Jefferson Greens salad: smoke, no mirrors
A parasite took you out of your salad game. Return and indulge at City Pork, where the house salad is an umami delight.
Salads were once iceberg lettuce drowned in processed Thousand Island dressing, something to push around the plate before tossing it into the trash when your parents weren’t looking. But salads have changed. At sit-down restaurants, they’ve become a tasty choice, even a refined one, occasionally surprising enough to eat with something approaching indulgence.
You may have taken a break from produce recently, when people on the radio and television were chattering about salads causing unmentionable illnesses. It’s relatively safe to return now, and the knowledgeable bartender at City Pork will reassure you that no one has been injured by any of the salads at the Jefferson Highway restaurant.
The salads are desirable, especially because the two smokers out back are put to work making the chicken and bacon that come on the default house one, the Jefferson Greens.
Sliced thin, the chicken is slightly chewy, with enough smoke to season the salad itself, especially alongside the umami of Gorgonzola crumbles and the bite of red onion. Add bacon, and you might expect the whole thing will be too much. It isn’t. Together, the ingredients deliver just enough richness to enhance the lettuce, tomatoes and radishes, all finished with a little pepper jelly vinaigrette.
City Pork began with a devotion to smoked meat, and when it opened, few restaurants delivered on that mission so well. The restaurant has since changed hands, but the cooks working with wood and fire continue to produce some of the best smoked meats in town. That same care turns up in the Jefferson Greens, a salad deserving of a regular spot in your lunch rotation.