In Hackensack, a Costco with no crowds, spicy food warms us at Bangkok Garden

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

In the nearly two years since the old Costco Wholesale warehouse in Hackensack reopened, members have found an oasis of calm at what is now called a Business Center.

Another Costco member I know describes the reimagined Hackensack warehouse as a combined restaurant supply house and consumer store.

On Tuesday, I was out of organic spring mix -- which serves as my daily salad -- and organic spinach, and I had a 2-pound bag of organic coffee beans I wanted to grind for my daily brew at home.

When I bought the beans on sale at the Costco Wholesale in Teterboro, that warehouses' two coffee mills were busy.

So on Tuesday, I drove to the Costco Business Center, and parked in the uncrowded lot.

After grabbing a shopping cart and showing my membership card at the door, I headed for an enormous cold room in the back of the warehouse.

That's where shoppers find milk, eggs, OJ, yogurt and many other items they are familiar with from the busy Teterboro warehouse.

I picked up a 1-pound tub of organic spring mix and another of organic spinach (only $3.69 each), paid with the Costco Visa credit card -- which is also a cash rebate card -- and took my coffee beans for a Turkish grind in the mill, which has been moved into a corner of the Costco food court.

No fuss, no muss. See video on brewing coffee at home, below:

SOME LIKE IT HOT: On a chilly and rainy Saturday, me and my wife warmed up with a few spicy dishes at Bangkok Garden Thai Restaurant, 261 Main St., Hackensack. Our main dish was called Pla Nung, a steamed whole striped bass ($26.95). But instead of the Thai brown bean sauce topping, we asked for a chili pepper-garlic sauce on the side.

ON A SCALE FROM 1 TO 10: As with the chili-garlic sauce we got with our fish, the server asked us how hot we wanted the dressing on the Som Tam Malakaw ($8.95) or crunchy Green Papaya Salad on a scale of 1 to 10. When I asked for 5, she cautioned me, so I revised that down to 3, and that was plenty hot for us.

SWEET & SPICY: We also shared an appetizer of Tod Mun Pla or Fish Cakes ($6.95) served with a Thai sweet and spicy chili sauce and ground peanuts. The menu says the chewy, deep fried  cakes are made with minced "fresh water fish." My wife also had a bowl of Thai Wonton Soup ($4.50 for small), made with chicken, not pork.

See: Our May 2017 visit to Bangkok Garden

Details

Bangkok Garden Thai Restaurant, 261 Main St., Hackensack; 201-487-2620. 

Open 7 days, liquor license, metered parking on street or in rear lot (25 cents for 30 minutes).

Website:

A Beautiful Setting for Thai Food

Eating Out + Eating In: Bangkok Garden, plus shopping for fish at the Super H Mart

At Bangkok Garden Thai Restaurant in Hackensack, a celebratory dinner for three included a whole fish, top left; wide rice noodles with shrimp and egg, bottom left; and a soft-shell crab special.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

Sad to say, but fans of Wondee's Fine Thai Food & Noodles in Hackensack will have to console themselves by visiting its longtime competitor, Bangkok Garden, only a block away.

First, Wondee's founders, Chef Wandee Suwangbutra and husband Tom, retired and handed over the kitchen to Air-Arisa Katengamkam, a young woman who trained by the chef's side.

The transition in 2015 was unannounced, but the quality of the food remained high, and customers noticed the dining room was spruced up with fresh paint and a new wooden floor to replace the worn, torn-in-places dark-blue carpet.

I had always been loyal to Wondee's, a BYO at 296 Main St. in Hackensack that had tastier food and lower prices than its rival on the next block.

Still, by last summer, Wondee's was on the ropes, a year or so shy of its 20th anniversary. 

In March, I visited Chef Arisa after lunch at Bangkok Garden, which was busy, and found her and a woman server alone in a restaurant without any customers.

Then, Wondee's closed for the chef's maternity leave, and now has reopened.

Yet, the dining room can only be described as shabby, at least judging from what I saw when I looked into the restaurant's plate-glass window on Main Street recently.

Hits and misses at Costco and other stores

Bangkok Garden Thai Restaurant's dining room is decorated elaborately. The restaurant, which says it was the first Thai place to open in Bergen County, also has a liquor license.

Bangkok Garden

We had a big dinner at Bangkok Garden to celebrate a birthday and Mother's Day, but made sure to do so the night before that big holiday.

Both my wife and son loved the food:

Two Won Ton Soups ($4.50 each), Green Papaya Salad ($8.95), a shrimp appetizer called Tod Mun Goong ($8.95); a Jumbo Soft-Shell Crab, deep fried and served over Bok Choy with a homemade Chili Sauce ($18.95); Siam Noodles with Shrimp ($11.95), and a deep-fried whole Striped Bass with Chili Pepper and Garlic Sauce ($26.95).

I also enjoyed the meal, but recall sauces were a little too sweet for me.

Tod Mun Goong, an appetizer special, was described as shrimp kneaded with egg, white ground pepper and light soy sauce, then breaded and deep-fried. The "light plum sauce" was a little too sweet.

When I ordered the Green Papaya Salad, the waitress asked how spicy we wanted it. Be cautious. "Medium" was about as spicy as I can take. Other choices are "mild" and "hot."

Bangkok Garden's Won Ton Soup is served with chicken, not the sliced pork my son and wife remember from Wondee's.

Bangkok Garden's dishes appear in vivid color on this dining-room screen, and we ordered one of them, Pad Sea-Eyew Beef, for a fourth family member who stayed home.

   

Details

Bangkok Garden Thai Restaurant, 261 Main St., Hackensack; 1-201-487-2620. Liquor license. Open 7 days. See website  for hours. Metered parking on street and behind restaurant in municipal lot off State Street.

Closed

Penang Malaysian & Thai Cuisine in Lodi has closed. We enjoyed the food on two visits.

Spicy Malaysian Fish

An enormous fish head was on display last Sunday in the seafood department of the Super H Mart in Ridgefield.

Live Crawfish were offered at $4.99 a pound. 

I've never heard of Mud Fish, which were a pricey $19.99 a pound.

The Super H Mart rolls out carts filled with ice to accommodate all of the fresh fish the Korean market offers.

Last Sunday in Ridgefield, fresh wild Red Snapper were only $3.99 a pound. The week before, red snapper were going for $5.99 a pound at the H Mart in Englewood (25 Lafayette Ave). 

At home we seasoned the cleaned red snapper, stuffed minced garlic into the cavity and added fresh lemon juice. We wrapped up three fish and vegetables individually in aluminum foil, and roasted three of them for about an hour at 400 degrees.

Don't miss the tender "cheek" just below the eye.

In addition to fresh and frozen fish, the Super H Mart offers a wide selection of prepared seafood and sliced raw fish or sashimi, above and below.

Meat eaters also are well served with shelves of marinated beef, pork and chicken, above and below.

On weekends, you can find more free samples of Korean food in Ridgefield than at other, smaller H Marts in Bergen County, above and below.

Outside the store, I picked up a large seedless watermelon from Texas that turned out to be perfectly sweet ($8.99).

Details

Super H Mart, 321 Broad Ave., Ridgefield; 1-201-943-9600. Open 7 days. H Mart is short for "Han Ah Reum" or "One Arm Full of Groceries."

Website: One Arm Full of Groceries