NJ Dining Updates: Picklelicious, Binh Duong, Silver Pond, Lotus Cafe

Click on all of the photos for more information.

Picklelicious’s new retail location in Teaneck is serving up all kinds of briny Kosher treats.

After a recent kitchen renovation Binh Duong in Bloomfield is hitting home runs with its classic Vietnamese cuisine.

Silver Pond continues to demonstrate that it is the indisputable king of Bergen County Dim Sum in Fort Lee.

Lotus Cafe in Hackensack is also serving great Taiwanese and Cantonese dishes for Year of the Tiger.

Blogroll: Spoon & Shutter

I’d like to welcome Spoon & Shutter to the New Jersey food blogging community.

While the paint is still drying on this new blog, which only started in February of 2010, its got some serious talent behind it, so you’ll want to pay attention — it’s run by Susan Leigh Sherrill and Ted Axelrod, the husband and wife team whose works you’ve seen in 201 Magazine. Sherrill works as Food and Entertainment Editor of 201, and Axelrod is a professional photographer who has freelanced a number of food spreads in 201 magazine and elsewhere.

Check it out at http://spoonandshutter.wordpress.com

NJ Dining: Lotus Cafe (UPDATED)

Lotus Cafe
450 Hackensack Avenue, Hackensack, NJ
(201) 488-7070

At first glance, you might dismiss Lotus Cafe offhand as your average suburban American Chinese joint in a strip mall, because that’s entirely what it looks like. For the first couple of years I lived in this area, that’s exactly what I did, and now I regret that mistake. While I wouldn’t say it has the depth that Petite Soochow or Chengdu 1 have with their Shanghainese/Sichuan cuisine, Lotus Cafe is putting out some seriously good select Taiwanese-style dishes on its menu, particularly all the noodle stuff they do.

Storefont, 2010

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NJ Dining: Tandoori Chef/Madras Bistro

Tandoori Chef
258 Main St, Hackensack, NJ

Rachel and I recently re-visited Tandoori Chef, which has been under new ownership for 3 years. Tandoori Chef used to be part of the same restaurant group as the now closed Indian Chef in the International Food Warehouse in Lodi, but has since undergone significant changes, including the re-branding of the cafe space that it owns next door, which used to be Veggie Express but is now Madras Bistro. It should also be noted that Tandoori Chef has recently lowered the price of its lunch buffet to under $10 a person, and we intend on checking that out soon.

Indian Chef and Madras Bistro in Hackensack are serving some of the best North Indian and South Indian Food in Bergen County.

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NJ Dining: Aleppo Restaurant (UPDATED)

Note: This article originally appeared as “Off the Broiler Economic Stimulus Dinner II”. With the recent review of this restaurant in the New York Times, we thought it would be appropriate to raise it to the foreground and update several photos.

Aleppo Restaurant
939 Main Street, Paterson NJ
(973) 977-2244

For our second in our series of Economic Stimulus events, we enlisted former Bergen Record restaurant writer and fellow food blogger Victor Sasson to arrange a lunch for us at one of South Paterson’s best Syrian restaurants, Aleppo, after which we went shopping at some of the local bakeries and markets.

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Check out Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations, 10PM March 8th, 2010 “Obsessed” on the Travel Channel

Episode Synopsis: Anthony talks to chefs and bloggers whose obsessive love for food drives them to noteworthy feats.

If you’re a fan of Off the Broiler and have been following my activities for the last 10 years, this is an episode you don’t want to miss. There’s a bunch of familiar faces in this one, including eGullet’s Steven Shaw and Opinionated About’s Steve Plotnicki.

Updated: Here’s a video clip exclusively for the web where we discuss anonymity in restaurant reviewing.

Promo 1

Promo 2

We Officially Terminate our Oath of Fealty to Insane Greatness

Ah, Adobe. Poor Adobe.

Things between Adobe and Apple used to be just peachy. Indeed, almost from the very day the company formed in 1982, it was destined to be the premier supplier of content creation software for the Macintosh, which launched only two years later, in 1984. We all remember what happened in 1984, at least those of us who aren’t Milennials.

Click Here to read the rest of this article at ZDNet Tech Broiler.

Four Years of Off The Broiler

It happened without any pomp and circumstance, but on February 7, 2010, Off the Broiler reached its fourth birthday, 1015 posts later.

To all my supporters, friends and family, to all the restaurants and businesses that I have profiled over the years, and especially to my wife, Rachel, who puts up with my craziness and obsessive-compulsive food photography that frequently causes her dinner to go cold, I extend my greatest thanks and appreciation. Without you I could not have done this.

Jason Perlow

The iJuche Sasang of Kim Il-Jobs

Kim Il-Sung, the late leader of North Korea called it Juche (pronounced Ju-Che). In English, the term is loosely translated as “spirit of self-Reliance”.

Since its beginnings in the 1950s, Juche Sasang (The Juche Idea) is the foundation that has provided the base ideology and tenets by which the rogue and isolationist nation has behaved, conducted itself on the international stage and controlled its own people in a never to be questioned iron grip dominated by a culture of leader worship that has continued to this very day.

Click here to read the rest of this article at ZDNet Tech Broiler.

NJ Dining: Huong Viet

Huong Viet
358 Passaic Avenue, Nutley NJ

When your favorite restaurants close, there is always a mourning period. Sometimes, you know that they are going to be gone forever, but in other cases, you get a glimmer of hope, hearing rumors that they may open again somewhere else.

One such restaurant was Little Saigon in Montclair, a Vietnamese favorite with a loyal clientele. Little Saigon had closed before, due to a fire in its original Nutley location on Franklin Avenue in 2003. The restaurant  re-opened in 2005 in a much larger Montclair space on Elm Street. In October of 2009, Little Saigon closed suddenly and without any warning.

But late last year we heard rumors that the owners were going to re-open, and re-open it did, in the original town where it all started, in Nutley. However, “Little Saigon” is no longer — it has returned to business, with the same owners, as Huong Viet on Passaic Avenue, in a much more manageable space than its previous location.

Huong Viet is the new Pho King of Nutley. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.