Update for Korean barbecue lovers

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It's happened again. Madangsui Restaurant in Fort Lee, once my favorite Korean barbecue restaurant, was fined $1,033 last week by the borough environmental health specialist "for allowing a rat infestation, with droppings too numerous to count," The Record reported on Friday.

Madangsui was fined $285 on Nov. 10 for defrosting meat on the floor and not covering it.  This was a real surprise, because it  had always boasted of serving fresh beef and was the first Korean barbecue restaurant to offer prime beef, the highest USDA grade, after it opened more than five years ago.

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We love all the vegetables and soy served by Korean restaurants, but I've long been concerned about their "mystery meat" -- sliced extremely thin and marinated to improve flavor and tenderness. So we started buying free-range, grass-fed Australian beef and preparing barbecue at home, with rice, kimchi and other side dishes.

Thankfully, the newspaper Friday also contained a ShopRite circular offering Nature's Reserve free-range, grass-fed whole beef tenderloin for filet mignon from Australia at $3.99 a pound with a store card, $5.99 a pound without (4- to 6-pound average). Make sure you get the Australian beef, because the supermarket chain also has put on sale the same cut of conventionally raised U.S. beef. The sale starts today and ends Feb. 6.

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What I did the last time I bought this Australian beef was to trim it carefully, slice it thin and store it in the freezer in bags with bulgogi marinade, available at H Mart, the Korean supermarket in Little Ferry, Englewood, Fort Lee and Ridgefield. (Illustration shows the tenderloin just below the sirloin.)
 
There are few meals that can match the fun quotient of Korean barbecue, where you use red-lettuce leaves to wrap up meat, hot pepper paste, rice, garlic, kimchi and whatever else you can manage, then stuff the whole package into your mouth.

More Korean restaurants pop up

We have dozens of Korean restaurants in North Jersey, but more seem to open all the time. Yesterday, I had lunch at Haha Donkatsu, 1630 Lemoine Ave., Fort Lee, which took over the space once occupied by a Korean baby octopus restaurant.

Across the street from Haha Donkatsu is Pho 32, a Korean-owned place specializing in the Vietnamese soup called pho and shabu-shabu, where you cook meat, seafood and vegetables in hot broth on your table. It is around the corner from a Vietnamese-owned pho restaurant called Mo' Pho. Haha Donkatsu specializes in breaded pork cutlets, and I had mine diced and added to a bowl of Korean bibimbap -- steamed rice and julienned vegetables ($8.99 with several side dishes). The sauce you add is truly spicy.

Today, as I returned from ShopRite, I saw what looks like Hackensack's first Korean restaurant (the city already has a Shilla Korean bakery on Main Street, near the Sears parking lots). I didn't catch the name, but signs offer barbecue and shabu-shabu. This is a small place that has housed a number of unsuccessful restaurants, between The Record and Pep Boys.

Podcast on the North Jersey food scene

After sampling the Middle Eastern fare at Whole Foods' Paramus store on Friday, I discussed additive-free food, food shopping, favorite Korean and Middle Eastern restaurants and other topics with Jason Perlow, the food lover behind the Off The Broiler blog. Click on the following link, or if that doesn't work paste and cut it into your browser:

http://www.theuw.net/~perlow/podcast/Off_The_Broiler-%2351%20Victor%20Sasson.mp3