National Culinary Review

bowl provides bountiful fresh produce throughout the year. “We have three farmers markets, including a supermarket-sized one, within driving distance.” On Saturdays, he visits them to stock up on tricolored beets, Brussels sprouts, fava beans, English peas and other veggies to prepare the salads for Sunday brunch at Meritage at the Claremont, the hotel’s signature restaurant. A Tuscan-style antipasto with roasted vegetables is a brunch mainstay, as are assorted fresh locally grown salads. Ingredients can include parsley root and cabbages, squash blossoms, sunchokes and ramps.

Annette Marcus

Green beans pair with feta cheese in this salad at Annette Marcus Catering.

Brussels sprouts are a popular salad ingredient. Thomsen sometimes combines them with cannellini beans and salmon in a red wine dressing. At the hotel’s Paragon Restaurant & Bar, where chef de cuisine Charles Crossley runs the kitchen, warm Brussels sprouts salad with tasso ham, vinaigrette, egg, croutons and candied bacon is on the menu.

Whatley menus a bean salad made with chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans, corn, roasted red peppers and herb vinaigrette. “Customers dig right into it,” he says. Roasted root vegetables find their way into salads, and asparagus grilled or roasted al dente and topped with a Meyer lemon vinaigrette is another popular offering. “Green beans make good salad ingredients, and in the summer, I like to use grilled squashes,” Whatley says.

Another popular vegetable salad is the Chinatown chop chop offered at lunch. It’s a hearty salad made with napa cabbage, carrots and daikons, lo mein noodles and sesame seeds, and dressed with a very light vinaigrette made with soy sauce, ginger and cilantro. “It’s often ordered with roasted chicken on it, but it’s best with the barbecued shrimp we created for it,” Banas says.

Antipasto platters filled with vegetables are found on brunch menus and assorted legumes make their way into salad offerings at lunch at the Ahwahnee Dining Room and other properties where DNC handles the foodservice operation. At Yosemite’s Tenaya Lodge, for example, the menu in the restaurant and for room service includes a chopped salad of chipotle BBQ chicken over iceberg and romaine lettuces with fresh basil, black beans, cilantro, sweet corn, tomato, roasted pepper, Jack cheese, green onion and crispy tortilla chips, tossed in a creamy ranch dressing.

UP ON THE ROOF While Thomsen and Whatley have the bounty of the West at their fingertips, Myk Banas, executive chef at the Chicago Marriott Downtown Magnificent Mile, has a rooftop garden where he can harvest herbs for vinaigrettes and sometimes beets for the roasted beet salad offered as a starter at Harvest, the hotel’s restaurant.

Harvest’s winter chop chop salad, offered as a dinner entrée, came off the menu in mid-March. “It was a delicious, big, healthy salad with a couple of greens, rice, barley and a couple of kinds of beans. But it just wasn’t that popular. Strip steak and hand-cut fries outsold it 10 to one,” Banas says, noting that he might put it back on the menu as a smaller side salad.

“It’s a very simple salad,” Banas says.
The beets are roasted in foil, peeled and
cut into 3/8-inch coins. While hot, they’re
spread out in a pan with an herb/garlic
vinaigrette, and refrigerated overnight. “At
serving time, we plate them with a little
goat cheese, and dress with lemon juice,
olive oil, salt and pepper. Then we drizzle
a little of the soaking vinaigrette, which is
now a nice scarlet color, on the plate.”
“Healthy eating won’t go away,” says
Ventura’s Fiorentino. Bulman adds that the
future for salads is good, and will be about
great taste and wellness.

The National Culinary Review | May 2011

“The key to turning fresh vegetables into attractive salads is to keep it simple,” Thomsen advises. “Mother Nature wrote the recipe. Don’t screw it up.”