A seafood lover's lunch at Hiura in Fort Lee

At Hiura, a family owned Japanese restaurant in Fort Lee, I was served a welcoming cup of hot green tea after I sat down to wait for a friend, who arrived a few minutes late for lunch. The restaurant has 26 seats at tables and a sushi bar.

By Victor E. Sasson
Editor

I've become a big fan of the bento-box lunches at Hiura, a small Japanese restaurant in Fort Lee.

And the lunch I always seem to order is the Hiura Box ($16), which is beautifully composed and served with soup, rice, a tempura dipping sauce and unlimited hot green tea.

The lunch has both raw and cooked fish contributed by Sushi Chef Noboru Hiura and son Shoji Hiura, respectively. Chef Shoji works out of sight in the small kitchen.

 

The Hiura Box is perfect for seafood lovers: Grilled mackerel or salmon (mackerel shown), pristine slices of raw fish and shrimp tempura. It comes with bowls of miso soup and steamed white rice, and a dipping sauce for the tempura.

In addition to grilled, skin-on  mackerel and four slices of melt-the mouth sashimi, accented by a small sesame leaf, the Hiura Box includes beautifully fried tempura of shrimp and vegetables.
 
A friend who met me for lunch on Tuesday also ordered the Hiura Box, but he paid a $2 supplement for Cilean sea bass, which he loved.

Shoji Hiura says he marinates the sea bass or black cod in a sweet miso paste before grilling.


Hiura, 400B Main St., near Anderson Avenue, Fort Lee; 201-346-0110. BYO, closed Wednesdays. Reservations are recommended.

Lunch is served Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 2 p.m. Dinner is served from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. (except Wednesdays), and to 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

 

In Asian Fort Lee, let the Hiura family serve you

Once the lunch rush was over on Thursday, Chef Noboru Hiura began skinning and carving a fresh whole fluke into melt-in-the mouth sushi and sashimi for his customers in Fort Lee.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

People flock to Fort Lee for the biggest variety of Asian restaurants in North Jersey -- Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Thai and, at one time, Vietnamese.

But no place is as special as the 24-seat gem on Main Street that is run by the Hiura family and likely is the oldest Japanese restaurant in the borough.

My Hiura Box at lunch included steamed white rice, a dipping sauce for tempura, unlimited green tea and a bowl of miso soup with tofu and greens, below.

 

I met two friends for lunch at Hiura on Thursday to acquaint them with a restaurant I have patronized for many years.

I chose the Hiura Box ($16) with both raw and cooked fish; shrimp and vegetable tempura; and salad, rice and soup.

Sushi Chef Noboru Hiura included three fat slices of wonderful bluefin-tuna sashimi that literally dissolved in my mouth.

I also enjoyed expertly fried shrimp and vegetable tempura, and delicious broiled mackerel from his son, Chef Shoji Hiura, who runs the small kitchen.

Shoji's mom, Chioko, now comes into work only on   Mondays and Fridays at lunch.

Pan-fried pork with onions in a ginger sauce is served in a large bowl over white rice ($10), accompanied by radish pickles.

Bluefin-tuna sushi, front, and cooked eel are $4 a piece when ordered a la carte.

Hiura has operated on Main Street for about 22 years, and has evolved into a high-end restaurant for customers searching for the best sushi and sashimi.

But the restaurant is more approachable at lunch, when it offers a large selection of raw and cooked dishes at reasonable prices.

One of my friends ordered Ginger Pork, pan-fried meat and onions in a ginger sauce served in a large bowl over steamed rice ($10).

A board listed a 5-item lunch special for $12

The other friend wanted only 4 pieces of blue-fin tuna and 4 pieces of cooked-eel sushi ($4 each).

We finished our meal with complimentary slices of sweet melon.

Today, Hiura is the best Japanese restaurant in Fort Lee, but you might want to reserve to make sure you get one of the 24 seats at tables or the sushi bar.

At lunch, a small parking lot off Anderson Avenue is shared with a Korean restaurant on a first-come, first-served basis, but valet parking is provided at dinner.

Hiura's rear entrance is off the parking lot.

Before the eponymous Hiura, the family operated Hodaka, a Japanese restaurant on 16th Street in Fort Lee that also offered Chinese food.


Hiura, 400B Main St., near Anderson Avenue, Fort Lee; 201-346-0110. BYO, closed Wednesdays. Reservations are recommended.

Lunch is served Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from noon to 2 p.m. Dinner is served from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. (except Wednesdays), and to 10:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Changes in the Asian food scene in Fort Lee

Image by dougtone via Flickr

Visitors to Fort Lee will find Japanese, Korean, Chinese and Asian Indian restaurants. Mo' Pho, a Vietnamese noodle soup restaurant, closed.

Editor's note: Since I wrote this in December 2011, there has been a resurgence of Japanese restaurants in Fort Lee, but Korean place still dominate the dining scene.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Fort Lee has long been the place to go for the widest range of Asian food in North Jersey, and it continues to evolve.

Some of the changes have been in response to an influx of Korean-Americans in a community that many Japanese immigrants had called home for decades.

Now, the Korean supermarket chain Han Ah Reum has opened a small market in a neighborhood of high-rises and garden apartments, and dubbed it H Mart Fresh.

The market on 16th Street, across the street from the Fort Lee Community Center, replaced another Korean market, Good Nature Supermarket, and has been open about eight months. 

Nippon Daido, a small Japanese market on the same block, is now a laundromat.

H Mart Fresh is an abbreviated version of the full-size H Mart supermarket a couple of miles away in Fort Lee's Linwood Plaza shopping center. One woman said she shopped at H Mart Fresh because she lives in the neighborhood. 

On Tuesday, I picked up two prepared items at H Mart Fresh: a trio of sleek, 10-inch-long mackerel pike for $3.99 and a Korean pan-fried omelet stuffed with seaweed for $4.99. But I couldn't find any kimbap, those addictive seaweed, vegetable and rice rolls.

The small market had a beautiful, though limited, selection of fresh whole, wild-caught fish on a bed of ice, including red snapper and croaker, and I saw a solitary eel in a seafood tank.

A Korean restaurant, New Bang's Kitchen, is down the block, at 1355 16th St. 

History of Hiura

In the 1980s, on the same block and possibly in the same space as New Bang's Kitchen, the Hiura family operated a BYO Japanese-Chinese restaurant that kept customers' sake bottles. 

A fire in an adjacent business closed the restaurant, and sushi Chef Noboru Hiura eventually relocated to Main Street in Fort Lee, where the family now has a high-end Japanese sushi restaurant called Hiura.

Several blocks away on Main Street, a pizzeria replaced a Vietnamese restaurant, Mo' Pho, which specialized in steaming bowls of anise-flavored noodle soup.

Japanese pub closes

Meanwhile, in neighboring Cliffside Park, the opening of a new Japanese restaurant, Bushido, has been delayed. The address is 671 Palisade Ave.

Bushido is replacing an authentic Japanese pub, Izakaya Don, which replaced another Japanese pub in July 2004. The pubs served food and overflowing glasses of sake.

Bushido is the latest venture of Lebanese restaurateur Charles Hamade and Chef Yoshiharu Suzuki, who operated Wild Ginger, a BYO on Englewood's Palisade Avenue, for more than 16 years.

The high-end Japanese restaurant was renamed Wild Nigiri before it closed this year, replaced by Hamade's Papa Mole Mexican restaurant.

Hamade and Suzuki likely paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for Izakaya Don's liquor license.

Details

H Mart Fresh, 1379 16th St., Fort Lee; 201-944-9009.
Parking on street or in difficult, sloping lot.