Ignore huge Lan Garden menu, but embrace delicious dim sum

Super Har Gow Jumbo Shrimp Dumplings ($6.95) are among 50 items on the dim sum menu at Lan Garden 88 in Ridgefield. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Slow service and pricing fresh fish by the pound are two of my complaints about Lan Garden 88, but I am totally won over by the restaurant's delicious selection of Hong Kong-style dim sum.

I can recall my first taste of dim sum in Hong Kong in 1979, when I had lunch in a restaurant so popular a customer waiting to eat stood behind each occupied chair as carts circulated in the dining room.

There and at dim sum lunches I had in later years in San Francisco and Manhattan Chinatowns, servers sang out in Chinese the names of the freshly prepared items displayed on the carts they pushed.

At Lan Garden, the atmosphere isn't as colorful and no carts appear in the dining room.

But the Ridgefield restaurant makes up for that by serving dim sum all day long (until 1 in the morning). 

Dim sum is also referred to as "yum cha," which means "eat tea." 

Beef Dumplings at Lan Garden ($4.95).

Fried Canton Carp Ball ($5.95).

Hard to top these dim sum

Lan Garden's freshly prepared array of dim sum eclipses what's available at any other Chinese restaurant in North Jersey, including Silver Pond Seafood Restaurant in Fort Lee.

In contrast to the large bound menu, Lan Garden's dim sum menu is a piece of paper on which you can check off which of the 50 items you want and how many you want.

The menu also includes Egg Custard Tart and other desserts, as well as Steamed Rice Noodle Rolls and Congee.

The items are labeled "Small" ($3.50), "Medium" ($4.95), "Large" ($5.95), "X Large" ($6.95) and "Super" ($8.95), and usually include two to four dumplings and so forth. 

Filling meal for $15 a person

On Tuesday afternoon, four of us ordered two Super Har Gow Jumbo Shrimp Dumpling, one of my favorites for the stuffing of minced shrimp and the garnish of tiny fish eggs.

We also ordered a Seafood Dumpling with Spinach, a Beef Dumpling, two Mini-Sized Sticky Rice Wrapped in Lotus Leaf ($5.95 each), Chicken Feet with Gluten in Chu-Hou Sauce, two Fried Canton Carp Ball and Pan Fried Chive Cake ($4.95).

The sticky rice and chive cake put the meal over the top, and we washed it all down with cup after cup of hot Chinese tea.

I was stuffed, and when the check came, we spent about $15 a person before tax and tip.

Chicken Feet with Gluten in Chu-Hou Sauce ($4.95).

Inside a Seafood Dumpling with Spinach ($5.95).

Eleven years ago, I celebrated the purchase of a new Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid with a meal at China 46, the Chinese soup-dumpling restaurant that preceded Lan Garden 88. On Tuesday, it was time to celebrate the purchase of my latest green car, an all-electric Tesla Model S.

Lan Garden, 88 Route 46 west (near Grand Avenue), Ridgefield; 201-840-8688. Restaurant hasn't received its liquor license yet, meaning you can bring your own wine or beer.

Open seven days for lunch and dinner, but closed weekdays between 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.

Chinatown near the turnpike

Live tilapia were going for only $3.68 a pound on Friday at Hong Kong Supermarket, but there was no information on the origin of the fish .

Don't look for Hong Kong Supermarket and a cluster of other Chinese-owned businesses in lower Manhattan's Chinatown.


Instead, the bustling market is in a small shopping center less than a mile from Exit 9 of the New Jersey Turnpike.


You can have your hair cut or styled; get a massage or acupuncture treatment for a sore elbow; and pick up sushi, a live fish and fresh greens for dinner.

A salon, left, and a massage center are outside the entrance to the supermarket. Nearby, a small sushi restaurant offers prepared items and table service.

I drove past the supermarket a few times on the way to another part of East Brunswick and finally stopped in Friday afternoon, joining other Good Friday shoppers.


Hong Kong Supermarket is bigger than New King Fung Supermarket in River Edge, but only marginally cleaner.

A large variety of Asian greens are packaged for shoppers.

First, I picked up five small avocados from Chile for $1.98.


Then, I stopped to look over fresh greens, selecting sugar pea shoots for $1.98 a pound (photo above) and small mustard greens for $1.29 a pound.


The price for live fish is the lowest I have ever seen, but the store's fish counter doesn't have the signs it is required to, telling shoppers two things: the origin of seafood and whether it is farmed or wild.

Shrimp come in all sizes.

I wouldn't buy live fish from China, which has a poor food-safety record. I've seen wild-caught tilapia on ice at H Mart, and would prefer them over their farmed cousins.


I made only two other purchases, a 22-ounce bottle of Kadoya Sesame Oil from Japan (on sale for $5.98) and a package of Brown Rice Vermicelli ($1.69).


When I got home, I prepared half of the vermicelli and mixed it with blanched sugar pea shoots, flavoring them with sesame oil, soy sauce and Sriracha hot sauce.

Barbecued ducks.

Hong Kong Supermarket is part of an East Coast chain based in Flushing, Queens.

Chicken feet for $1.28 a pound.

Dragon fruit.

Hong Kong Supermarket, 275 Route 18 south, East Brunswick; 1-732-651-8288.


Web site: Chinese shopping hub


Directions: After paying the toll at Exit 9 of the New Jersey Turnpike (New Brunswick), follow signs to Route 18 south. Shopping center will be on your right.


East Brunswick is about 40 miles south of Hackensack.

How Whole Foods Market helps and hurts

If you could afford to food shop at only one store -- Whole Foods Market -- your troubles would be over.

You wouldn't have to do Internet research and hunt around for a steady, reliable source of naturally raised meat and poultry, wild-caught fish and organic vegetables.

They're all there -- in abundance -- at Whole Foods Market. The store even pledges it's farmed fish is raised without antibiotics and other harmful additives.

And if you time your visits, stock up on some items and take advantage of sales and promotions, you would not be spending a great deal more money than you do racing to three, four or more other places in search of savings.

Celebrity chefs

But Whole Foods Market has blinded many celebrity chefs, doctors and other so-called food experts to what the vast majority of shoppers -- who can't afford this premium food-shopping experience -- have to go through to put healthy, nutritious meals on the table.

With many other supermarkets, the discussion is on how to save the most money, not where to find poultry and meat raised on vegetarian feed -- without antibiotics, growth hormones or animal by products.

At ShopRite, for example, you always see big sales on drug-filled Perdue and Tyson chicken, but promotions are rare on Readington Farms, Coleman and other naturally raised poultry.

The Oz phenom

I've watched Dr. Mehmet Oz for many years on "Oprah" and occasionally since he started his own TV show, and I've never heard him discuss how a steady diet of antibiotics in meat, poultry and fish can raise resistance to antibiotics he and other doctors prescribe.

Does Dr. Oz shop for food or is he familiar with what is offered at most mainstream markets? I imagine he's never stepped foot in a supermarket, and leaves all of that to his wife, who probably shops only at the Whole Foods Market in Edgewater, near their Cliffside Park home.

Now, his daughter Daphne is getting into the act with her own TV show on eating healthy. I don't expect much, judging from her book, "The Dorm Room Diet," published in July 2010.

On her Web site, she lists "5 principles of healthy eating,"  including "always have breakfast," "drink half your body weight in ounces of water daily" and "eat at least every three hours."

This from a Princeton grad, no less.

TV cooking segments

I've watched morning TV cooking segments on "Today" and other programs from an exercise bicycle at the gym for more than a year, and have never heard any chef discuss how animals are raised or how animal antibiotics can harm us.

Some of the chefs offer naturally raised or organic food at their restaurants -- more in Manhattan than in North Jersey -- but apparently don't think the home cook should bother to look for them in supermarkets.


When Chef Bobby Flay opened his so-called Burger Palace in Paramus, near Whole Foods, he apparently made a bottom-line decision to serve Certified Angus Beef -- which is raised conventionally -- over a Natural line that receives no antibiotics, growth hormones or animal byproducts.

Lucky for Flay, the clueless reporter who wrote a lavishly promotional story about the restaurant and the chef's family for the local daily newspaper never questioned the chef about the quality of beef used.

Paramus Whole Foods

I attended opening day at the Whole Foods in Paramus on March 19, 2009, and have returned every two weeks or so to take advantage of sales or pick up an item I simply could not find elsewhere.

I stopped eating meat in February 2010, so appreciate the store's fresh seafood delivery seven days a week, and how it cooks or discards  unsold items after a day and a half or so. 

I've paid a lot more for mussels at Whole Foods than elsewhere, but found sand or other problems with cheaper mussels.

Hake is a meaty fish you rarely see outside Whole Foods, and when fillets are on sale at $5.99 a pound, it's a good deal for great-tasting seafood.

But Whole Foods has disappointed me lately.

Slowly, I've gotten my wife to go to Whole Foods for the poultry and meat she uses to prepare her home-cooked specialties.

Missing chicken feet

A few weeks ago, I went to the Paramus store to pick up frozen organic chicken feet, but there were none. A butcher took my home number and said he would call when they came in, but he never did.

Last night, my wife called Whole Foods -- still no organic chicken feet. So, she went to Hackensack Market and bought a couple of pounds of "Grade A" mystery feet.

In place of the organic chicken feet, Whole Foods has begun to offer organic goat meat from Coleman Natural Foods -- free of antibiotics, animal byproducts and growth hormones -- and my wife was delighted with how tender it was in her curry goat.

-- VICTOR E. SASSON