It was one of those times where opening the front doors brought a refreshing splash of nice cool air onto your face. The apparent 20+ degrees difference in temperature with the 95 degree heat outdoors was welcoming when we first walked into the new P.F. Chang’s Restuarant along the long stretch of new construction in the Edgewater, NJ / West New York, NJ / Weekhaken NJ area/
The restaurant was empty a little before noon and we sunk into a booth along the side of the spacious main room.
What a pleasant surprise! A lunch menu with “rice bowls” for a little under $10 each. Soup. rice, entree. I went for the crispy chicken dish and we also got the beef with broccoli.
The server quickly cautioned me as if I should know already, “You know that that dish comes with like, only 3 or 4 little pieces of chicken, right?” After guilting me into thinking about getting the lunch bowl and trying to “upselling me”, I picked the main lunch entree version for $12.
Boy did we quickly find out why the restuarant was empty, even though there were tons of companies in the office buildings right down the road.
We literally got 4 tiny pieces of beef with our Beef & Broccoli dish. I can’t even use the words “little” or “smallish”– you could only use the word “tiny”.
And they lacked in quantity, the chef made up for it in volume of salt put into all the dishes. It was the most salty lunch I’ve ever had period.
My $12 main dish wasn’t any better. It came on a zen like serving dish that was approx 4″x7″ — a little bigger than a photograph. The dish was so small that I had to ask the food delivery guy (they have specialization of duties apparently) if this was in fact the lunch bowl or the main entree size dish. He confirmed the worst, that it was in fact a “full” entree sitting in front of me.
Good thing my 3 year old ordered one of the small lunch bowls for himself vs. planning to share one of our dishs. It was one meal where we didn’t encourage our child to eat any more than he wanted to since we were so hungry ourselves (from the lack of it on our own plates).
Would we ever go back to P.F. Chang’s in Weekhaken, NJ ever again? NO. NOT EVEN IF YOU PAID FOR MY MEAL.
Our time is precious, and this is one restaurant that is clearly a waste of anyone’s time (and money).
To reiterate — I RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT EVER GO TO THIS RESTUARANT unless you want sub-par service, crazy high prices, and SALTY, SALTY, SALTY food.
P.F. CHANG’S RESTUARANT 10 Port Imperial Blvd West New York, NJ 07093
WOW. I like Panera Bread before, but today I found one that is the nicest Panera Bread Cafe and Restaurant I’ve ever been to to date.
Located off Route 78 in Martinsville, NJ at 100 Marketplace, Martinsville, NJ, this Panera is one of the anchor stores in a brand new shopping center.
The Panera Bread is very spacious, has a fireplace and of course free WiFi. They even have internet terminals at the back of the store for you to use free if you don’t have your laptop with you.
In the mornings, it was really quite, so I got a solid hour of work done with literally just 3 customers in the whole store. At about 11am, people start to file in for lunch. There’s a bunch of corporate campus right around the shopping center, and it looked like a lot of those corporate workers coming in groups to work.
As usual, there were a bunch of pharmaceutical rep-type looking people that were in the store as well with their laptops set-up head to head as if they’re playing battleship. I’ve noticed a lot of drug reps hanging out at various Panera Bread’s I’ve been to. It’s the free wifi + coffee or food + meeting place with other reps that draws them probably since they don’t have their own offices and basically live out of their cars.
Most other Panera’s I’ve been to in the morning have their own little groups of senior citizens or “moms” that hang out as part of their normal routine, but this location either is so new that it hasn’t been found yet, or there aren’t that many of these types in the area (probably the former vs. the latter reason).
Anyway, it sure was pleasant to sit down with coffee and log onto the net hassle-free (vs. Starbucks which is free too now, but makes you go through an extra steps of setting up an account, rewards account, and logging in each time).
This summer has a bunch of blockbuster movies coming out in the theaters. But sometimes the movie you want to see isn’t available at the time you want to see at the closest movie theater.
What to do?
Check out GOOGLE MOVIES for showtimes of all local theaters easily:
All you have to do is enter a zip code and after that you can click on specific movie titles to sort by that movie and all available showtimes locally.
For example, we wanted to catch the new Narnia movie in the morning if possible. So here’s the search that helped up find a 10am and 10:50am show!
Even though Livingston is in Essex County, for some reason the Livingston Library is part of the Bergen County Cooperative Library system.
So what? It means that you can log on to www.bccls.com and order books from any of the numerous libraries in the entire Bergen County area for free. And guess what, they’ll deliver the books or videos to Livingston Library for free and then call you when it’s ready to pick it up!
It’s an amazing resource, why not take advantage of it?
Yes, that’s right: take advantage of what Bergen County taxpayers have paid for on your behalf!
Not your typical hang out, but a worthy tip for travelers…
Office Depot stores now offer Free Wi-Fi hotspots in their stores!
So if you’re on the go and need to connect to the internet to send/receive emails or do some surfing, here’s another national chain that offers free WiFi so you can avoid those $10/day hotel wifi connection charges.
If you have not been to the Liberty Science Center since it reopened after the two year renovation, you definitely have to plan a visit!
This month there’s an exhibit on race from the American Anthropological Association. Scientific understanding of human variation is beginning to challenge racial differences and even question the very concept of race.
And, this age appropriate exhibit for elementary students is perfect for discussions and exploration for something that’s so important in our society.
The Liberty Science Center is located at 22 Jersey City Boulevard, Jersey City, New Jersey www.lsc.org.
Don’t forget that there is a $10 off family ticket purchase coupon. Coupon code A073 — It is available in the Comcast Winter Guide which is a recent statement stuffer insert with your Comcast cable bill.
Here’s your chance to get your copy of his new book Bobby Flay’s Grill It! signed by Bobby himself today from 3:00 o’clock to 5:00 o’clock PM. 
