The summer, now entering  full swing, brings us into the seasonal consumption of cold caffeinated beverages. I have recently been asked about the proper method for making Iced Coffee, as with the current economy being what it is, people now have the desire to drink and make Megabucks-style iced coffee creations in their own homes and workplaces, rather than spend $2.60-$3 per 16 ounce glass in a store surrounded by trendy jackasses using Macbooks and sipping their green tea lattes.

There are a number of ways you can produce very good iced coffee in your very own home, some involving Scientological devices such as “Cold brewing” requiring 8-hour preparation methods, snobbish apparatus such as “Toddys” as well as diluting espresso shots with iced water in order to produce “Iced Americanos’ and the like. To this, I say, phooey.

To make really good iced coffee, you will need an inexpensive can of Latino-style “Espresso Coffee” such as Cafe Bustelo or Pilon, or an inexpensive Italian-style brand such as Medaglio d’Oro (these are all made by the same company, Rowland Coffee Roasters out of Miami). These all go for about $2.50 for a 10 ounce can. If these brands are unavailable in your area, try either Community Coffee Dark Roast (With or without Chicory, this depends on your taste) or Cafe du Monde. If you prefer to purchase your coffee from a local roaster, purchase their least expensive house espresso blend and have them grind it for French Press use, NOT for espresso machine use. You will also need a French Press, and optionally an electric kettle for boiling water. Shown here is the 1.5L (48oz) Bodum Columbia, a stainless steel thermally insulated press which goes for about $99.00. You obviously can buy much cheaper presses in smaller sizes, however I like stainless presses because they stay hot much longer if you are making an entire pot and they are much more durable, having broken several Pyrex presses.

For 48 ounces of water, I use approximately 4.5 to 5 ounces of coffee. That’s double strength, so figure to 10 ounces of water you’re using 1 ounce of coffee. You want to brew at double strength because when you pour the coffee over ice and add milk or cream, you’re going to water it down. You want it to approach an equilibrium where the coffee is still strong even as the ice melts. Boil your water in a pot or kettle, and pour it into the press, covering it and letting it brew for at least 3 minutes. I would even say walk away for 10 to 20 minutes, come back, and then plunge the press.

Decant your coffee into a container, and store this in the fridge. At this point, you can sweeten the coffee if you want, but I prefer to sweeten coffee at the time when I am drinking it. Once refrigerated you can keep iced coffee for up to a week. Do not reheat it or it will go rancid. Once you’ve made iced coffee, it stays iced coffee.

Fill a tall glass with crushed ice and pour in coffee about a thumb’s thickness from the top.

Lighten with cream or skim milk, and sweeten with raw turbinado sugar or Splenda. Enjoy.

More great stuff at the Tenafly Farmers Market

Mediterranean delights abound at Greek Taverna’s Montclair branch

Our commitment to space exploration began with a wake up call over five decades ago with a beeping sound.

Not with a clock radio, but with a transponder signal that could be tuned in by any ham radio enthusiast — the launching and ever present chirping of the Soviet Sputnik 1 satellite in 1957, the first artificial satellite. Shortly after, the Soviets followed with a dog, Laika, aboard Sputnik 2 and several follow on Sputniks, and then sent a man into orbit, Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, aboard Vostok 1 in 1961.

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

As I mentioned in a post last week about broadband service outages, Last Friday, I was upgraded to Optimum Online’s Ultra service. Ultra is a new service offering from Cablevision which provides DOCSIS 3.0 service, which is rated at 101 Megabits (Mbps) or 12.53 Megabytes (MB) per second for download speeds and 15 Megabits or 1.85 Megabytes per second upload. Both of these speeds are advertised as “Up to”, in other words burst mode speeds in optimal network conditions.

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

Ann & Tony’s
2407 Arthur Avenue, Bronx NY 10458
(718) 933-1469

Web Site: http://www.annandtonysonline.com

Ann & Tony’s restaurant in the Arthur Avenue section of Belmont in the Bronx is one of the oldest continually operating Italian restaurants in the borough, dating back to the 1920s.

Twitter is a very interesting phenomenon. I’ve only really started using it in the last year, initially as way of sending automatic updates from OTB and Tech Broiler to people who actually cared about using the service. A year ago, I thought the idea was pretty pointless, with these limited 140-character messages that people send out that everyone on the Internet can see, which seemed to focus on fairly dumb, exhibitionist status updates such as “eating a Cannoli” or “This alfredo sauce is @#$%ing awesome dude!” so I stayed away from issuing my own updates because I didn’t want to look like a total ass. I knew a lot of people were LOOKING at Twitter, but I didn’t feel like engaging in it beyond the “let’s feed my blog updates into it and see how it goes” capacity.

But then something else happened. I joined FaceBook, which hooked me up with a lot of old friends and many other foodie and technology industry colleagues. But FaceBook, like Twitter, requires you to enter updates about what is going on with your daily life to make your friends feel like you haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. So if I was now committing to doing FaceBook updates, I might as well start updating my Twitter as well. So I downloaded Twitter software for my Blackberry and my PC and started sending updates to Twitter, and automatically syncing those to FaceBook.

So now I’m addicted to Twitter. I have TweetDeck running constantly in the background on my PC and whenever I’m traveling I have TinyTwitter running on my BlackBerry. When people have questions, such as when Eater “Retwittered” a particular person’s inquiry about where to eat in the Bronx on Arthur Avenue, I offered up some advice. No later than 10 minutes afterward, I get a message from Twitterer @RalphNapolitano:

@jperlow saw your tweet about Arthur Ave. When are you coming to eat in my restaurant…LOL!!!

So I look Ralph up. Along with this brother Anthony, he Co-owns Ann & Tony’s, one of the many Italian-American restaurants on Arthur Avenue. Normally, when restaurateurs want me to come visit, I usually get  an email extending an invite to an open house or a press event, or sometimes even a phone call from a publicist, but receiving a challenge over Twitter to come eat was a first. Okay, then, I’ll play. What kind of guy broadcasts a message like that to the entire Internet and not expect a serious foodie like myself to take him up on it?

I told him I was coming over that very evening, with hungry wife and friend in tow, and he had better be ready to face the consequences if the food wasn’t any good.

Click on the “Read the Rest of this entry” link below for more.

As it turns out — and I only discovered it that evening when I was dining and he came over and proudly showed me how he found me — Ralph has the search term “Arthur Avenue” on his Twitter client on his iPhone set so he can message anyone who mentions the subject. I wasn’t a unique target or special or any way. Oh well.

Frankly, I don’t know if it’s considered bad Twitter etiquette to do that or just plain genius marketing technique, but it was definitely an effective means for getting me into the place. That, and I hadn’t had a decent Italian-American meal on Arthur Avenue in a LONG time and I had visions of pasta floating in my head.

Ralph may have used 21st Century technology to lure me in, but what he and his brother are doing at Ann & Tony’s is very, very old school. It’s practically an anthropological exhibit. This is solid, but extremely dated, boilerplate Italian-American food, the way that things USED to be made. This is not the regionally specialized, Batali-esque, let’s attempt to reproduce authentic  stuff from Tuscany or Emiligia-Romagnia Italian cuisine you get in Manhattan. This place has not changed a single darned thing since at least the 1940s, and they like it that way.

Scenes from an Italian Restaurant. It could have been the prototype for that song.

A Bottle of Red, A Bottle of White..

Fried Calamari, crispy. Rachel thought it was a little overcooked but I appreciated the fact that it was well seasoned and had tentacles. Lots of places don’t bother with the tentacles, those are my favorite.

Eggplant Rollatini. Rachel and I loved this, it isn’t heavily breaded, but it’s stuffed with a wonderful ricotta mixture. Ann & Tony’s marinara sauce also has nice acidity with just the right amount of sweetness. I’m really looking forward to trying their eggplant parmigiana next time, which uses fresh tomatoes.

A portion of the dinner salad. Nice crispy lettuce and good job with the thinly sliced cukes but the tomatoes weren’t ripe. But this is not why you come here.

Italian Sausage and Meatballs. We all agreed that the meatballs were some of the best we’ve ever had, and you would totally be justified in ordering Spaghetti and Meatballs here.  The sausage was good, in fact I would say it was very good, but the meatballs were better.  The meatballs had just enough binder to hold them together, they were of ideal Italian-American meatball consistency with just the right amount of cheese and were a good mixture of Beef, Pork and Veal.

Here’s where we  start getting into dinosaur territory. This is “Chicken Ann & Tony’s” which is boneless chicken cutlets pounded flat in a thick marsala wine mushroom gravy with artichoke hearts, prosciutto and mozzarella cheese. Rachel thought it was too rich and heavy, I actually enjoyed it for what it was and appreciated its “Look at me! I’m a fossil on a plate, eat me!” appeal.

Here’s a similar dish made with veal cutlets. Again, very rich and heavy, and the kind of thing you probably won’t find anywhere else in New York, let alone the Bronx.

I was disappointed in the Shrimp Fra Diavolo, only in that the sauce was fantastic but the shrimp were overcooked. At Ann & Tony’s I’d probably stick with the meat and pasta dishes.

We rebound from the shrimp with an excellent Clams with Garlic Sauce over Linguine. There’s whole cloves of caramelized garlic in this thing.

Like the New York Yankees, Ann & Tony’s seems to get better in the later innings. This is a fantastic Spaghetti Carbonara, made with prosciutto. Pasta dishes and the classic Italian American boilerplates seem to be where Ann & Tony’s really shines.

Rigatoni with meat sauce. What can I say, I can’t make a better one myself, and I think I make a pretty serious one. Like the meatballs this ragu is a blend of pork, beef and veal. It was so good it didn’t even need cheese on top. Ann & Tony’s also makes a traditional Spaghetti Bolognese, with a sauce that is simmered for hours. If the regular meat sauce was that good, the Bolognese has to be amazing.

Bases loaded with the pasta, bottom of the 9th. Angel Hair pasta with Pesto sauce, also very good with strong fresh basil flavor.

I’m very particular about my cannolis, as Madonia Brothers down the street are my favorite. But these were very good indeed. I had mine with an espresso, with lemon peel, the old school Italian-American way.

However, this orange flavored Italian Cheesecake was the home run that brought it all together. Rachel, who prefers New York Cheesecake stylistically over the Ricotta-style, actually made me stop eating this so she could finish it the next day, we liked it that much.

This zeppole, deep fried dough stuffed with Nutella and Bananas and topped with powdered sugar was an experiment that was tried on us by Chef Anthony. Definitely a keeper, but they need a name for it.  I suggested “The Bronx Bomb” and “The Bambino” as possibilities  but I’m not sure how they went over.

Okay everyone, It’s promotion time. My friend and local Brooklyn  girl Daisy Martinez has a nuevo season starting THIS SATURDAY, at 9:30am on Food Network. Don’t wanna get up that early? Set the Tivo!

FOOD NETWORK’S NEW LEADING LADY HEATS UP “IN THE KITCHEN”

Season Two Premieres: Saturday, July 11th at 9:30am ET/PT

This summer, Viva Daisy!, the newest addition to Food Network’s “In the Kitchen” line-up, returns for a second seasons. Popular TV personality Daisy Martinez shares her secrets for quick, simple Latin cuisine in Viva Daisy! premiering Saturday, July 11th at 9:30am.

In Viva Daisy!, viewers come home with Daisy Martinez and learn tips and tricks for creating quick, simple, mouth-watering meals inspired by her love of Latin cuisines. Daisy dishes for friends and family with recipes like savory Barbecued Short Ribs of Beef perfect for a “Family Night,” Avocado Stuffed with Crab-Mango Salad for a refreshing “Ladies Brunch,” and creamy, corn-filled Humitas (Empanadas) with Cilantro Pesto for “TV Night.”

For more information, videos, and recipes, visit:

www.foodnetwork.com/daisy and www.daisymartinez.com

When the King of Pop died last week, I swore that I was going to be tasteful and not cover it. I was going to take the opposite route — focus on pure technology, and let the other opportunistic bloggers grab the hits on bottom feeder clickwhore material. In all fairness, too much of my subject matter in the last few weeks has been bordering on the frivolous and I wanted to get back into writing about hardcore subjects, traffic be damned, my street creds are at stake here.

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

Images and Text by Rachel Nash Perlow

I’m going to start this entry by showing  you my favorite picture from this year’s Fancy Food Show:

This is from the mushroom display at D’Artagnan’s very large booth. Feel free to make it your monitor wallpaper, I did. :)  D’Artagnan is very proud of the fresh produce they offer, which is more than just mushrooms, as you can see when we took our tour of their Newark, NJ, facility back in April 2009.

Click the link to see the many other vendors I visited at the 2009 Fancy Food Show.

But they managed to show off what D’Artagan is best known for as well:

This vast array of poultry, as well as a huge variety of speciaty meats and game, are available by mail order or delivered direct in the New York area.

Owner, Ariane Daguin expresses her love of D’Artagnan’s products to a visiting tv journalist.

Samples of country pate, dry cured saucisson and smoked chicken were offered on skewers thrust at booth visitors by the Three Musketeers. To the left is Alix Daguin, daughter of Ariane, doing her part to help out the family shop.

However, I left this year’s show wondering if calling it the Fancy Food Show is a misnomer? I mean some of it is obviously “Fancy” but much of it is not. There’s lots of schlock, dreck, and other assorted Yiddish pejoratives to be had as well. I sampled many fully prepared or dry soup mixes, all full of sodium and MSG. The most prominent display and mascot? Jelly Belly. Why do they bother with a display at the FFS? Who hasn’t heard of Jelly Belly?

Say Hi! to Mr. Jelly Belly and the Sunkist motorcycle.

But on the other hand, there were plenty of more thoughtful foods on display.

The anti-corn syrup lobby had many representatives in the form of alternative sweeteners, like agave syrup. Also, cane sugar sweetened, less sweetened, or completely unsweetened drinks. Many foods were featured promoting the concepts of  sustainability and/or organic methods. And, there were lots of whole grain products, usually featured in the form of granola, but also breads, and one much more unusual method.

Wholesome Sweeteners Blue Agave Syrup, I’ve even seen this product used at a local restaurant, see the OTB post on Green Door Cafe.

Xagave was handing out “Corn Syrup Kills” buttons as well as sampling their product line.

Honest T is lightly sweetened with organic cane sugar (under 50 calories per serving, double that for the bottle). They now have a new product featuring yerba mate, sweetened with agave (34 calories for the bottle).

I loved the completely unsweetened flavored waters from Ayala’s Herbal Water, especially the clove cardamom and the ginger lemon peel flavors.

Wild Planet featured sustainable, wild caught, canned seafood. Their tuna is processed from the raw state with no liquids added.

My favorite yogurt, Fage (pronoucned fah-yay), had a lovely display, and sampled out whole cartons of yogurt with honey or fruit on the side. I saw that Fage is now inspiring imitators. Several other brands featured “Greek Style” yogurt, including Stoneyfield Farms. But I still preferred the taste of Fage.

But one company had an interesting spin on the whole grain movement.

Lowell Foods is producing a yogurt with fruit and whole grains blended right in. Interesting concept, but I’m not sure how it will sell.

Ozery’s One Bun whole grain hamburger buns, although thin, held up well when we used them in a turkey burger florentine over the July 4th weekend:

There was some fun celebrity spotting at the show too.

Here is Bobby Flay filming his segment for CBS’s Early Show at D’Artagnan’s booth.

Rick Bayless himself was dishing up fresh chicken tacos, chips, salsa and guacamole from Frontera Kitchen.

Dave, of Dave’s Gourmet, who was kind enough to pose with his Dave’s Insanity hot sauce line, even though his primary focus at this year’s show was to promote his new line of pasta sauces. The Butternut Squash sauce even won the SOFI award for best new pasta sauce.

Dave’s Butternut Squash Sauce with its SOFI award.

Last year, I liked the single serving packaging of humus, this year my best single serving award goes to Wholly Guacamole

for their 100 calorie packs of their classic all natural guacamole

And, finally, back to the non-fancy portion of the show, and to the schlock, but what loveable schlock. A product that seems more at home at the As Seen On TV store, but Wow! It really works! I want one.

The bacon goes on the tines, into the cup, then into the microwave for about 3 minutes. The result? Crisp, drained, bacon, with all the fat in the cup and no mess in the microwave. And it’s dishwasher safe too!!!

Gourmet Magazine’s Diary of a Foodie features lots of great video food porn.

I don’t often link to the bigger content sites, as I prefer to highlight individual bloggers that would otherwise get buried in the mainstream media. However in the case of Gourmet Magazine, they’ve got same utterly fantastic video content, direct from their PBS television series Diary of a Foodie, which is produced by Zero Point Zero Productions, the same people that bring you Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations.

Suffice to say that the folks at Zero Point Zero are the Shaolin monks/Kung Fu masters of video pornography, and Gourmet Magazine gives them an incredible Hi-Def canvas to work with.

The Diary of a Foodie website features entire episodes from 3 seasons of the show. I recently started watching this program on PBS, but you don’t have to own a HDTV set to get in on the fun.

I recently saw the “Ancient Traditions” episode from season 3, which was originally shown in January, about food in Korea, which was utterly mind blowing.  I encourage you to sit and watch every single one of these episodes, especially if you are a fan of No Reservations. It’s just like taking a trip with Tony but without the angst and the cigarettes — and it’s narrated by hardcore food bloggers and food writers from around the world who you’ve probably never even heard of.

Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks as seen from Edgewater, New Jersey

Mediterranean Delights at Greek Taverna in City Place Shopping Center in Edgewater, NJ

Summer produce abound at the Tenafly Farmers Market

My Tuesday morning started like this. Phone rings. 9AM.

Hey Jason, uh, it’s Christine. Javi just booted up the laptop at the store this morning and nothing is working. Can you stop on by?

Me: Sure!

I knew, of course, that this probably involved my entire day being completely shot to hell.

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

Green Door Cafe
1 Highwood Avenue, Tenafly NJ
(201) 567-8226

Green Door Cafe’s Storefront in downtown Tenafly, NJ.

As a few of you may be aware, I am a resident of the sleepy hamlet of Tenafly, which is situated on the northeast side of Bergen County, adjoining the towns of Cresskill, Bergenfield and Englewood. Tenafly, while being a wonderful residential neighborhood, has a bit of an unfortunate reputation of being the town that eats restaurants.

One of the restaurants that recently got the axe was Blockheads, an outpost of a NYC-based burrito chain. So I was rather surprised this week as I was driving by its former location to find Green Door Cafe, a self described “Doorway to real food” which only serves “proteins which are antibiotic and hormone free or organic” and produce that is “organic or locally farmed seasonally. We restrict our purchases to foods raised naturally without the use of chemical pesticides or fertilizers.”

I was expecting the place to be owned by a bunch of hippies wearing hemp clothing. What I wasn’t prepared for was being greeted by the former owner of Blockheads when I went in, Leon Bell. “Hey! Jason! The Off The Broiler Guy!”

Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

As it turns out, Leon decided to trade his SYSCO franchise concept for a Sustainable one. He joined forces with a new partner, chef John Marsh, a veteran of the New York City and New Jersey dining scene whose cooking experience includes working at restaurants  such as Tavern on the Green and Arthur’s Landing. The menu is cafe style, focusing on fresh salads, sandwiches, burgers and other comfort food items, with a few different entree dish specials each evening. The restaurant also features an impressive array of homemade desserts which is not to be overlooked.

Cafe Menu (Click on the photo to enlarge)

Dinner Additions (click on the photo to enlarge)

The atmosphere behind the Green Door is cozy and bright. Whether the food is pornographic is yours to decide.

Salmon Entree, ordered by another customer.

Mushroom Soup, accompanied by whole grain Balthazar Bakery Bread. The soup was of the non-creamy, very mushroomy variety. Both Rachel and I enjoyed it a lot.

The roasted vegetable side features cauliflower, turnips, rutabega, mushrooms, onions and brussels sprouts.

Green Door’s Mac and Cheese is amply cheesy and is of the saucepan, rather than the baked variety and is indeed tasty.

Rachel’s roasted chicken entree which was juicy and well seasoned.

A nicoise salad with sashimi-grade tuna. I would have liked a little more tuna in this portion, but otherwise the implementation was excellent.

An order of white beans with sundried tomato and oregano. On this evening the beans had been really undercooked but this may very well be addressed in some kitchen tweaks shortly.

Even the condiments at Green Door are organic and natural. The Heinz Ketchup is the organic variety as well.

Apple Tart Tatin, one of the many in house made desserts.

Ultra-Dense and rich chocolate brownies. I had a tiny taste of one of these and it was definitely rich enough to share.

Rachel and I opted for a seasonal berry cobbler with Haagen-Dasz ice cream.

The next day we came in to try some of their other items. This is a classic Vichy potato and leek soup, served chilled.

A salad destined for one of the other restaurant patrons.

Turkey Fontina sandwich (”The Grandpa”) and a Lobster Roll.

The cold appetizer sampler, which includes Tzatziki, Feta Cheese with Olives, Roasted Tomatoes and Hummus.

A peek at the dessert case.

Rachel went for the ham sandwich with sauerkraut, honey mustard dressing and Gruyere cheese.

I went for the sliced ribeye steak with onions, peppers and melted cheddar cheese.

A peach tart looking lonely in the dessert case.

Rachel and I finished up with a piece of the Apple Tart Tatin.

As I explained in a previous article last summer about my broadband situation, my employer, like many large technology services companies, has elected to classify my work situation as “Home-Based”, in that when I am not at a customer site, I’m working from home. So for connectivity to corporate email, our Intranet and Instant Messaging system, my link to the mother ship is entirely dependent on the reliability of my connectivity through Optimum Online, Cablevision’s cable broadband service.

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

One of the many highlights of the 2008 NASFT Fancy Foods Show in New York City at Javits Center. The Summer 2009 Show starts Sunday, June 27 and runs through Tuesday, June 30th.

Web Site: NASFT Fancy Food Shows

Fire & Oak Restaurant / Westin Newport
485 Washington Boulevard, Jersey City NJ 07310
(201) 610-9610

Web Site: http://www.southcitygrill.com

South City Restaurant Group’s latest, Fire & Oak restaurant at the brand-new Jersey City Westin Newport.

Rachel and I were recently invited to dine at a press luncheon for Fire & Oak restaurant, a brand new casual dining restaurant attached to the recently opened Westin Newport hotel in Jersey City, which is conveniently located near the Jersey City PATH and only a block and a half away from the Port Imperial Ferry to Midtown and Downtown Manhattan.

Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Fire & Oak at the Westin Newport is part of the South City Restaurant Group,  which operates three South City Grill restaurants in Northern New Jersey, as well as two other Fire & Oak locations, in Little Falls and Montvale.

I had never eaten at any of South City’s restaurants before, but I had experienced watching two of the organization’s chefs cook competitively against my friend Christine Nunn at the Ultimate Chef Bergen County events at Chef Central in Paramus. Back in January of this year, Chef Carmine Spinazzola plated some gorgeous-looking seafood Asian-Fusion dishes for the Lemongrass-themed elimination round. So when I heard he would be running the kitchen at Fire & Oak Newport, I was eager to see what he could do.

The bar area of Fire & Oak at the Westin Newport.

Single diners at the hotel need not worry about the awkwardness of having to sit at a table by themselves, the bar area is great for eating and socializing with other guests. South City also has a great wine list and beverage program.

Fire & Oak’s Lunch and Dinner menus are remarkably affordable and creative considering that it is a hotel restaurant in an urban setting. The casual dining atmosphere combined with the large array of upscale comfort food items on the menu makes it a great Jersey City dining choice for business lunches and dinners.

Chef Carmine Spinazzola

Fire & Oak’s main dining room is spacious with a warm, earthtone woody decor.

While Fire & Oak is primarily American/Mediterranean themed comfort/bistro cuisine, the restaurant has a few sushi items. These are spicy tuna rolls in a dinner-sized portion. Considering that sushi and Asian food is not the restaurant’s primary focus I thought these were surprisingly good.

Fried Oysters Appetizer, made with Pacific Oysters. These didn’t have the characteristc brinyness or funkyness you get from East Coast or Gulf oysters but I enjoyed them.

Macaroni and Cheese, served in a Staub cast iron casserole. I really liked this and kept grabbing for more. Could have easily eaten the whole thing by myself.

This roasted vegetable flatbread was a big hit at the table. Really nice seasoning and caramelization on the roasted vegetables on a thin crispy crust.

As was this beet and fresh tomato salad with feta cheese.

Fire & Oak serves excellent French Fries with their sandwiches and entrees, but you can also get Parmesan and Truffle Oil French Fries as an appetizer. I’m somewhat conflicted about the use of Truffle Oil in dishes as typically the ingredient is synthetic and if used with a heavy hand tends to overpower dishes with its aroma which really don’t need it. Rachel in particular really dislikes the ingredient, although I think that Fire & Oak does a good job of using it lightly, and they are using a much higher quality infused truffle olive oil rather than one of the synthetically manufactured ones.

Rotisserie Chicken with Pan Juices, one of their signature entrees. The piece of chicken breast which I tasted was nice and moist, cooked properly and seasoned well, although the skin was not as crispy as I would like.

Steak Salad ordered by one of the other guests. Steak prepared perfectly, nice and juicy.

Rachel ordered the crabcakes which are an excellent value. These are 90 percent lump crab with very little filling at all, there’s just enough egg and breadcrumbs here to use as a binding agent.

I ordered the “Best BLT”, which is inspired by the BLT sandwich featured in the Adam Sandler comedy “Spanglish” in which Chef Thomas Keller (of The French Laundry and NYC’s Per Se)  instructs Sandler’s character on how to make his favorite sandwich. Like in the movie, this BLT features a runny fried egg, crispy bacon, young lettuce and melted cheese over buttered toasted thick bread. My only complaint is at the end of June, the beefsteak tomato served in this sandwich still had a fairly white core. I admit to being something of a BLT snob when it comes to tomatoes and told Chef Carmine that maybe that until our beautiful Jersey tomatoes become available in the late summer, they might want to consider using slices of a smaller Roma-type tomato or an imported vine-ripened Holland or Israeli tomato rather than am unripe domestic beefsteak. When a Tomato is a prime featured ingredient in a dish, especially for BLTs it really has to be a good ripe one, regardless of what size tomato or type you use.

All of Fire & Oak’s desserts are big enough to share, but this Chocolate & Peanut Butter Pie was so rich it beckoned for five spoons.

Fire & Oak’s Key Lime Pie is made with real Key Lime Juice and one of the better ones I’ve had in New Jersey. It doesn’t have any Key Lime zest in it but it makes up for it with plenty of Key Lime tang.

The house baked Apple Pie a la mode was my favorite of the desserts. What can I say, I’m a traditionalist.

While Off The Broiler is primarily focused on food, as many of you know, I also write technology articles for ZDNet, CBS’s technology news site. Over the last few months I have been teaming up with Linux Magazine and DaniWeb columnist Ken Hess, where we broadcast live on BlogTalkRadio every Friday at 6:30PM EST on leveraging technology to save you and your business money. The format of the show is news and commentary for the first half hour, with the second reserved for special guests from the technology industry. This summer we are going to be featuring a lot of Linux and Open Source guests, so be sure to tune in.

The replays of all the shows are available at www.frugaltechshow.com, just in case you miss them.

Bacardi’s misogynistic Israeli Internet advertising campaign will only get them scores of disdain from American consumers. What the hell was Bacardi thinking?

I had to see it to believe it. Bermuda-headquartered Bacardi, the world’s largest spirits distiller, decided to launch a English and Hebrew language Internet ad campaign for Bacardi Breezers in Israel and on FaceBook (see cached link, original site seems to have been pulled) with online agency McCann Digital.

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

Shish! at Whole Foods Market
2701 Bergen Mall, Paramus NJ
(201) 226-1244

Other locations: Tribeca, NYC

The new Shish! stand at Whole Foods’s new Paramus. New Jersey location serves Middle-Eastern kebabs and mezze with an organic twist.

I recently had a chance to try the new Shish! middle eastern food stand at the brand new Whole Foods market in the recently revamped Bergen Mall, accompanied by former Bergen Record staff writer and experienced foodie Victor Sasson, who recently has started blogging about healthy and chemical-free shopping options in New Jersey. Victor is a Syrian Jew by birth, with a very discerning palate, and has an even greater level of experience with Middle Eastern food than I do, so I was interested in seeing his reactions to the food there.

Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

The main meat attraction at Shish! are the two types of Shawarma, one turkey with both white meat and dark meat, and the other a beef and lamb combination.

Here’s the salad table with various types of Mediterranean side dishes which you can pick to have on a combination plate ($12 for two sides and a meat)

This is my Lamb/Beef shawarma plate. Victor, Rachel and I both agreed that this was dried out and under seasoned. I really liked the  squash salad, which had fresh mint and dill in it.

Victor went for the Turkey shawarma, which while not as dried out as the lamb and beef, was still pretty dry, and still under seasoned. The red colored side dish here is muhammara, which is a spicy dip with red Aleppo pepper and walnuts, which I liked very much, although it could have used a bit more chile punch. Victor also indicated that in the various dips we tasted they were generally lacking in acidity and garlic flavor.

This is the falafel plate, accompanied by various types of pickles and a green salad. While indeed a colorful plate, both Victor and I thought that the falafels were under seasoned (lacking cumin, chile and parsley notes which are the characteristics of a good falafel) and had sort of a cakey texture to them.

The spicy eggplant salad on Rachel’s plate was very good, as was the Babaghanoush, not shown here, which was of the Israeli/Mayonnaisy/Smooth variety.

My reactions to Shish! are mixed. If you are shopping at the Bergen Mall and want some healthy options, I definitely think that the Whole Foods self-serve salad/food bar and Shish are good bets, although I would not consider Shish! to be a particularly good example of good Middle-Eastern/Mediterranean food in the Bergen County area. For that, I’d have to recommend you to Joeyness in Fort Lee or Bennies in Englewood for Lebanese style food, and Adonisa’s in Fort Lee, Greek Taverna in Edgewater or A Taste of Greece in River Edge for reasonably priced Greek. At the high end, Axia Taverna and Nisi are also very good choices.

I’m hoping that Whole Foods in Paramus will pay a little more attention to keeping the spit-roasted schwarma meats moister and be a bit more aggressive with the seasoning their dishes, because with some tweaks the Shish! stand could be a great place to eat.

Earlier this year Burger King had a Whopper Sacrifice promotion where if you de-friended 10 of your friends on FaceBook, you received a coupon for a free Whopper burger. Amazingly, a huge amount of people were willing to do this. However, I suspect that for a free iPhone 3G S with two free years of data and voice service — assume it’s the upper-end, 32GB model — that more serious, heinous acts of inhumanity would be willing to be committed by the average iPhone junkie.

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Chef Christian Albin, who passed away this last weekend at the age of 61. Albin was the long-time Executive Chef of The Four Seasons, pictured here in his marvelous kitchen in October of 2006.

Grilled Squid over Greek Salad at Adonisa’s in Fort Lee

Tri-Color Beet Bundle from Yuno’s Farm at the Tenafly Farmers Market

Victor Sasson and I lunch at Whole Foods’ SHISH! shwarma/falafel joint and discuss his love of Middle Eastern food and his new mission to help you find the best chemical and hormone-free shopping options in Northern New Jersey.