NJ Dining: Post-Sandy Limited Time Menu at Blu, Next Door and Daryl Wine Bar

Beginning this Tuesday, November 13th, Zod Arifai, owner and executive chef at the acclaimed Blu and Next Door in Montclair, and Daryl Wine Bar in New Brunswick, will be offering two courses plus a bite of dessert for limited-time menu at all three of his restaurants, priced at just $19.50 (beverages, tax and gratuities not included).

If you’ve never had the opportunity to dine at one of Zod’s restaurants, this is the perfect opportunity to experience his cuisine.

Arifai wrote:

In the wake of the disaster caused by Hurricane Sandy and the following Nor’easter, thousands of lives have been disrupted.  Simple things we take for granted, like electric, gas and food, have been in short supply.  In light of these circumstances, many people have expressed that they would enjoy an inexpensive, quick, casual, hot meal, without any fuss.

  

In appreciation of our customers and their needs, all three of my restaurants, Blu, Next Door and daryl will be offering a menu priced at $19.50*.  The menu, detailed below, will include two courses, plus a few bites of a sweet ending.  Beginning on Tuesday, November 13, the menu will be available everyday, including weekends, until November 30.  Beginning on December 1, through December 30, 2012, the menu will be available weekdays only.  

 

For a look at the menu, visit Hot From The Kettle.

NJ Dining: Meatless Monday at Rutherford Pancake House

Happy #MeatlessMonday.  Here’s the weekly post from Hot From The Kettle’s Veggie Girl, Dianne Wenz:

For vegans, the most unfriendly meal of the day is usually breakfast. Even if the dish is meatless, it’s usually made with eggs, milk or cheese, which vegans eschew. While it’s pretty easy to make tofu scrambles and egg-free pancakes at home, eating out can be pretty tricky. But lucky for us, we have Rutherford Pancake House, which serves both vegan and omnivorous fare, so it’s a perfect place to take family or meet with friends who might still be slightly wary of vegan food.

Read more from the Rutherford Pancake House on Hot From The Kettle.

An Iced Coffee Primer

Here’s a classic OTB post that I thought you would all enjoy — Jason

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, El Pico 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-$3.50 for a 10 ounce can or $2.50 for a 10oz brick. 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.

Latino-Style Espresso Coffees. Cafe Bustelo, Pilon, and El Pico are all  made by Rowland Coffee Roasters in Miami, Florida.

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

All Conched Out

Rachel and I just returned from a vacation in Grand Bahama, and we’re both pretty wiped. The photos below we took in December of 2008 still very much reflect the native cuisine of the island, and I can assure you, we ate an awful lot of it this trip.

• Also See: Food and Dining in the Bahamas (Complete Flickr Photo Set)

I’ll have some new photos of Bahamaian beach food (and the beautiful beaches) to put up shortly. But in the mean time, feast your eyes on the Island nation’s favorite marine gastropod, the ubiquitous Bahamian conch.

This is one of the many conch shell dumping grounds on Grand Bahama Island. There are literally tens of thousands of shells here in this one pile.

In the Bahamas, it’s all about the Conch. Click on the “Read the rest of this entry” link below for more.

Picnic a Les Marmitons

by Rachel Nash Perlow

Chef Christine Nunn of Picnic, The Restaurant (opening June 2010), was the special guest chef at the New Jersey chapter of Les Marmitons‘ Spring event.

We feel a bit of a Yenta’s pride in this as another OTB friend Eric Eisenbud, and former President of the chapter, was the event organizer, responsible for procuring the guest chef and provisions. For those who don’t know, “Les Marmitons is a gastronomic and social club of gentlemen who share a common interest in fine food, wine and the culinary arts.“

Chef Christine Nunn discusses the menu with current NJ chapter President, Efrain Raices (right), and John Howlet (left), a past president of the NJ chapter and the current Vice President of Les Marmitons International.

Click here for a slide show of all of Jason’s photos of the event.

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

Grillin’ on the Bay 2010

There are many things to like culinary-speaking about Brooklyn. It’s a huge melting pot for different cultures and many of New York’s food traditions, and most of the country’s best and most iconic ethnic dishes originate from there.

It has some of the best Pizza imaginable in the entire country and is the cradle of Jewish cuisine as we know it in the United States. Arguably the best hot dog on the planet originated in Brooklyn. And so on, and so on. Brooklyn is America’s premium brand name for ethnic culture.

However, I don’t normally consider Brooklyn to be a huge barbecue town. But last Saturday, my views on this were seriously challenged.

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

The Pizza of Affliction

Ah yes. The Matzah Pizza.

Many gentiles know of Matzah, and that Jews eat it on Passover. However, even those that do know of Matzah and when it is consumed probably do not realize that Matzah is not just consumed during the Seder itself, but for seven days during the entire Feast of Unleavened Bread.

That means if you are an observant Jew, you are stuck with eating this stuff several days after the turkey and brisket leftovers have all been consumed.

While Matzo meal is used for a number of enjoyable culinary applications, such as the beloved Matzo Ball Soup, and Kugels, Matzot themselves don’t rate particularly high on the enjoyment scale on their own.

Oh, there’s Matzo Brei,  but at that point the physical properties of the shitty cracker in question have been completely transmuted into something resembling French Toast.

So Jews have been trying for an eternity to do something ELSE with Matzot. Sometime in the 20th century, American Jews got the idea of using  them  for half-assed salami sandwiches, PBJs and the like.

And then in the 50’s or the 60’s the Matzah Pizza came, which no sane pizza enthusiast would ever put in their mouth or even remotely call a Pizza. Especially since virtually all Matzah Pizzas were made with horrible processed jarred sauces which were Kosher for Passover knockoffs of stuff like RAGU or Pizza Quick.

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

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.

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

NJ Dining: BBS Chicken

BBS Chicken
561 Livingston Street, Norwood NJ
(201) 768-1230

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

BBS Chicken, the rogue warrior of Fried Chicken in Norwood, is the new king of Korean Wings in North Jersey.

As many of you are aware, I’m a bit of an obsessive when it comes to Korean Fried Chicken.

In Northern New Jersey, since I last wrote about the subject in 2007, there have been a number of openings of new Korean wing joints. Unidentified Flying Chickens in Tenafly opened in 2009 and in early January 2010, its sister restaurant in Englewood, Green’Licious Cafe also opened.

However I think there’s a new wing king, and unlike the big names such as Bon Chon which has multiple locations in the NYC/NJ metro area,  it’s an independent takeout/delivery-only store run by a pair of young, enterprising guys with a passion for making a quality product, and they’re on the main drag of Livingston Street in Norwood, where several Korean  businesses have opened up in the last few years, further extending the Korean community from their commercial centers in Palisades Park, Fort Lee, Leonia and Ridgefield.

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

NJ-Based Chinese OTB Groupie Needed

Yup, it’s finally come down to this, we’re absolutely desperate. We’re looking for that special someone who can speak Mandarin, Cantonese and other regional Chinese dialects that is familiar with the New Jersey Chinese restaurant scene and knows how to get us “The Good Stuff”.  There are restaurants we’d like to go to, but our lack of Sino-communication skills are preventing us from getting the very best authentic dishes.

If you can tolerate hanging out with a bunch of hungry and loud food-obsessives that like to take photos of every single thing they eat, inquire within to jperlow AT Gmail DOT com.