bartl

A great new barbecue place has opened up in Sloatsburg, NY on Route 17; it's called "Hog Heaven BBQ", and the owner used to do catering before he opened the roadside eatery. I put a more detailed review on yelp.com if you want to check it out.

I can't read a Nero Wolfe book without getting hungry. I discovered the Nero Wolfe Cookbook (by Nero Wolfe author, Rex Stout). It would have been cute if he had called it "Too Many Recipes", but a lot of people probably wouldn't get it. It's out of print, but available, but check your library first.

The waitress claims they changed the recipe about 6 months ago. My wife and I had been there about a year or so ago, and found the pastrami close to the quality in the Edison location, and the Lyndhurst location was much closer. From now on, it's Edison for us, or to New York for Katz's, Sarge's, or Carnegie (we haven't been to 2nd Avenue since the reopening). Near where we live, in the Foster Village center in Bergenfield, there's a kosher deli which serves "will do in a pinch" pastrami at a very reasonable price.

The Harold's in Lyndhurst has taken a triple nose-dive; the quality of the food, customer service, and even their business ethics have hit bottom. In mid-February (2009), we ordered a double meat (26 ounce) pastrami sandwich and a knish. When the sandwich came, we were unpleasantly surprised. As the waitress then confirmed, they had changed the pastrami recipe. Instead of the richly flavored, smoky, superior meat we had been served there in the past, the meat was more akin to cheap supermarket corned beef with some black pepper on the outside, in both flavor and texture, without any detectable smoke flavor. Also, the sandwich appeared to be a bit on the small side. We asked the waitress if she was sure this was the 26 ounce and not the 19 ounce pastrami sandwich, and she assured us that it was. The bill specified that we did order the 26 ounce sandwich. The potato knish did not have the usual traditional Jewish fried-onion in shmaltz flavoring; instead it was bland whipped potatoes in a pastry crust. We brought half the sandwich home with us. Still doubting the waitress' claim, I weighed the meat on a scale, and, sure enough, there was only 9 ounces left; they had given us the 19 ounce sandwich and charged us for the 26 ounce sandwich. We called the restaurant the next day about the overcharge and the missing half pound of meat, and were told to speak to Carlos, the general manager. We called Carlos twice over the next few days; both times he promised to get back to us to resolve the problem. No response. The fourth time we called, we spoke to the bartender, who promised us that Carlos would get back to us. They never returned any of our calls. We have realized that the restaurant management has no intention of even talking to us, much less trying to make it right. The only conclusion we can come to is that Harold's in Lyndhurst no longer cares about quality or customer service.

I can give you the recipe. It'll be two fifty. (it's a reference, for those who don't understand. And I'm amazed nobody has beaten me to it...).

Greasy is authentic; tell them to hold it down, and they will.

I'll ditto Sanducci's. My wife and I figured something was up when we bought a broccoli roll from the attached salumeria, and it had AMERICAN cheese. The service and ambiance is wonderful, and the food is diner quality, AT BEST. We ordered eggplant rollatini stuffed with ricotta and prosciutto, and, if you looked with a magnifying glass, you could ALMOST see a fleck or two of prosciutto. A seafood over pasta dish was boiled seafood over pasta, where the only seasoning was hot water. When we complained, it was brought back with a few pieces of RAW garlic on it. The other food we had was, as I mentioned, about the same quality you'd find at a local diner.

Odd; I pass there on my way home from work every evening around 6, and there's never a line. Bart

My wife and I go to the Ridgewood one a couple of times a year; it IS good, and pretty reasonably priced for Ridgewood. Bart