On two sides of the food tracks in Englewood

Englewood's Palisade Avenue has been in flux. One of the changes was Blue Moon Restaurant moving next door to a bigger space in the shuttered Ann Taylor store.

The Kitchen restaurant also moved, to the old Blue Moon space next to Starbucks.

Recent additions include Simply Seafood and Teita, a Dominican restaurant, below.

El Paso is an inexpensive Mexican place.

Las Maravillas de Tulcingo is the third restaurant from Jesus Pita; the others are in Passaic. The food is more authentic and cheaper than at Blue Moon, but on Memorial Day, the staff left a mess on an outdoor table, a sure way to turn off potential customers.

Palm BBQ Grill, above and below, is the second place to open in the space occupied for many years by the popular Vietnamese restaurant, Saigon, which moved to Tenafly.

The Palm BBQ menu offers pita and po' boy sandwiches, plus falafel and hummus.

A popular Panera Bread was replaced by a bank, above. On the same block, Victoria's Secret closed after more than a decade at the entrance to the ShopRite shopping center.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Englewood is a classic two-sides-of-the-tracks community, even when it comes to dining out.

Wealthy, mostly white residents live on one side of the tracks all the way up the East Hill, and send their children to large private schools.

On the other side, a long-established Jamaican community and Hispanic residents occupy modest homes, sending their kids to elementary and middle schools that have few white students.

Food lovers will find the better restaurants on the east side of the tracks, while most of the cheaper ethnic restaurants and bakeries are on the other side.

Food city

Baumgart's, It's Greek To Me, Starbucks, El Prado and others have had staying power. 

In other parts of the city, Jerry's Gourmet & More and Balthazar Bakery draw customers from far and wide.

The city also boasts two good Thai restaurants, popular Colombian restaurants and bakeries; excellent Jamaican takeout; H Mart, a large Korean supermarket; and Korean dumpling and kimchi factories.

But the food scene is always in flux, and I would be hard pressed to name all of the restaurants that have opened, operated for several years or more, and disappeared.

Sushi to tacos to pizza

Wild Ginger, an expensive sushi restaurant, closed in 2011 after a 16-year run, and was replaced first by a Mexican restaurant and then by an upscale pizzeria.

The businesses on the first floor of the Town Centre at Englewood luxury rental building on Palisade Avenue change constantly, and at least two food markets have failed there.

What factor ever-escalating rents play in the closing of popular businesses is unclear. 

Bittan Group

Little is known about Michel Bittan, owner of the Bittan Group of Englewood, whose signs are on several vacant commercial spaces.

Bittan is the owner of Solaia, a fine-dining restaurant on North Van Brunt Street, between the performing arts center and City Hall. 

He also owns a casual restaurant next door called Caprizza, and the 201 Club, a party space.

Do you have to keep the receipt forever?

Image by futurowoman via Flickr


Six months ago or more, I bought an unusually large stainless-steel pot with two steamer inserts and a glass cover at the Korean supermarket in Little Ferry.


It cost less than $30 on sale, but was made with steel so thin the bottom of the pot flexed.


Still, the generous 12-inch-plus width easily swallowed a pound of spaghetti, and was ideal for blanching large quantities of  such greens as bok choy, fresh spinach and collard greens.


And the inserts accommodated a 10-inch Pyrex plate for steaming frozen wild salmon or cod with sake, soy sauce and other Asian flavors on one level and vegetables on a second level.


This week, I noticed that rust spots started to appear on the inside of the pot and one of the steamer inserts, and this morning, I took the whole thing back to H Mart.


The first thing the woman at the customer service desk asked me is, "Where is your receipt?"


When I said I bought the pot more than six months ago and no longer had the receipt, she said she could do nothing for me.


I asked her to call chain headquarters while I shopped for a couple of items, and as I was checking out, she handed me a store credit for $19.99.


Then she explained the cheap-stainless-steel-pot facts of life to me:


There are all qualities of stainless steel and when you buy a pot for under $30, as opposed to one for $60 or more, you can't expect much.


And, she said, I had a responsibility to dry the pot and steamer inserts before I put them away. I thanked her and left.

Filling up on spicy soup while saving gas

Image by shindoverse via Flickr

Shin Ramyun noodle soup from Korea is labeled "Gourmet Spicy."

I made a second visit to the newly renovated H Mart in Englewood over the weekend, and picked up a few sale items. 

I like to combine trips, so when my 13-year-old son asked me to drive him to a friend's house in Englewood, I could have stopped on the way home at the Arirang kimchi factory, Best [Korean] Dumplings, Jerry's Gourmet & More, Balthazar Bakery or Ashanti International for Jamaican food.

But I returned to the Korean supermarket, because we had run out of Shim Ramyun, a spicy instant noodle soup my son loves. A box of 20 packages was on sale for $11.99, a discount of $4.

Although the sodium content is 44% of the daily recommended intake, that's one of the lowest for an instant Korean soup. You can dilute it by adding more water than the directions call for.

I also picked up two 1-pound packages of Driscoll's strawberries for $2.99,  jumbo brown organic eggs for $2.79, a nice bunch of fresh, big-leaf spinach for 99 cents; and two prepared items, stir-fried anchovies for $2.25 and stir-fried noodles for $2.99.

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

Oddities in the produce aisle

I never know what I will find at the big Korean supermarket in Little Ferry known as H Mart.

I went shopping for fish and okra for last night's dinner and saw three items I've never heard of in the produce section: banana flowers, Chinese okra and nagaimo.

The first two were from Mexico, and the Chinese okra was more than two feet long. Nagaimo, which appears to be a large root, comes from Japan packed in sawdust. I have no idea what you do with them.

There are two other H Marts nearby, in Englewood and Ridgefield. They formerly were called Han Ah Reum.

The market that often beats all others on price

For dinner tonight, we baked six small whiting and steamed two dozen Little Neck clams in sake and garlic. I bought them at H Mart in Little Ferry, the Korean supermarket formerly known as Han Ah Reum.

I also picked up five pounds of organic carrots ($4.99) and a box of 20 champagne mangoes from Mexico ($11.99). The whiting were $2.99 a pound and the clams $3.99 a dozen. I saw herbicide-free Campari tomatoes for $1.99 a pound, compared to $2.50 at Fairway in Paramus and $2.75 at Costco in Hackensack.

I shopped at the H-Mart in Englewood, when I lived there, and occasionally visited the Ridgefield store. Year in, year out, the prices for fresh fish and produce are often the lowest around and the quality, compared to ShopRite, for example, is far superior. The whiting I picked up this evening had the sweetest flesh and compared favorable to the larger whiting I bought at Fairway last week for $3.99 a pound (or was it $4.99?).