mike kivowitz presents……………………….the blog

red robin sends me a free burger coupon for my birthday!

while driving today back from passaic i passed a new restaurant called “organic thai food”. i know nothing more, but it’s on main st in passaic park by the haseeeds and i want to go. it’s not open yet and it has the WORST name ever

The Green Market Cafe in Ho-Ho-Kus is gone — something that escaped my attention until last night when a reader named Fred passed it along.

I’ll let Fred take it from here. He sent a fun obituary, with the [mostly] vegetarian cafe’s highlights and lowlights:

We’ve always seemed to have a love-hate relationship with this restaurant and it’s Chef/Owner Jim. GreenMarket was a small cafe, the only bastian of American vegetarian/vegan dining in Bergen County.

Here’s some of my un-fond memories:

1. Hiring a waiter who often told you it was late (at 7:30pm on a Saturday) and to hurry up with your order because they’d be closing the kitchen soon. He then kind of throw your silverware and plate of food on the table rather then gently placing it down. A few well placed low tips discouraged him from continuing to wait on us on repeat visits, except when he was the only one there. He also served very thin slices of the expensive vegan cake for dessert, so he could take the rest to eat after the restaurant closed.
2. We only ate there April-October,. We ate there once in the winter and I was cold. Jim often kept the heat down to save money. It was a cold storefront with ceiling heat and thin glass up front.
3. The never changing rotating soups choices.
4. The really good homemade cookies that at one point came from Trader Joe’s.

Let me close with some positives:

1. Jim’s willingness to accommodate any special requests to leave something out or put something in. An important thing to vegan/vegetarian/wheat-free/gluten free/sugar free people.
2. The veggies in the food were always fresh and bursting with flavor.
3. The homemade desserts were always great, sometimes vegan, sometimes wheat free, and even sugar free.
4. Carla, the waitress (ex-radio DJ from Arizona) who should have owned this place. A friend who single-handedly made this place a great success for a couple years in it’s midlife with her outgoing personality. She inspired Jim to cook many special items, have “theme” weekends such as Carribean, Mediterranean, & Mexican. Music and psychic nights. She even encouraged Jim out of his shell to make some new soups: African Tomato Peanut Soup? Goodbye GreenMarket Cafe.

Thanks for the good food and memorable memories.

– Fred

[From Green Market Cafe -- RIP]

go eat a bunny

i’ve never been to pinkberry (the name makes me laugh/reminds me of the slang for THE shocker… two in the …) but i heard its good. its guilt-free, fat free fro-yo (as jason calls it). i want to try it sometime and i will even though the line is out the door. My girlfriend and i went to the palisades mall on saturday for some afternoon shopping. we walked by cocoplum and decided to find out more. it is a 100% copy of pinkberry according to LALA. the food is exactly the same as pinkberry, well, coocplum has a few more flavors, but they were out of the greentea flavor.

the toppings are done in the same way, the food is the same overpriced price and they are as stingy and tight with their amount of toppings/fro-yo that they give you. yeah — so the moral is, if you are going to blatantly rip off another company’s idea, product, toppings, menu, design, slogans, fonts, etc, at least do it for cheaper.

soooo odd, and yeah — there seems just to be one cocoplum aka pinkberrywannabe.

enough said. if you want to try it, its near sharper image in the palisades mall.

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