The North Jersey 'ethnic-food run' is alive and well

The takeout counter at Pollos El Chevere, where the menu of Peruvian specialties goes far beyond its signature rotisserie chicken.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss some of the great ethnic food available in North Jersey, and shop with a coupon booklet from H Mart, a Korean supermarket chain. The H Mart in Englewood was closed in 2018.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

North Jersey's increasing diversity pays big dividends: Great ethnic food at nearly every turn.

I often did my "ethnic-food runs" on Saturdays, starting in the city of Passaic with a snack of tacos, stopping in Paterson for a takeout soul-food dinner, and ending with food shopping and a meal in South Paterson's Middle Eastern bazaar.

The soul-food restaurant closed, and three and a half years ago, I stopped eating meat. But I can still do a food run.

Last Saturday, my wife wanted to shop some of Passaic's cheap clothing stores.

That set up a visit to Pollos El Chevere, an inexpensive Japanese-Peruvian-owned restaurant that is one of the nicest and cleanest in that poor city.

We ordered takeout for the meat eaters in the family:

Pollo Entero Solo, a whole rotisserie chicken with a side of white rice, french fries, green or sweet plantains or yuca ($10); an order of Tostones or fried green plantains ($2.75); and two Empanadas with ground meat and boiled egg ($2.50 each).

We also ordered an extra container of a pale green, spicy chili-cheese sauce ($3) that can be poured over the chicken, green plantains or just about anything else.

Plenty of seafood

I fondly recall meals at Pollos El Chevere, especially enjoying my favorite dish, Ceviche de Pescado ($12), a Japanese-Peruvian twist on sashimi, served with  sweet potato and popped corn kernels.

Another great dish is called Tallerin Verde, a green or pesto-like pasta dish available with shrimp, fish or steak ($12.50 to $14).

The menu also offers many seafood dishes, including stews, fried fillets and steamed fish.

Pollos El Chevere, 228 Washington Place, Passaic; 1-973-249-6330. 

Web site: www.cheverechicken.com

Al-Shark Moroccan Sardines in tomato sauce or spicy oil are still only 99 cents a can in the grocery section of Fattal's Bakery in Paterson. We use them in pasta sauce and salads.

Corrado's

Our next stop was Corrado's Family Affair, a big, ethnic supermarket on the Clifton-Paterson border where I used to go for salted cod from Canada in 1-pound plastic bags.

After two earlier visits to Corrado's, only to find they were out of those bags of salted cod, I called ahead and was told by a fish counter worker the cod had finally come in.

But what the employee called cod turned out to be salted Alaskan pollock, a cheaper substitute I buy at Costco Wholesale, and I left empty handed.

We drove less than a mile to Fattal's Bakery on Main Street in Paterson, where I picked up 21 cans of Al-Shark Moroccan Sardines in tomato sauce or spicy oil (99 cents each).

Aleppo Restaurant offers a great Syrian meal in a pleasant setting, above and below, free of the annoying hookah smoke so prevalent in other restaurants in South Paterson or over the border in Clifton.

If you like spicy food, Aleppo Restaurant's Muhammara is a must.

Aleppo Restaurant

We finished our "ethnic-food run" with another great meal of soup, salad, fish and kebabs at Aleppo Restaurant in Paterson.

See a previous post: 

My heart goes out to the city of Aleppo, Syria 

Details

Aleppo Restaurant, 939 Main St., Paterson; 1-973-977-2244.

Fattal's Bakery, 975-77 Main St., Paterson; 1-973-742-7125.

Corrado's Family Affair, 1578 Main Ave., Clifton; 1-973-340-0628.

One of the coupons in a book sent to some H Mart shoppers offers 20% off on big seedless watermelons, but that's just $2 off the price of $9.99.

The best coupon for me gave a $1 discount on 2 pounds of wild mussels harvested in Massachusetts just a week before I bought them. The discounted price was $1.99.

Whole whiting, here swimming in a sake-organic diced tomato sauce, were $3.99 a pound. There is no coupon for fresh fish.

H Mart 'savings'

H Mart has sent a "summer savings" coupon booklet to holders of the Korean supermarket chain's Smart Card, which gives a 1% rebate on purchases of $1,000.

On Wednesday, at the Englewood H Mart, I used coupons to get 20% off the price of green peppers ($1.59 a pound), and to buy 2 pounds of wild mussels for only $1.99.

I steamed opened the mussels in a little inexpensive sake, and they were deliciously tender and grit-free.

Non-coupon items I bought included a box of 20 intensely sweet Champagne or Ataulfo Mangoes for $8.99, a dollar less than before.

The store was having an even better special -- 2 boxes or 40 mangoes for $14.99. The regular price is $15.99 a box.

Jinga's Cheese Kimbap -- a seaweed, rice and vegetable roll -- were half price after 4 p.m. or just $2.49.

Fresh collard greens were 99 cents a pound.

H Mart has other stores in Fort Lee, Ridgefield and Little Ferry.  Coupons are good through July 14, 2013.

See its Web site: 

http://www.hmart.com/

More wonderful things to eat from stores in northern New Jersey

Manchego 100% sheep's milk cheese at Costco Wholesale is aged twice as long, but costs much less per pound than the version sold at Whole Foods Market.

Colavita Whole Wheat Capellini with langostino in vodka sauce.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Costco Wholesale in Hackensack sells more than 50 cheeses, but the 100% sheep's milk cheese from Spain has a special place in my heart.

I first enjoyed the rich, distinctive taste of manchego as part of a dessert in the 1970s after a meal of rabo de toro -- tail of the bull -- in a Madrid restaurant. 

I had spent the late afternoon watching bullfights in Madrid's famous ring, Las Ventas.

The dessert is Manchego y Membrillo -- sheep's milk cheese and quince paste -- recommended by author James Michener in "Iberia."

In the 1980s, on another trip to Spain, I brought home a 2.2 kilogram wheel of Manchego, hidden in my luggage.

I stopped going to bullfights decades ago, and no longer eat meat.

But I can still enjoy manchego from Costco Wholesale, and now pair it with fig marmalade from Lebanon, just one of the many Middle Eastern products sold at Fattal's Bakery, 975-77 Main St., Paterson.

Salloum Bros. Fig Marmalade is accented with anise.

Slices of manchego and a big spoonful of fig marmalade go wonderfully with the unsalted almonds I buy at Costco and roast at home.

Or you can pair the cheese with crisp apple slices or slice it thinly for use in an open-face omelet or with eggs sunny side up.

Earthbound Farm's Organic Half & Half is a great way to end a meal.

Our dinner one night this week was thawed, fully cooked langostino, Colavita Whole Wheat Capellini and bottled Paesana Vodka Sauce, plus a salad of Earthbound Farm Organic Half & Half (Baby Spinach and Spring Mix).

Langostino tails, from a crustacean that falls somewhere between shrimp and lobster, are sold frozen.

I didn't use a recipe. I just assembled the meal:

First, I heated up the sauce, adding some red-pepper flakes and several ounces of extra-virgin olive oil.

Second, I cooked the capellini until it was al dente in just enough unsalted water to cover the pasta. 

The 3-minute cooking time on the Colavita package is optimistic.

Then, I drained the cooked pasta and transferred it and the thawed langostino tails to the sauce, mixing them well over low heat.

The wild-caught, preservative-free langostino, vodka sauce and salad mix are from Costco. The whole wheat pasta came from Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood.

Baskets full of merchandise left behind by spoiled Costco customers who change their minds, but who are too lazy to return the items to where they found them.

Part of a mural at Trader Joe's Chelsea store in Manhattan.

As much as I like Colavita's imported whole-wheat pasta, the whole-wheat pasta from Trader Joe's has several advantages.

Trader Joe's pasta is made from organic durum whole wheat, it contains no sodium, it has more fiber and it costs 10 cents less for a 16-ounce package.

Today, at the Paramus Trader Joe's, I compared the nutrition labels of whole-wheat pasta and Trader Joe's Italian pasta made from durum semolina.

The major difference is more than twice as much fiber in the whole-wheat product.

Two ounces of whole-wheat spaghetti, bottom label, has 5 grams of dietary fiber.

I also stopped at Fairway Market in Paramus, but didn't buy anything beyond what I went for: 3 pounds of coffee from Colombia and the Dominican Republic for $6.99 or $7.99 a pound.

With small pieces of baguette, I sampled a few of the expensive extra-virgin olive oils the store sells.

I saw fresh wild king salmon for $15.99 a pound, compared to $12.99 a pound at Costco.

A Manchego cheese aged for 15 months was $18 a pound, compared to Costco's 6-month Manchego for $8.29 a pound.

Some of the cheeses are so expensive, signs give the price for one-quarter pound, not a full pound, as in most other stores.  

I saw Sunset-brand Campari Tomatoes in a 1-pound package for a high $3.89. 

The store did have 3 packages of grape tomatoes for $5, but many of them contained crushed tomatoes and I passed. 

Jerry's takeout container is marked "MICROWAVABLE SAFE."

We continue to enjoy restaurant-quality Meals To Go from Jerry's in Englewood, but never heat them up in the plastic Anchor-brand takeout container.

I usually get the multi-course meals on Wednesdays after 4 p.m., when they are marked down to $5.99 from $7.99.

As we've done for many years, we plate the food before heating it up in the microwave to avoid a potential transfer of chemicals from the plastic container.

A red-snapper dinner from Jerry's was heated up on a plate, never in the plastic container.

A Syrian lunch brings back warm memories

A spicy dip of sweet and hot peppers at Aleppo Restaurant in Paterson.

The Arabic Salad is dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and mint.

We stopped for a tasty lunch of dips, salad and fried fish at my favorite South Paterson restaurant before heading over to see the Great Falls, now part of the National Park system.

Aleppo Restaurant, at Main and Thomas streets, was quiet before the start of Ramadan on Thursday night.

We ordered muhammara, a spicy dip made from sweet red peppers and crushed hot Aleppo pepper ($4); arayes, meat-filled, grilled pocket bread ($6); hummus with tahini ($4), and a large chopped Arabic salad dressed with olive oil, lemon juice and mint ($8).

Four of us also shared an entree of beautifully fried, meaty whiting fillets with fluffy white rice ($10). 

 

My son's favorite dish is grilled pocket bread stuffed with seasoned meat.

Two meaty whiting fillets came with fluffy white rice.

As I was cutting into the fried fish, I was flooded with memories of my Syrian-born mother's Sephardic Jewish kitchen in Brooklyn, where she fried fish for lunch on Friday afternoons. 

Occasionally, she would ask me to go to the fish market on Kings Highway, a few blocks from our home, and bring back fresh flounder or sole fillets, which were wrapped in white paper and placed in a brown paper bag.

One of my strongest food-shopping memories is going with my mother to buy chicken at a live-poultry market on McDonald Avenue, but I didn't like the strong smell and never returned.

Our Friday night dinner always included a whole chicken with potatoes, a platter of white rice and a bowl of sour sauce with small meatballs, which were eaten over the rice.

Aleppo Restaurant's creamy hummus is made with plenty of tahini.

The meal starts with fresh, chewy pocket bread, pickles and hot peppers.

At our lunch on Thursday, I broke my no-bread diet to scoop up hummus and muhammara with thin, chewy pocket bread, even to wrap and eat a pickle or two.

I finished the meal with a cup of thick, medium-sweet Turkish coffee (939 Main St., Paterson; 973-977-2244).

Don't forget Fattal's

I don't leave South Paterson without visiting Fattal's Bakery on Main Street.

You'll find string cheese at Fattal's, bottom. I recall seeing my mother braiding fresh cheese near the stove in our Brooklyn kitchen after she softened it in hot water. 

Fattal's Bakery is about 2 blocks away from Aleppo Restaurant, and it has its own parking lot, so we drove over for cans of Moroccan sardines and a pack of crushed Aleppo pepper (975-77 Main St., Paterson; 973-742-7125). 

Fattal's also has a butcher, spices by the pound, a pastry counter and a small lunch area.

Aleppo pepper is $6.99 a pound. 

Al Shark sardines still are 99 cents a can.

Does size matter?

Both of these bottles of extra-virgin olive oil at ShopRite are marked 1 liter.

 On Wednesday, I went to the Englewood ShopRite for more Summer Can Can Sale items, including 1-liter bottles of ShopRite extra-virgin olive oil from Italy for $4.99 each and Classico Roasted Garlic Pasta Sauce at two bottles for $4.

I also picked up two pints of Jersey Blueberries for $4 after seeing them for $3.49 a pint earlier in the day at the Paramus ShopRite. 

$5.99 takeout dinner

Red snapper with pasta, vegetables and stuffed mushroom.

I've been pleasantly surprised when stopping at Jerry's Gourmet and More in Englewood in the late afternoon on Wednesdays to find several Meals To Go -- restaurant-quality takeout dinners for $7.99.

After 4 p.m., they are marked down to $5.99. I picked up four dinners -- Red Snapper Marechiaro (2), Shrimp Fra Diavolo and Pork Loin.

You can see the size of the meaty red snapper fillet in the photo above -- about one-third of a dinner plate. Wonderful.

The woman at the register said she believes Jerry's is preparing more Meals To Go than in the past, when they would be gone by early afternoon. Bravo (410 S. Dean St., Englewood; 201-871-7108).


Seeing red

I always try to have a bottle of Arirang Cabbage Kimchi in the fridge.

Korean-style side dishes: H Mart's stewed tofu and seasoned bean sprouts, Arirang kimchi from Englewood and Italian olives, $3.99 a pound at Jerry's Gourmet & More.

Two organic eggs with Aleppo pepper and leftovers from New Zen Kitchen in Teaneck.

Scenes from Costco

The canned fish aisle at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack.

$5.99 watermelons as far as you can see.

Her oversized shopping cart runneth over.

I went to Costco Wholesale in Hackensack today for more fresh wild sockeye salmon fillets ($8.99 a pound).

I plan to prepare them with ripe peaches, and will let you know how it turns out.

I also splurged on four 6-ounce cans of Bumble Bee Fancy Lump Crab Meat from Indonesia ($14.69).

The crab meat will go into my canned-fish salad with pink salmon and yellow-fin light tuna, also from Costco, along with Dijon mustard, fresh lime juice, cumin and chopped red onion or celery.

Cereal with sugar

Jersey Blueberries over Trader Joe's Bran Flakes.

I bought a second box of Trader Joe's Raisin Bran, and looked more closely at the label ($2.79 for 20 ounces).

I was surprised to see "sugar" listed as one of the ingredients. Sugar also is used in Trader Joe's Bran Flakes cereal ($1.99 for 17.3 ounces).

At least, they aren't sweetened with high fructose corn syrup.

A welcome sight at Trader Joe's in Paramus were small sweet potatoes, which I haven't seen at Costco for several weeks.

I bought two 2-pound net bags of these North Carolina-grown beauties for $1.69 each.

Failing a crash course in Italian food

Image via Wikipedia

If you're looking for a quiet meal, Eataly isn't for you.

Editor's note: Today, I discuss a marketplace for Italian food called Eataly, our early dinner at Lupa in Manhattan, and the apparent extinction of the 99-cents can of sardines.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

I'm a dropout from Eataly -- a crash course in Italian food at Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street in Manhattan.

Chef Mario Batali and his partners stage a daily feeding frenzy in this sprawling, all-Italian marketplace, where customers are willing to eat standing up as scores of people rush past just inches away.

We spent less than 30 minutes there on Monday afternoon, but couldn't take the sensory overload or the noise. Think "mob scene" or "zoo" -- one hardly conducive to enjoying a meal.

Eataly has one proper restaurant that takes reservations, Manzo, Italian for "beef," and it has a full menu, including pasta and seafood. But it doesn't open until 5 p.m., we were told.

Fish, vegetables, a rotisserie, cold cuts and more are available elsewhere, at what looks like feeding stations, with seated and stand-up eating.

Searching for the rest rooms, I came upon one aisle lined with bags of flour, where two employees were slicing bread, and saw a flight of stairs, which led to an upstairs dining area for pizza and pasta.

In the market, a six-pack of Italian beer, Birra Moretti, was $9.80. Handmade butternut-squash ravioli were about $14 a pound. An autumn tasting menu in Manzo was more than $90. Wines by the glass are $7 to $19 each.

The Web site says Eataly has a fish market, but we didn't see it. Whole fish are served for $22 and $23, though the ones I saw in front of diners looked small. 

The original Eataly opened in Turin, Italy, in 2007. Eataly New York opened in August 2010.

Eataly, 200 Fifth Ave., New York; 212-229-2560. Open every day.

Low prices, small portions

We still wanted to "Eat Italy," so we jumped into the car and drove downtown to another Batali venture, Lupa Osteria Romana.

Lupa has been a hit since it opened in 1999, and for peak dinner times, a reservation has to be made at least a month ahead, according to a re-review in The New York Times that awarded 1 star to the Roman-style trattoria last week.

Three of us arrived at Lupa around 4:15 Monday afternoon, and were told a table was available immediately, as long as we gave it up by precisely 5:35. We agreed, and were shown to a table in the intimate -- and drafty -- rear dining room.

Lupa employs a big staff, as we learned watching a procession of people going out a rear door and into a room where servers' uniforms hang in dry cleaner bags, and returning ready for work, but every time the ill-fitting door was opened, we got a gust of cold air.

Lupa is inexpensive by Manhattan standards, but portions are small. A nice touch is a glossary of Italian food terms on the back of the menu. 

Service was good and the food was well-prepared, but the kitchen didn't seem able to keep up with orders, and our appetizers were agonizingly slow coming to the table.

Sardines, fluke, striped bass

We decided to share two antipasti -- a special of grilled sardine fillets ($14) and a Fall Vegetable Insalata ($12).

There were four wonderful sardine fillets served with blood orange and wilted greens, and the salad included fruit, greens and roasted fall vegetables, all served at room temperature.

We skipped a pasta course, because I'm watching my weight, but I did have small pieces of bread crust dipped in peppery olive oil.

For entrees, we chose wild-caught fluke with lentils and bitter greens ($19); the Market Fish, striped bass ($22); and a naturally raised half chicken that was roasted alla Diavola or Devil's Style ($19).

My two, thin fluke fillets were disappointingly small, and they were served over a bed of tiny lentils and wilted greens, with little else on the plate. I made quick work of them, then speared morsels from my wife's dinner.

Her delicious striped bass fillet was cut thickly and the skin had been crisped, but I think the waitress was mistaken describing it as wild, not farmed. I tried both a piece of the fish and fatty skin, as well as shaved fennel.

The best value was the moist half chicken, which was served with a crostini spread with chicken liver.

We drank tap water and didn't have wine or dessert, though a cheese plate served to a couple at the next table looked terrific. We spent $108.63, including a $15 tip.

Lupa Osteria Romana, 170 Thompson St., Manhattan; 212-982-5089.

Web site: Antipasti, primi, secondi

Canned sardine news

Those 99-cents little wonders -- Al Shark-brand sardines from Morocco -- disappeared from the shelves in Paterson markets for a while, but I found them again on Monday morning at Brothers Produce, 327 E. Railway Ave.

The price went up 1 cent, to $1.00. Skinless-and-boneless sardines are higher.

I bought 20 cans, half of sardines in tomato sauce and half with hot peppers.

I also was looking for yogurt drink, but Brothers only had half-gallons from Merve Ayran at $4.79 each.

At Fattal's Bakery, 975-977 Main St., the half-gallons were $4.49 and the gallon container I bought was $7.79.

I also picked by the wonderful store-made spinach-and-cheese pies at six for $8.99.

More about the fish at Costco Wholesale

Image via Wikipedia

Atlantic Ocean cod fisheries have collapsed.

Under pressure from Greenpeace, Costco Wholesale has halted sales of five wild-caught fish species that are on the environmental group's "red list" of over-fished species, including Greenland halibut, certain types of grouper and skates and rays.

I don't recall seeing any of those in the more than five years I have been shopping at Costco in Hackensack.

Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, Costco stopped selling seven other species on the Greenpeace list, including Atlantic cod, Chilean sea bass and orange roughy.

I've been buying fresh cod fillets at Costco recently, but they are from the Pacific Ocean and labeled "True Cod." 

Dipped in an egg-milk mixture, breaded and baked, this cod makes for wonderful eating. It's a meaty, flaky white fish that fills your mouth. This morning, I had a piece leftover from dinner on Tuesday topped with two fried eggs -- sunny side up.

Image via Wikipedia

Another Korean enclave

In Closter, you can get your hair cut by a Korean barber or have your nails done in a Korean salon, enjoy a lunch of Korean dumplings and cold noodles, and then have dessert and coffee at a Korean bakery.

A few blocks away from those merchants, who are in the Closter Plaza shopping center, the small downtown is filled with more food choices.

After my haircut and coffee, I stopped at a catering shop called Doorebak for a jar of homemade cabbage kimchi, stewed tofu in red-pepper sauce and the translucent Korean noodles known as japchae. 

Doorebak, 218 Closter Dock Road, Closter.

Good deal on olives

Jerry's Gourmet & More in Englewood has mixed Italian olives for $3.99 a pound, among the lowest olive prices I've seen in North Jersey. I bought a large container with green and black olives of various sizes, plus crunchy, whole garlic cloves. Delish.

Fairway Market and Whole Foods Market , both in Paramus, charge at least $7.99 a pound for olives. In Fairway, a sign posted above the open pails of olives warns shoppers about behaving badly.

Jerry's Gourmet & More, 410 S. Dean St., Englewood; 201-871-7108.

ShopRite produce prices

I found seedless red grapes from Chile for $1.29 a pound with a store card at ShopRite in Rochelle Park, but sweet peppers were $1.99 to $2.49 a pound -- compared to 99 cents a pound at Brothers Produce in the Paterson Farmers' Market.

If you go to Paterson for cheap produce, you can stop at Fattal's Bakery on Main Street for fresh-baked Syrian pocket bread, Moroccan sardines for 99 cents a can, and olives for $2.99 to $4.99 a pound.

Brothers Produce, 327 E. Railway Ave., Paterson; 973-684-4461.

Fattal's Syrian Bakery, 975-77 Main St., Paterson; 973-742-7125.