The summer after my freshman year of college, I was clearing tables at a beachfront restaurant in St. Augustine, Florida. Parched and sticky with sweat, I watched as a salad was brought to nearly every table: giant geometric chunks of watermelon and feta, piled on a plate with basil. I cleared the plates, each time tempted to sneak in a leftover to rehydrate. On my last day, the manager said I could order anything. I sat down at a table for the first time and ordered a salad as a diner. It was a revelation. The salty feta sliced through the refreshing fruit not like a sword, but like a high note in two-part harmony—Paul McCartney to John Lennon, Michelle Branch to Jessica Harp.
The salads I ate in my youth, the ones I remember most fondly, all had this effect, and they all contained cheese. The contrast between cool, robust base notes (fruit, veggies, lettuce) and salty, creamy accents (cheese) made each bite of these salads feel like more than just a salad. The day I interviewed for my first food writing job, even before I got it, I celebrated with a glass of rosé and a Caesar salad. A pile of romaine lettuce hearts drizzled with Parmigiano-Reggiano and sprinkled with fried parsley bay leaves was exactly how I wanted to mark the big day.
Food doesn’t necessarily have to be the yardstick by which you measure your life, but like a song, a good meal — even a salad — can bring you back to a past self. In 2001, 20-year-old Wisconsin native Adam Baumgart moved to New York City to cook in fine dining restaurants, but those jobs didn’t stick with him. Instead, he stayed with jobs at local joints like Gabriel Hamilton’s Prunes (where he prepared brunch as head chef) and Franny’s, a popular Brooklyn pizzeria (where he made and ate a lot of salads). In those jobs, he made what he calls “the food I wanted to eat every day,” honestly prepared dishes like a simple veggie pizza with a housemade crust and cheese.
Recipe: Lettuce with fresh herbs and cheese
Unlike steak frites, the perfect salad is democratic and can taste like restaurant food if done well. and Home cooking is popular. The house salad at Baumgart’s first restaurant, Oma Grassa, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, has characteristics of both the salads he ate growing up in Wisconsin (served in a thin, faux-wood bowl next to the plate) and the ones he eats now with his partner, Alex Auriachi. He and Auriachi both spend many evenings at Oma Grassa, helping out in various ways, he in the kitchen, she at the front of the store, as they have done since the restaurant opened. But at home in Brooklyn, the salad starts with a good head of lettuce from the crisper drawer of the refrigerator, a vegetable or two, and some cheese.
The salad at Baumgart’s restaurant, which the menu calls “lettuce,” is crisp yet deeply flavorful, topped with a generous helping of curls of piave. If the soft cheese is the star, the fresh herbs (or tarragon or basil, if you have them and like them) are the supporting role, enlivening this green salad. The herbs are also in his homemade white wine vinegar, which Baumgart steeps all of his leftover tarragon and basil for a week in, allowing the sweet flavor of the anise to soak in. He doesn’t make a dressing, just mixes olive oil with that beautiful vinegar. It’s not very traditional, but the high vinegar-to-oil ratio here keeps the lettuce healthy and crisp. Don’t forget to season the leaves with salt, but “don’t use too much dressing,” advises the now 43-year-old chef. You can always add more later.
For those who truly love to cook, the best restaurants are the ones that taste like you’re dining in someone’s home. As you reach the last paragraph of this recipe, grate your salad, and remember what Auriacci said: “Cheese makes everything better.”
