What a right little gem
This summer salad options are getting as down, dirty and delicious as their fleshy partners, says Phoebe Luckhurst
SALAD is the joyless option. While fleetingly you feel saintly for opting for a lighter meal, the taunts and jeers from your party are so fierce that soon you feel like a deviant. The criticism is motivated by guilt and envy, but smugness goes down even worse. In the end, ordering something high-cal is simply easier.
However, this summer greens have taken a turn for the filthy: they’re no longer the boring option. Admittedly, nor are they the healthy one, but making one course of many a veg one certainly mitigates the calorie spend of a summer barbecue, and you’ll get a few of your five a day — even if they are swimming in melted cheese.
Soho chop emporium Blacklock (The Basement, 24 Windmill Street, W1, theblacklock.com) is dishing out barbecued baby gem lettuce. The restaurant, which is housed in a former brothel and presided over by Hawksmoor veterans, specialises in piles of meat but the barbecued baby lettuce is a crunchy palette-refresher in between the pillows of fat and flesh.
Jose Pizzaro (36 Broadgate Circle, EC2, josepizarro.com) also has grilled baby gem on the menu, which is served up with anchovies, cheese, sweet piquillo pepper and honey dressing.
“For me it’s the combination of the smoky and the salty that makes our dish what it is,” says chef Jose Pizarro. “It’s completely unexpected — the tang of the La Peral cheese, the slight sweetness of the piquillo peppers, the salt from the juicy anchovies and then this incredible smokiness from the lettuce on the plancha.”
At Pizza East’s Shoreditch restaurant (pizzaeast.com) it’s artichoke with scamorza cheese.
Q Grill in Camden (29-33 Chalk Farm Road, NW1) has a couple of other interesting takes on formerly boring salad staples: salt-baked and smoked beets served with goat’s cheese and maple-tossed walnuts (lick-the-plate sweet) and green beans with smoked aioli. And Duke’s (33 Downham Road, N1, dukesbrewandque.com) does deep-fried pickles rolled in breadcrumbs and served with a Creole garlic remoulade. This sinful incarnation is nothing like the saintly cucumber to which it is distantly related.
And it’s not all grill-heads who are cooking their veg on the BBQ: the elegant Portrait Restaurant (National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Pl, WC2, npg.org.uk) is serving up grilled asparagus and grilled baby gem lettuce marinated in olive oil and lemon juice. These are lighter, zestier options, as befits the austere surroundings — this is the highest echelon of the trend.
Going green is never usually this fun.