#186 - Fulfilling A Craving
or: we have [westville kale salad] at home
The major perk of working in Manhattan is lunch options.
WeWork was for slop bowls. Sweetgreen, Cava, Chipolte, Chop't (which is better than Sweetgreen gimme those tiny pieces of cabbage mmmmmm so crunchy ~Homer Simpson noises). Food that you can accumulate on a fork and put directly into your mouth without looking or thinking too much about it. Buildings full of people who like Dig Inn, a bowl serving what Straightiolab correctly identified as "lukewarm leftovers" (their mac & cheese isn't good enough on a "good day" to get me to eat cold mashed potatoes). Everyone who worked in a WeWork-type startup was just so busy! Too busy for lunch! Strap a feed bag on for the lols we have governments to destabilize via cryptocurrency boys!
Lush = watermelon bowls from Dukes Cafe. RIP Dukes, one of the cheapest places in SoHo for hot bar. But also they once charged me $25 for American Spirits and would only take cash. IN 2013!!!!
Petropolis was in the FiDi which meant you could easily be tricked into spending $17 on a shitty bagel if you went into the wrong tourist trap masquerading as a diner. Thankfully I had a fabulous coworker who was such a beacon of beaming light she made instant friends with everyone and got me hooked up at the place that made soup from scratch – I have never eaten such good split pea soup in my life and they would give me free bread when they found out who sent me!! it! was! heaven! We also mutually shared a love of giant soft pretzels and despite it being the frattiest bar of all time I would march on in to Clinton Hall and procure the softest largest pretzel (with multiple mustards & the worlds best cheese sauce) to-go because I am literally always willing to do a slightly weird pickup order from an embarrassing place. Like, I'm leaving with food I'm happy to walk into any overly-themed tiki bar to grab it no matter how rare a pick-up may be!
There were plenty of other little places over the years. Even just doing job interviews is fun because everyone has worked everywhere and will always have a recommendation for a place to get really good falafel within 4 blocks of your interview.
My LoveThyBeast era was short and mostly fueled by dollar slices and diet coke cans (for $4 you could get two slices and a DC) but my boss was randomly Very Generous and introduced me to the (temporarily forgotten) love of my life: Westville.
It's far too expensive for what it is (it's...salad) but oh BABY it's so good and it looks so chic and wow we should really be putting pickled red onions on leafy greens more often.
The actual salad is made with kale, pickled red onions, dried cranberries, pumpkin seeds, toasted walnuts, and topped with blue cheese and a lemon olive oil.
I usually swap the blue cheese for goat cheese and add chicken, which makes this a whopping $21 salad (it used to cost $14 with the chicken – the girlies yearn for precovid nyc prices).
But I kept craving it for the past few weeks and the time I finally went to Williamsburg specifically to get it last week, I ended up going with a friend to Birds Of A Feather which is way better food and consists of dishes I in no way can recreate at home (except for their pickled green beans which I have now made several times gimmes that crunch) so I'm not mad that I didn't get the salad but it did result in me not...getting the salad.
So instead I did the ~financially responsible thing and bought the ingredients and now I've eaten it like three days in a row so here's my variation on it:
- Air fryer chicken breast (olive oil/salt/pepper/400degrees for 12 minutes)
- Throw the almonds in for the last 3 minutes of the chicken cooking for easy toasting!
- As much Kale as you want
- Shredded, no big veins, wash it with hot water and massage and then blast it with cold water and then dress it and let it sit while the chicken cooks
- Pickled red onions
- Dried cherries (they were out of unsweetened dried cranberries)
- Almond slivers (because I'm meh on pumpkin seeds and didn't want to get walnuts for some reason)
- Goat cheese (Vermont Creamery, my beloved)
- The original recipe is feta so if you want to go vegan, do a veg feta OR sub avocado because the real thing it's providing is a little bit of creamy tang
- EVOO/balsamic/lemon juice/dijon/maple syrup dressing (measure with your heart!)
- I like the extra balsamic because I'm addicted to acidity but the OG recipe is just lemony oil which like...is fine.
- The touch of maple goes a long way in balancing the flavors but if you don't have dark&robust vt maple straight from a sugar hut, granulated sugar or brown sugar will emulsify in there just fine!
It's a salad so I'm not going to put measurements for anything because...I trust everyone reading this knows what their preferred leafy greens to toppings ratio is if they decide to make it!
Okay that's it I hope you get to fulfill any food cravings you're having this week because food is a miracle and having this many options can be overwhelming but boy oh boy is living in abundance a unique part of the modern world.
Salads rule especially when half of the ingredients are already prepped! Lunch decisions are annoying! Waking up looking forward to a specific meal later is the best!
✌️ ♥️ 🥗