-free cold cuts

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The Starbucks in Edgewater is the only one I know with outdoor seating.

We stopped at the Trader Joe's in Edgewater to pick up Applegate Farms cold cuts, which come from animals that are raised without antibiotics, and a few other items.


Sliced roast beef and sliced turkey were $3.99 for 7 ounces, and sliced ham was $3.79. That works out to about $8 to $10 a pound, compared to about $13 to $18 a pound for the same cold cuts at ShopRite in Englewood.


The cold cuts, called Applegate Naturals, are not preserved with nitrites or nitrates.


We also picked up Trader Joe's bacon, which contains no antibiotics, growth hormones or nitrites ($3.99 for 12 ounces); uncured, antibiotic-free hot dogs ($4.29 for 16 ounces); sliced yogurt cheese with jalapeno pepper ($4.79 for 12 ounces) and organic whole-wheat spaghetti ($1.39).


We had driven to a parking lot near The Crab House in Edgewater to walk along the Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, parts of which are marred by barges sunken in mud, old pier pilings and a stench from stagnant water.


The smell was so strong my wife kept on urging me to turn back, but we eventually found a nice spot in front of some condominiums, with a view down river of Jersey City.


In the Edgewater Commons shopping center on River Road, we found a Starbucks with outdoor seating, albeit with a view of the parking lot.


As I sipped my dark-roast coffee of the day, I watched two men play backgammon and listened to several foreign languages being spoken by people at nearby tables.

Looking for healthy food in the hospital

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Although you can't stop the destruction of the giant bluefin tuna, you can refuse to buy
 any at Mitsuwa, the Japanese supermarket in Edgewater, and at Japanese restaurants.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss my search for healthy food in a hospital cafeteria, urge you to boycott a Japanese supermarket's bluefin tuna festival, note higher prices at Costco Wholesale and offer a recipe for a mayo-less canned fish salad.

Sliced strawberries nestled in whipped cream? For breakfast?


I stared at the tray on the fruit-salad bar in the cafeteria of Englewood Hospital and Medical Center, and wondered what hospital administrators are thinking.


In September, I had tests and then open-heart surgery at the hospital, and was served a series of healthy but awful meals during my recovery: no salt, no sugar, no caffeine and no taste.


Since I started cardiac rehab a few weeks ago, I had walked past the cafeteria on the first floor without going in, so on Friday, I walked through and did the same on Monday morning.


The cafeteria is open to the public as well as to the staff, including doctors and nurses, but the chances of finding healthy food are slim. 


On Friday, just after 9 a.m., the first salad bar I came to had only a few shrink-wrapped platters of pale, farmed salmon with vegetables or salad, but on Monday, the same bar was empty.


To the right, there were bananas and two other kinds of whole fruit, plus buttered rolls, big Jersey bagels, pastries, muffins, sugar buns, cookies and pound cake. 


The Boar's Head Sandwich Bar was self-service, but you can be sure the only cold cuts served there are from animals raised with antibiotics and growth hormones, and cured with preservatives.


A grill offered an "all-natural" hot dog without nitrites for $2.66. The hamburger and cheeseburger are a mystery, however.


A steam table offered two or three kinds of hot cereal and scrambled eggs, plus greasy mystery bacon, sausage and corned-beef hash.


At the fruit-salad bar, fruit salad was 50 cents an ounce -- or $8 a pound. I guess the sliced strawberries and whipped cream cost the same.


I'm on a no-bread diet, so if I wanted to have breakfast there, I would have to satisfy myself with coffee or tea and fruit salad or maybe some eggs without anything else.


Tuna-boycott time


It's time to boycott the Giant Bluefin Tuna Festival on Nov. 19-20 at Mitsuwa Marketplace in Edgewater.


Please stay away from the Japanese supermarket's three "cutting performances," in which beheaded fish weighing hundreds of pounds are reduced to sushi and sashimi by a small army of workers.


The magnificent giant bluefin tuna is an endangered species, but the Japanese have a voracious appetite for the fish, despite its extremely high mercury content. 


In 2009, Mitsuwa sold sashimi from the belly of the fish for $60 a pound. 


Women of child-bearing age and children should not consume any blue-fin tuna.


Higher Costco prices


In looking over my wife's receipt on Monday from Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, I noticed a couple of price increases.


Two pounds of Jarlsberg sliced, reduced-fat Swiss Cheese are now $9.49, compared to $8.99.


Two large containers of Greek Yogurt are now $6.99, and 1 pound of Earthbound Farm Organic Spring Mix is $4.89.


The Roma plum tomatoes are from Euro Fresh Farms, but they are grown in the United States and pesticide free ($4.99 for 2 pounds).


Canned-fish salad


I chopped up red onion and sweet yellow pepper, opened up two cans of pink salmon, two cans of Moroccan sardines and a can of light, yellowfin tuna.


Everything, including the liquid from the cans, went into a plastic container, and I mixed it all up.


Then I added lots of Dijon mustard, ground cumin and fresh lemon juice to taste, but no mayonnaise. 


A big mound of the canned fish salad made a nice breakfast over red-leaf lettuce dressed in extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar, with olives on the side. 

Let's toast good food and good friends

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Lotus Cafe offers price-fixed, multi-course meals for four to 10 people.

I continued my birthday celebration on Saturday night by hosting an eight-course meal for family and friends at Lotus Cafe, the popular BYO Chinese restaurant in Hackensack.


We began by popping the cork on a bottle of pleasantly sweet Italian spumante wine and toasting good food and good friends.


I ordered our meal for six from the restaurant's price-fixed dinner and banquet menu. 


Eight courses -- from soup to sticky rice -- worked out to just under $23 a person, including tax and a 20% tip.


We started with bowls of tasty Seafood and Tofu Chowder, which had the consistency of egg-drop soup.


The next course was to be Three Cup Chicken Casserole, but I asked to substitute Shrimp Soong with Pine Nuts, which is served in a lettuce leaf that you roll up like a Chinese taco. I added hot chili paste to mine.


I skipped two of the following courses -- Crispy Aromatique Duck and Beef with Chili Pepper and Mustard Green.


But I loved a fresh-tasting Fillet of Sole with Yellow Chive and South Pacific Prawns, a pepper-and-salty preparation served on a bed of chopped lettuce, garlic and hot peppers that I added to my bowl of brown rice.


Our vegetable was crunchy Stir-Fried Chinese Broccoli with Garlic, and instead of the usual ice cream or fruit platter, we received a hot dessert of sweet sticky rice glistening with corn syrup. 


After we finished the spumante, we drank fragrant tea. Want a refill of your  tea pot? Leave the cover open -- a universal sign in a Chinese restaurant.


Lotus Cafe, 450 Hackensack Ave., Hackensack, 
in the Home Depot Shopping Center, 201-488-7070.
BYO, reservations necessary on weekends.


Web Site: http://lotuscafenj.com/

Four women and three bottles of wine

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Squid-ink pasta at a restaurant in Venice, Italy.

I was celebrating my birthday on Friday night at Sanducci's Trattoria with one of my favorite dishes -- black pasta with lobster -- when four women were shown to the next table.


I had an open bottle of chianti I had brought from home, enough for a glass of wine for me, my wife and my mother-in-law. The women had three bottles of wine.


My eyes widened. With about six glasses of wine in each bottle, the four women could divide a total of 18 glasses. I wondered if one of them was the designated driver.


Did they start drinking before they arrived? One woman carefully cut her mozzarella-and-tomato appetizer into four sections before she started to eat.


Sanducci's opened a year ago in a new location in River Edge, and I really enjoy the food, but the kitchen can't handle orders when the popular restaurant is close to being full, as it was Friday. 


I ordered my black pasta in a red sauce, instead of a vodka sauce with cream, and the chunks of lobster were cooked beautifully ($18.95). I sprinkled a little grated cheese on the dish -- something I'm told Italians never do with seafood pasta.


My wife had angel hair pasta with crab and fresh artichokes ($15.95), and my mother-in-law ordered chicken parmigiana, which came with spaghetti ($14.95). Both took home plenty of food.


We started with a crisp, delicious Caesar's salad for three, with just enough croutons ($15.95).


If there is something foreign in her dish, my wife will find it. At Sanducci's, she found a tiny piece of steel wool in her pasta, and we told the waiter. 


Lisa, one of the owners, came over and explained pots are cleaned with steel wool and sometimes, minute pieces get caught in rivets and end up in the food. She offered to make my wife another pasta dish.


My wife declined, but the restaurant didn't charge me for the espresso that ended my meal.


Sanducci's is set up oddly, with dining rooms on two levels. You have to drive down a slope into the rear parking lot, then take an elevator to the second level, but walk down a flight of steps to reach the hostess on the first level.


We didn't like the table we were shown on the first level, so we asked to be seated upstairs. We were hungry when we arrived, but there was a wait for the salad and another wait of about 10 minutes between salad and entrees.


If Sanducci's bakes its own bread, it's a failure. I broke my diet for a couple of crusts dipped in olive oil, but it wasn't worth it. And the tomato focaccia that comes with the bread is tasteless.


This morning, I thought of the four women with the three bottles of wine when I read about a study that links even moderate consumption of alcohol to a higher risk of breast cancer.


However, if I was a woman, I would not give up a glass or two of wine with dinner a few times a week.


Sanducci's Trattoria, 620 Kinderkamack Road, 
River Edge; 201-599-0600. BYO.

From pristine sushi to homey tacos

Image by Emily Barney via Flickr

Mole is a classic Mexican sauce made with dark chocolate and chilies.

After 16 years of serving pristine seafood in a jewel-box setting in Englewood, restaurateur Charles Hamade is moving his Japanese restaurant to Cliffside Park.


Wild Nigiri on Palisade Avenue -- known for many years as Wild Ginger -- has closed.


In its place, Hamade had the soft opening today of Papa Mole, a Mexican restaurant where, he said, a trio of tacos cost $7 and entrees top out at $16 or $17.


Later this month, he plans to open Bushido in Cliffside Park, a restaurant with a liquor license, which he has never had in Englewood.

Papa Mole, 6 E. Palisade Ave., Englewood; 

201-567-2660. BYO, no reservations accepted.