Bowling City

Bowling City

Hackensack, NJ

We were here one evening for a bowling birthday get-together for one of DJKung's coworkers.  For your money, Bowling City is an above-average bowling joint. 

But first, the food.  There is a little diner-style restaurant within the building (which I thought was pretty cool) that served your usual burgers and fries.  Of course, you can bring your food out to the bowling area as well, so the place was humming with a lot of kids having their pizza with their bowling.

Hearty minestrone soup for a cold winter night.

DJKung got a cheeseburger with fries, which he said was adequate.  We also had some nachos later on, but they were uneventful chips covered in yellow cheese.

Apart from the diner and the bowling area, there was also an enclosed bar with a couple of small pool tables, and an arcade area which was surprisingly busy with young kids.  I guess bowling can be too low-tech for the younger generation?  But no, the bowling alleys were also full of youngsters showing their skills.

The bowling itself was quite nice... the lanes were very smooth and even.  After you enter everybody's names on the scoreboard, their computers take care of the scoring and all that.  This was nice because not everybody knows the special rules that apply with strikes, and how you get that extra bonus throw with the last set. 

Let's go bowling!

DJKung and his winning leftward-curve throw.  He was the high scorer of the group that night.  Go DJKung!

At a certain time, Bowling City has disco bowling, where the lights go down and the music goes up a bit.  What's exciting about this is that you get a chance to win one free game redeemable at any time.  So say you go bowling once a year and you score and get lucky, you can show up next year and claim your free game!  All you have to do is throw a strike when the magic red pin shows up in your lane. 

This, unfortunately, was not as easy as the anouncement made it sound like.  One of the little rules was that the magic red pin had to be the lead pin, i.e., the pin closest to you.  So it did not happen all that often.  Further, before you throw that winning ball, you had to get one of the staff to personally observe you.  Which was a bit of a pain given that there were quite a lot of lanes and it was very noisy and fired up with everybody waiting for that special pin.  So alas, we missed a few chances at getting that free game, but everybody had a swell time. 

Take your time at Kevin's Thyme

Kevin's Thyme
614 North Maple Avenue
Hohokus, NJ 07423
(201) 445-6400
http://www.kevinsthyme.com/


So we've been looking for a nice little table for our living room where we can dump our keys and hats and whatnot upon walking in the door.  We tried Then & Now, but did not have much luck.  A quick online search revealed a big antiques store in nearby Hohokus, so off we went. 

Hohokus' downtown is small and quite pretty.  We saw this cute little place and decided to have lunch.

The interior of this tiny cafe is done up in a very nice French country style, with very nice lighting and a lot of attention to detail, all the way down to the plates and cutlery.  It seemed that they do a very brisk business with take aways and catering, because when we arrived, a litle shy of noon on a Saturday, they had already run out of a few items on their menu.  A few minutes later, the entire place, including their heated outside patio, was already full.

The lunch menu was very simple and consists of sandwiches, soups and salads. 

The soup of the day--- nineteen bean soup.  The tomato base was very flavorful and the beans were hearty, perfect for the fall weather.

My first choice was the grilled veggie wrap, which they had just run out of.  I decided on the Alaskan salmon BLT (with the bacon held).  The salmon was generous and freshly broiled and the fresh pesto mayo added a nice touch.

DJKung got the turkey and brie sandwich, which he said was very good.  The bread had a lot of nuts and seeds and perfectly complemented the filling.  The flavors of the turkey, melting cheese and cranberry jam worked beautifully together.

We are not cupcake people, but since it was DJKung's birthday weekend, we splurged on a red velvet cupcake.  The server kindly gave us one that was nice and cold from the fridge, too!  The cupcake was moist and not too sweet, although the icing was.  This is the first time I've had red velvet myself, and I can see why it's made a comeback. 

We can tell that this was not your average sandwich joint.  Later, when we came home, we looked up their website.  Kevin's Thyme was voted as the best for alfresco dining in the (201) Magazine [this is the local glossy devoted to Bergen county].  The chef is quite pedigreed too, which explains all the special touches. 

Dinner here looks like it would be a really special event.  It is BYOB too!