The kosher-restaurant scam

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New Jersey commuters might be able to take a subway from Secaucus to Grand Central Terminal.

What a farce. Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung fell for the kosher-restaurant scam again in today's piece on Nobo in Teaneck. What's the scam? It's charging outrageous prices for "kosher" fish and beef that probably isn't of any better quality than their non-kosher counterparts.


But the funniest joke played on the reviewer for The Record of Woodland Park is the claim people confuse Nobo with Nobu, the Japanese restaurant in Lower Manhattan. Maybe Hobo or Nogo.

But what would a high-end, non-kosher sushi restaurant be doing among all the kosher places in Teaneck's West Englewood section?


A few years ago, Ung herself wrote a glowing profile of Drew Nieporent of Ridgewood, one of the owners of Nobu, and quoted him as saying he had absolutely no plans to open a restaurant in North Jersey.

Kosher means a lot of things, but it doesn't guarantee the food was raised or grown naturally, although you can find kosher poultry without antibiotics and kosher beef that was raised on grass or a vegetarian diet and without growth hormones. 

What is 'kosher'?
 
Kosher does mean the animal was healthy before it was slaughtered. If you're kosher, you can't eat lobster, shrimp, scallops and other shellfish, or meat and dairy at the same meal. At home, you have to have separate pots and dishes for preparing and serving meat and non-meat dishes.

What about the kosher food served at Nobo? Ung doesn't say whether the fish is wild or the beef was raised naturally, but she falls for the scam in her data box, where she says "value" is "generally fine, considering the cost of kosher ingredients."

Nobo charges $34 for an entree of red snapper. That's really high. Is it the whole fish? A 20-ounce ribeye is $39! Is it grass-fed? All Ung says is it "rang with powerful flavor," whatever that means.

Maybe, it's all those unseen rabbis checking out processing plants and fisheries that raise the price of kosher food or even the rent a kosher restaurateur pays. Also, kosher restaurants often are closed before sunset on Fridays and all day Saturdays, so their revenues are lower than non-kosher places. They have to make it up someplace.


I expect more from a restaurant reviewer than mindless blather. Ung seems to forget she is a journalist first. Often, her reviews put readers last.


Better Living omits local restaurant health ratings today, but finds room for wire-service stories on holiday wine and hot-lines.

Neat packages

Today's front page contains four neat, little packages delivered to Editor Francis Scandale, head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and their lazy, incompetent assignment desk. 

The lead and off-lead stories are based on reports, that big New York Post photo came a from "perp walk" in Connecticut and the fourth element is a public hearing in Union Township. Not much hustle in any of that.


Governor Christie, who is probably one of the state's unhealthiest people, was conspicuously absent when first lady Michelle Obama visited Newark schools with a message to eat healthy (A-3). Why have we heard so little about what New Jersey is doing to curb childhood obesity since Christie took office in January?

Turning against Christie

An apparent production error robbed readers of Alfred P. Doblin's smug smile and byline on his A-23 column today, but the important thing is that the Editorial Page editor has finally found a mass-transit poposal he likes -- extending the No. 7 subway line to Secaucus from Manhattan.

With a stop at Grand Central Terminal, not "station," the line would fulfill transportation planners' decades-old dream of delivering North Jersey commuters to the East Side of Manhattan. 

Doblin calls on Christie -- whose ass he knows intimately from all the kissing he's done -- to use his bully pulpit on behalf of this project and for "creation, not negation." 

Lots of police news

The major stories from Hackensack and Englewood today are police news -- a big drug bust in the former (L-1) and a bunch of burglaries in the latter (L-3).  More police news (L-2) -- on the capture of a suspect who fled to Connecticut from Fort Lee -- inexplicably calls a Ford Fusion sedan an "SUV."


Road Worrier John Cichowski -- Sykes' chief space-filler -- has a column on L-1 today about the closing of an MVC office in Wyckoff. Someone should remind him he is the commuting columnist, not the sit-at-a-computer columnist.