Comparing sale prices at the H Marts in Englewood and Little Ferry

I picked up more than 2 pounds of mustard greens, above, and a Kabocha squash, both on sale for 88 cents a pound, at the H Mart in Englewood, but the same store was selling a 15-pound bag of Kokuho Yellow Label White Rice for $2 more than the H Mart in Little Ferry.

This breakfast includes organic brown eggs, organic quinoa and organic fresh salsa, all from Costco Wholesale. Why can't I find a mostly organic breakfast at my local diner?

Editor's note: I continue to be puzzled by varying sale prices at H Marts in Bergen County, and wonder whether I have to start to bring organic food and other items I like to restaurants that don't offer them.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

On the way home from an errand in Cresskill on Saturday, it only made sense to stop at the H Mart in Englewood for fresh greens, produce and a few free food samples.

This Korean supermarket is part of the Hanahreum Group, but you wouldn't know it when you compare it to the larger H Mart in Little Ferry. 

For example, you might find a 5-pound box of Bagu Clementines from Spain on sale for $5.99 at both stores.

Yet, the Englewood H Mart will claim you saved $3 while the Little Ferry store puts your discount at $2.

A 15-pound bag of Kokuho Yellow Label, a white rice grown in California, was on sale for $14.88 in Englewood on Saturday and for $12.88 in Little Ferry on Sunday.

The parking lot at the Little Ferry H Mart on Sunday.

Spinach, red snapper

The Little Ferry store is much larger, but shabbier and sorely in need of a makeover, and employees keep their coats on in the seemingly unheated space.

On Sunday, I saw a few large potholes in the parking lot and a large, frozen pond that blocked access to half of the lot.

The Englewood store, which was renovated a couple of years ago, has a food counter where you can have lunch or buy prepared Korean food to take home.

Little Ferry had a dingy lunchroom, but it is now closed.

Still, Little Ferry offers more free food samples on weekends, and on Sunday, I sampled sushi made with cooked snow crab, broiled eel, seafood dumplings, fresh fruit and sauteed mushrooms.

In addition to the bag of Kokuho rice for $12.88 and clementines for $5.99, I bought two bushels of fresh spinach, on sale for 99 cents instead of $1.49 each.

At the fish counter in Little Ferry, I bought two large, wild-caught red snappers nestled in ice, and had them cut into steaks, including the head and tail ($6.99 a pound).

For dinner, I stir-fried the spinach and prepared the fish with organic diced tomatoes, red wine and fresh lime juice.

Web site: H Mart

Natural sugar oozing from large sweet potatoes I bought at Costco Wholesale and baked at home.

Plenty of restaurants offer baked potatoes, but finding sweet potatoes on the menu is rare.

Even rarer at diners and restaurants are mashed sweet potatoes with garlic, extra-virgin olive oil, salt and other seasoning, including curry powder and cinnamon. Here, I boiled 3 pounds of small sweet potatoes from ShopRite ($2.99) and about a pound of peeled California cloves from Costco.

I've switched to organic whole-wheat pasta instead of the conventional type, and buy imported whole-wheat linguine, spaghetti, capellini, spirals and other shapes from ShopRite, Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's for $1.49 a pound or less. But the only whole-wheat pasta I've been able to find at restaurants is penne. Do I have to bring my own? Above, organic whole-wheat linguine with sardines and anchovies in a cream-free vodka sauce.

Spicy fried chicken comes at a high price

A takeout order of 10 Wings of Fire from BBQ Chicken & Beer.

The storefront on busy Anderson Avenue in Cliffside Park.

Editor's note: Korean food usually is of great value, because of the rice and side dishes included in the price. But that's not the case with takeout fried chicken.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

BBQ Chicken & Beer in Cliffside Park is another place we stopped patronizing after I gave up poultry and meat.

The Korean fried chicken restaurant was a favorite of my teenage son, who dares chefs to make his food as spicy as possible.

On Saturday night, we had soft-tofu stew in Palisades Park, then drove to Cliffside for a takeout order of Wings of Fire, prepared in extra-virgin olive oil. 

The spice isn't the only great thing about Korean fried chicken. The pieces are extra crispy because they are fried twice.

But Korean fried chicken has never been a great value, and BBQ Chicken & Beer drove home the point by charging about $1 for each of the 10 wings in my son's order.

Our order totaled $9.58.

Earlier, for $10 at So Gong Dong in Palisades Park, each of us had an entire dinner -- soft-tofu stew, a stone bowl of white rice, a fresh egg to cook in the bubbling broth and four great side dishes, including two kimchis and fresh, seasoned bean sprouts (118 Broad Ave., Second Floor; 201-313-5550).

The shabby interior in Cliffside Park includes worn table tops and chipped wall paint.

At BBQ Chicken & Beer, we waited 15-20 minutes for the takeout order, prompting my son to say service had improved over the 30-minute waits when we had dinner at the restaurant.

My son noted the menu now offers non-meat options, such as salad and a Korean fish-cake stew.

But he soaked in the worn table tops, chipped wall paint and the really loud American hip-hop music, and said he wouldn't want to eat there again.

The Cliffside Park restaurant is part of a global chain, but headquarters seems to have lost track of this outpost.

The bored, young Korean man who took our order didn't give us a warm feeling, either. He seemed more interested in the music selection than in anything else.

We recalled one dinner there when water leaked from the ceiling into pails.

I did like the frosty mugs of some of the coldest beer I've had in a restaurant, so maybe this place should market itself as a bar with fried chicken on the side. 

Look for other Korean fried-chicken places, including Boom Boom Chicken in Fort Lee, Bon Chon Chicken in Leonia and Peck Peck Chicken in Teaneck.

However, I don't believe any of these places use naturally raised birds.

Details

BBQ Chicken & Beer, 555 Anderson Ave., Cliffside Park; 201-840-8421. 

More Korean food

A $5.99 lunch box at H Mart in Englewood.

We've had Maine lobsters for $4.49 a pound from H Mart in Little Ferry two Sundays in a row, but after driving my son to Englewood today, I stopped at the H Mart in that town.

A sign said the half-price sale was on through today, but there were no lobsters in the tank.

In another tank, I saw live fluke and farmed tilapia, and on ice, fresh, wild-caught tilapia from Taiwan for only $1.99 a pound.

I decided to buy Sanford-brand frozen green-lipped mussels from New Zealand for dinner tonight (2 pounds for $7.99), and a package of seaweed, vegetable and rice rolls called kimbap with Korean pickles and sliced jalapeno ($4.99).

I also saw 1-pound packages of Campari tomatoes for 99 cents with an H Mart store card, but passed on them so I could eat several big tomatoes from my garden.

Details

H Mart, 25 Lafayette Ave., Englewood; 201-871-8822.

From the ridiculous to the sublime

The sign maker was going for the word "Mangia"at Napoli Pizza in Hackensack's  Home Depot Shopping Center. Hey, but I'm sure the owner got a good price on the sign.

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At the H Mart in Little Ferry, a box of 12 large Haitian mangoes (8.8 pounds) was $13.99. That is a good price, but two were rotten and we'll be seeking a refund.

A favorite prepared item is Korean stewed tofu, center, made with lots of red pepper.

At H Mart, fresh fish come up for air in a sea of ice.

Whole croaker ($2.99 a pound at the H Mart in Englewood) became Escoveitch Fish, a Jamaican dish based on a recipe brought to the island by Sephardic Jews.

I stopped at the H Mart in Little Ferry to pick up a few items on Thursday.

A box of 12 large Haitian mangoes for $13.99 seemed like a bargain, but the first two we tried at home were rotten.

The Korean supermarket probably stored them improperly.

Mother's Day sale

The store had a Mother's Day special on a 15-pound bag of medium-grain, California-grown Kokuho Rice (Yellow Label) for $8.99, compared to the usual price of $14.99.

I picked up a bag, but saw a woman and her son loading 10 bags into a cart.

California rice

I've been buying California-grown rice at H Mart for five or six years after reading that some growers in the South use old cotton field that were treated with arsenic to kill pests, and traces of the poison have been found in the rice.

My wife prefers to shop at the smaller H Mart in Englewood, where she picked fresh, wild-caught croaker for $2.99 a pound this week.

Jewish recipe

The fish were seasoned and fried whole, then covered with onions, garlic, pimento or allspice and sweet and hot peppers prepared in a little oil and a lot of vinegar with sugar.

This preparation is called Escoveitch Fish, which I just learned is based on a recipe brought to the island of Jamaica by Sephardic Jews (also called Spanish Jews), some of the original colonizers. 

Jamaica was under Spanish rule for more than 160 years before the British took over. 

An article about Jamaican food and Escoveitch Fish on PeterGreenberg.com says the fish is marinated in the vinegary sauce for 24 hours before cooking it, but that's not how my wife and mother-in-law do it.

Introducing the 50-cent lemon

Image via Wikipedia


My wife called from the ShopRite in Englewood, where she was picking up an Ace bandage and a painkiller for our son, who saw a doctor for his sprained foot. Did I need anything?


I also saw a doctor in Englewood on Thursday, and picked up 4.5 pounds of fresh king whiting at H Mart for a fried-fish dinner ($3.99 a pound). But we had run out of lemons, so I asked her to pick one up.


When she got home, I looked at the receipt and was shocked to see a single lemon cost 50 cents.


We usually buy them at Costco Wholesale in Hackensack, and today, I went there to pick up photos and get more lemons.


I bought a 5-pound bag of lemons from Chile for $6.79. That works out to about 57 cents for each of the dozen lemons in the net bag, although these are almost twice the size of the ShopRite lemon.


When did lemons get so expensive? 


H Mart credit


In an earlier post, I described how I returned a stainless-steel pot that started to rust to the H Mart in Little Ferry and how getting a $19.99 credit wasn't easy.


But I made sure to ask whether I could use the credit at other H Mart stores, including the ones in Englewood and Fort Lee. I was told I could.


I put the credit slip in my wallet and wanted to use it in the Englewood store on Thursday, when I bought the whole whiting, a 20-package box of spicy Shin Ramyun, green-leaf lettuce, a freshly made seaweed-rice-vegetable roll, white peaches and Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce. 


My total was $46.32. The cashier accepted a few H Mart coupons, but wouldn't take the credit slip, saying it wasn't good at that store.


She got on the phone, and another woman came over, but she said I couldn't use the slip, either. I protested, and said I was told it was good at any H Mart.


Finally, she called over another employee and he OK'd it.


There must be a lot of bureaucracy in Korea.