Jason Perlow x

(originally appeared on Chowhound.com, June 25 2001) Yesterday my wife and I went with a close friend to Kinara (which, I understand means "On the Water" in Hindu?) a fairly new Indian restaurant in Edgewater on River Road, across the street from the Whole Foods supermarket. The restaurant opened in late february and specializes in punjabi cuisine. Kinara has all the old moghlai favorites, elegantly prepared, but theres a lot of stuff there that you wont find at your average indian restaurant. We ordered 1) Mixed kebab platter which included peices of chicken tikka (tender, not dry), lamb sikh kebab (elegantly seasoned with herbs, also juicy), and reshmi kebab (another kind of chicken kebab, also very good but not done with tandoori spices like the tikka) which was served on a sizzling platter with caramelized red and white onion and thinly sliced green pepper. Sorta like indian fajitas. We ate it with a simple garlic naan flatbread, also excellent. 2) Chicken Vindaloo: a stew of boneless chicken in a very spicy hot and sour sauce. Very different from other vindaloos I've had, almost like barbeque cuisine. excellent. 3) Karahi Lamb: Stir fried cubes of lamb cooked with bell peppers, onions and tomatoes. Lamb very tender, subtle spiciness, very good. 4) Fish Malibari: rachel ordered this, i didnt try it but she liked it a lot. Fish curry made with freshly ground coconut. Had a few whole dried chili peppers swimming in the curry, she said it was spicy but not overpoweringly so. 5) Jerra Aloo: Cubes of potatoes smothered and simmered with cumin and other spices. Very spicy, excellent vegetable accompaniment to our meal. 6) Mango lassi: among the best I've had. Served in a metal mug, frosty on the outside, sweet but not overpoweringly so and tangy. Worked well to tone down some of the spicy stuff we had. All the dishes were served with rice, and a generous amount of it as well. I'll note this place has a very extensive menu and we' d probably have to go there 10 times to get a broader feel of the place, they have that many dishes. 15 different appetizers, 8 different tandooris, 10 kinds of naan/paratha, 10 chicken dishes, 8 lamb dishes, 6 seafood/fish dishes, 16 veggie dishes, 2 thalis, 8 biryanis. I'll also note that everything had the correct amount of spice to it and it wasnt toned down for americans, the place had a predominantly indian crowd. Also unlike a lot of indian restaurants I didnt smell caradamom coming out the rafters, and I didnt taste too much of it in the food, which for me is a good thing since I dont like too much of the stuff. ** NOTE: we went there for the luncheon buffet a week or so later, it was good but nothing special, typical tandoori stuff. *** (Edited by Jason Perlow at 11:32 am on July 29, 2001) ----- Jason Perlow, eGullet.com Community Coordinator

Noodle Chu is a great place -- the owner, Harry Chu, is the original owner of Bill and Harry's in east hanover and also owns Mr. Chu, a really good but more americanized restaurant also in E. Hanover across from the novartis campus on RT10. Mr. Chu is a primarily taiwanese-style restaurant and the staff internaly speaks mandarin, very different from Noodle Chu which of course is a HK-style place. Harry is usually holding the fort at Noodle Chu on dim sum days over the weekend. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote: from Rosie on 9:56 am on July 29, 2001 If you liked Hunan Cottage you should also try Noodle ChuRt. 46Parsippany973-299-6518 It is in a shopping center. Call for directions. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Edited by Jason Perlow at 4:58 pm on July 29, 2001)

Orginallly posted on Chowhound on January 29, 2001) On the recommendation of a nice Chinese couple sitting at the table next to us on Chinese New Year's Eve at Noodle Chu in Parsippany on Route 46 (our current Dim Sum fave in the Morris County area), we were told we could find the genuine Shanghainese/Taiwanese item at the curiously named Hunan Cottage on Route 46 in Fairfield. This intrigued me. We had never taken Hunan Cottage seriously because it looked like your basic American-style Chinese restaurant, we had passed by it by car several times over the last few years we had been living in this area, presumning we could find more authentic stuff in the area, like Noodle Chu, Ocean King (RT10 in Livingston) and the late Silver Pond. In fact, when we went in, there were a ton of ethnic Chinese eating there on the second night of Chinese New Year. Good sign. As we sat down we were immediately given your typical, American chinese menu with standard chinese restaurant fare. I looked puzzedly at the hostess, and exclaimed loudly, "What about me saying NI HAO MA to you on our arrival did not tip you off we were serious?". Immediately, she apologized, and snatched the menus away. "Oh, you want the CHINESE menu. Very Sorry!". Be sure to ask for this right away if you go there. The "Chinese" menu has lots of good stuff, lots of noodle, vegetable and seafood dishes, including crab and pork Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings). The menu is distinctively Shanghainese and Taiwanese, which is bizarre considering the restaurant's deceiving name. Apparently, the owner is from Shanghai and the chef is from Taiwan, but the chinese name of the restaurant is apparently reminiscent of a famous restaurant in Taiwan. Go figure. Soup dumplings were juicy and had just the right mixture of crab and pork, with a nice savory broth inside. Definitely the genuine article, most of the patrons there had them on the other tables, so apparently this is what the place is known for. Also had "homestyle noodles with beef" which were sphagetti like, nice and chewy tossed with scallion and shredded beef and napa cabbage in a simple soy sauce, very good, as well as a pickled cabbage soup with pork, authentic and not overpoweringly sour. Scallion pancakes were a bit too chewy and doughy with not enough scallion. Rachel had the crispy deep fried half chicken with accompanying traditional soy/cilantro dipping sauce, very good. Also had bean curd skin stuffed with mushrooms over baby bok choy in a light gravy, also very good. Couple next to us had some kind of shanghainese fried lobster dish, looked excellent.

This is a post I made on Chowhound a few weeks back. I know we have a few chile heads here (yo, Mamster!!!) so I thought you might enjoy this. (Posted originally July 11, 2001 on Chowhound.com) I've been a long time patron of Bangkok Garden on Main Street in Hackensack, a very nice and classy thai place that caters primarily to american and indian clientele, and was convinced this place was the best thai restaurant in northern nj and dismissed going to Wondee's, which is just down the street from Bangkok Garden, for over a year. Boy was that a stupid mistake. We were dressed kinda schlumpy today and we didnt feel like changing, so i figured what the ####, try wondees. I was astonished to find Wondees had a primarily Thai clientele and a very extensive menu with a lot of vegetarian options. And if you ask for something Thai spicy here, they really take you seriously. Many of the herbs and chilis used in the dishes are grown from Wondee's garden in the back parking lot (which consists of several dozen large pots and planters --- after our meal the owner and chef, Wondee, the restaurants namesake, was even nice enough to give us a tour and an education of the different chili plants, and she gave us some chili seedlings and a asian eggplant plant to grow in our home garden when I mentioned I was into growing chilis!). I ordered the benchmark dishes for a thai restaurant --Gang Keow Warn (green curry with chicken) and Pad Thai, both of which were authentically prepared and with obvious care and love by Wondee, with lots of herbs and chilis. Rachel ordered "Ocean of Garlic" which was a mixed seafood dish with shrimps, squid, mussels and scallops in a salty and very garlicy sauce, also very good. Appetizers were thai spring rolls (very good), pork sate (heavily seasoned and not dried out, excellent) and Tom Kha Gai coconut chicken soup, which had a lot of chili oil in it, lots of basil and lemongrass -- one of the best I've had. We stuck up a converstation with a thai gentleman who lives in englewood who comes here at least once a week, he had a whole red snapper in a red curry with tamarind sauce, it looked and smelled awesome. Like sriprathai in queens, Wondee has a large cart with all kinds of thai desserts and snackies including various dried fruits (we brought home some dried green guava with chili, dried mango and dried star gooseberrys) , other salty crunchy looking things as well as the lime green jello-ey thingies cut into diamond shapes. they had a mango and rice dessert on the menu but we didnt elect to try it, we were very full. One thing of note is that they offer the dishes in small and large sizes, so you can try a lot more different things. We of course overordered and got the large sizes, which are very generous portions, and I ended up taking 3/4 of my curry and half the pad thai home.

Doc you may want to check out the HollyEats.com web site, which has a lot of the stuff you may be looking for. Its got a lot of great pics and reviews of cheesesteak places -- and you gotta love the guy for being one of the inventors of the Big Mac! http://www.hollyeats.com