Chief restaurant reviewer forgets she is a reporter first

Parking in front of Joyce Chinese Cuisine and other tenants at Kress Plaza, a strip mall in River Edge, requires the skills of a constitutional scholar to interpret all of the signs warning customers about time limits, towing and other bad news.

The Record's rave review of Joyce Chinese Cuisine in Friday's edition makes no mention of the parking restrictions or that customers who use the bigger lot in back of the strip mall won't find a rear entrance to the restaurant. This photo was taken today before the restaurant opened at 11 a.m.

The restaurant, at 478 Kinderkamack Road, also has a sign on parking regulations, above, in addition to two others on nearby stores, below.

This sign means that if you park in front of the restaurant, you have to finish your meal in 30 minutes.

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Some River Edge residents were incredulous when they learned town fathers had approved a large Chinese restaurant for a Kinderkamack Road strip mall where parking is notoriously difficult.

Then, two friends joined a second couple for dinner at the new restaurant, Joyce Chinese Cuisine, and were incredulous they were charged an introductory price of $6 for a pot of tea that is free just about everywhere else.

Now that the restaurant has had its grand opening that pot of tea is listed on the menu at $8.

Starry eyed

You won't learn any of this by reading Restaurant Reviewer Elisa Ung's rave, 3-star review of Joyce Chinese Cuisine in The Record on Friday (BL-16).

But there is lots of gee-whiz reporting on the "more than $1 million" the owners spent to turn a vacant space "into an elegant restaurant" -- when every restaurant reviewer knows or should know readers can't eat the wallpaper.

Difficult parking at a suburban restaurant and an $8 charge for a pot of Chinese tea are two turnoffs that will keep me away no matter how good the Sichuan food might be at Joyce Chinese Cuisine. 

Lan Garden on Route 46 west in Ridgefield also serves Sichuan cuisine, and that restaurant, which is now having a soft opening, and Lotus Cafe in Hackensack have plenty of convenient parking out front.

Today's paper

Don't expect The Record to do any serious reporting on some lawyers' outrageous hourly rates or the roughly one-third they collect after huge monetary settlements of civil lawsuits.

In fact, Staff Writer Kibret Markos has filed numerous stories on settlements of many hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars without ever mentioning how much of that goes to the lawyers.

The rare byline of Jean Rimbach apears today over a front-page story on the $615,000 in legal fees Bergen County will be paying for two county police officers who were found not guilty in a police shooting (A-1).

On Aug. 16, The Record also reported in a Page 1 story the law firm that whitewashed Governor Christie's role in the George Washington Bridge scandal has billed "taxpayers" $6.5 million.

Hourly rates

Doesn't the county or state have the right to ask a judge if the fees are reasonable? Is that being done in these cases?

What about an investigative story on lawyers' hourly rates and whether they effectively deny due process to plaintiffs who cannot afford to pay for representation?

And are any lawyers in North Jersey actually doing significant pro bono work? 

Local news?

There is so little local news in today's paper a reporter was asked to write a story even after finding out no North Jersey activists are demonstrating over the shooting of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Mo. (L-1).

On L-6 in Local, the local-assignment editors scrambled to fill huge holes with wire-service obituaries of two people no one has ever heard of.

Friday's paper

Page 1 of The Record on Friday read like a regional edition of The New York Times with stories on Ferguson, Mo.; the beheading of an American journalist in Syria, new DEA limits on a painkiller, Ebola and the national 'knockout' game (A-1).

In Local, the only real news was the death of Violet Cherry, former director of Englewood's Health Department (L-1).

Her obituary shared L-1 with a story on "a study" of a DPW access road in Paramus.

And why didn't head Assignment Editor Deirdre Sykes and her deputy, Dan Sforza, do more with a Teaneck Police Department tradition of bidding goodbye to retirees with a parade and party (L-2 photo)?