A free introduction to Korean food

A customer stops for a free sample of Korean noodles at H Mart in Fort Lee.

If you haven't already discovered the vibrant flavors of Korean food, H Marts in Bergen County provide an easy way to try the cuisine without spending money on a restaurant meal.

On the weekends, H Marts in Fort Lee, Englewood, Little Ferry and Ridgefield provide free samples of fruit, Korean noodles, rice cakes, seaweed-vegetable rolls and other food, and not all of it is spicy.

On Sunday, I sampled translucent noodles called japchae at the main Fort Lee store, as well as dried fish, fruit, rice cakes and a seaweed-egg omelet.

The woman offering the free noodle samples attracted customers with a sing-song, "Japchae ... kimbap sushi ...japchae."

Translucent noodles with vegetables were $5.49.

Vegetable, rice and seaweed rolls (kimbap) contain egg and imitation crab.

H Mart also is a great place to buy fresh fish, and prices are among the lowest around. 

All seafood is labeled with country of origin and whether it is wild or farm-raised.

At the H Mart fish counter in Fort Lee, wild carp trumps farmed pompano from China.

I found whole, wild-caught whiting from the United States at the H Mart Fresh in Fort Lee for $4.49 a pound, and we had it for Sunday dinner, along with fresh broccoli and organic brown rice with organic diced tomatoes prepared in an electric cooker.

We love whiting for its minimum amount of bones and its maximum of flaky, white fish. I also bought japchae and kimbap at H Mart Fresh.
 
A farmer's market was operating on Sunday across the street from H Mart Fresh, the smaller of the two H Marts in Fort Lee. The last day for the outdoor market is Nov. 18.

Whole pan-fried whiting with broccoli and organic brown rice.

H Mart, 112 Linwood Plaza, Fort Lee; 201-947-7800. H Mart Fresh, 1379 16th St., Fort Lee; 201-944-9009.

For other store locations, consult the Web site:

H Mart

  

Paradise for seafood lovers?

Image via Wikipedia

We had a delayed birthday dinner for our 14-year-old son on Saturday at Sik Gaek, a Korean restaurant in the Flushing section of Queens where you can watch seafood being cooked alive in steaming hotpots on the table.

Many customers choose one of the live-octopus hotpots, but we wanted lobster and asked for the mixed seafood hotpot. Others, our server said, eat octopus raw and wriggling as it goes down their throats.

The menu says the lobster is pan-roasted, but our hotpot came with a live whole lobster and live abalone. My son said he saw the lobster's claw cut a mushroom. I felt a little queasy.

Mussels predominated, but the broad, shallow pan on our table burner included a spicy broth filled with large and small shrimp and clams; squid rings, baby octopus, conch, bean sprouts, cabbage, mushroom, fat noodles and cylindrical rice cakes. 

Some of the seafood was tender, some of it chewy and some of it tough, especially the baby octopus.

At $79.99, the hotpot would feed at least four or five people, but my son insisted on ordering his own dish -- a spicy stir-fry of whole crabs he enjoyed at Sik Gaek's smaller Woodside branch last year ($29.99). He asked for it extra spicy.

The three of us entered to shouted greetings from the staff. The dining room of heavy wood picnic tables and backless plastic stools pulsed with American and Korean rock music.

When we sat down, servers in black T-shirts cooked us an appetizer of three eggs over easy in a frying pan on our table burner, and brought us rice cakes in a spicy sauce and,  later, a steamed egg souffle and kimchi.

We saw a couple order sweetened soju, a Korean spirit made from yams, served in a hollowed-out watermelon half with a little paper umbrella stuck in the rind. 

Midway through my son's meal, he asked for fried rice ($4.99 extra). A waitress mixed hot white rice and fish roe with the spicy sauce in his crab fry. I tried a couple of spoonfuls and it was extraordinary.

We took the hotpot leftovers home in the biggest takeout container I've ever seen.

Sik Gaek B.B.Q & Seafood Grill, 161-29 Crocheron Ave., 

Flushing, N.Y.; 718-321-7770. 

Reservations recommended on weekends.

No American Express cards accepted.

A second bite of Sik Gaek Seafood Grill

Image by vasta via Flickr

If you're a jazz fan, you might think of "Jumpin' at The Woodside" during your visit to Sik Gaek BBQ & Seafood Grill in the Woodside section of Queens, but that tune by the Count Basie Orchestra would be drowned out by the loud, pulsing Korean and American rock that gives this restaurant such energy.

Let me be quick to say we didn't see customers eating live, wriggling octopus tentacles -- a signature dish at this Sik Gaek and the original in Flushing, as you can see in a You Tube video by clicking on the Web site link below.

I've even read customer reviews on the Internet that describe a live octopus thrown on a seasoned hot plate to make it "dance" or "jump."

My son and I stuck to conventional seafood and had a delicious meal, but we ordered way too much and took home plenty of leftovers. The turn-off here might be the obscene lyrics of some of the American hip-hop songs, not the all-out, red-pepper assault on your senses. 

We love spicy food, so we ordered everything hot and weren't disappointed. My sniffles were drowned out by the loud music as my paper napkins piled up at the side of the table.

Right after we were seated, a server turned on the gas burner in the middle of the table and fried us two eggs, over easy. After we placed our order, we got a plate of spicy rice cakes and an egg souffle commonly served in Korean barbecue restaurants. 

Still, I had to ask for kimchi, and it wasn't as good as the fermented cabbage we loved at the Flushing restaurant. 

Our first entree was barbecued mackerel -- a whole, butterflied fish about a food long and slathered with a thick, spicy sauce ($14.99). The fish was moist, with crunchy bits at each end. My son ordered stir-fried crabs and a pot of them in the same sauce was placed over the burner ($29.99).

I sucked on a few shells and legs, but my son was delighted and able to find some crab meat. 

It was clear we couldn't finish the fish or crabs, so we asked a waitress for some rice, and she came over, spooned out the crabs and stir-fried cooked rice, vegetables and what I think were small cubes of cooked octopus into the spicy sauce  ($4.99).

The few spoonfuls I could manage to eat were fantastic. Our meal ended with refreshing cups of cucumber juice.

The Woodside Sik Gaek is a smaller than the Flushing location, but the shouted greetings and farewells from the staff are no less enthusiastic, the menu is the same and it's easier to get into. Sik Gaek offers $99 pots of mixed seafood if you come with a group.

When we arrived, we pushed and pulled on the door between the vestibule and dining room, but it didn't budge until a waiter came over and slid it open. The restaurant is next to a taxi garage, in the shadow of the elevated subway tracks, in a neighborhood of Irish pubs and taco joints.

The walls in Woodside are covered with newspaper pages, photos of customers and staff, and dollar bills covered with Korean and English writing. I saw, "So hot" and below that, "Go for it."  

Sik Gaek BBQ & Seafood Grill, 49-11 Roosevelt Ave. 
(near 49th Street), Woodside, Queens; 718-205-4555. Also,
161-29 Crocheron Ave., Flushing, Queens; 718-321-7770.
Web site: 


Anthony Bourdain and David Chang eat wriggling octopus

Fourth H Mart opens in Bergen County

 I visited the new H Mart in Fort Lee yesterday, the fourth supermarket opened by the Lyndhurst-based Korean chain in Bergen County. The company, which used to be known as Han Ah Reum, has stores in more than a dozen states.

The Fort Lee store appears to be bigger than the one in Englewood, where I shopped for years, but smaller than the Little Ferry supermarket, which is closer to my Hackensack home.

Fort Lee has the usual, great selection of fresh fish at relatively low prices. It's also the first H Mart I've seen that carries Coleman organic chicken and a second brand that says the birds are raised on a vegetarian diet without antibiotics. But I didn't see any beef  that was raised naturally, despite the importance of meat to the Korean diet.

There is also a terrific selection of greens, including Chinese broccoli, choy sum, regular and baby bok choy, and collard, plus others I'm not familiar with. I took home some leafy Chinese broccoli, but overcooked it. There is no food counter, as in other stores, but a French-Asian bakery called Tous Les Jours has a few tables for coffee and pastry.

The store, which has been open about three weeks in the old Kings Super Market space, didn't seem to have any real bargains, though it's possible it hasn't staged a grand opening yet. I also bought two prepared items: soft, sweet rice cakes with pumpkin and japchae, the translucent noodle dish made from sweet potatoes.

The company motto is: Better Food Better Living (no punctuation) and there is a cute video on its Web site showing a pregnant Korean woman sitting at home, reading and sipping tea, while her husband approaches on foot with two bulging plastic bags of H Mart food. When she opens the door and sees the food, she is "happy."

But what I've seen in more than a decade of shopping in H Mart is an army of Korean and other Asian women -- but few men -- filing their carts with enormous quantities of  beef and other food and then loading up their minivans or SUVs to rush home and start preparing dinner.
 

H Mart, 112-130 Linwood Plaza, Fort Lee; 201-947-7800


http://www.hmart.com/