National Culinary Review

It’s topped with haricots verts, green olives, cucumber, tomatoes and house-smoked bacon, and tossed with rancho dressing made with creme fraiche, a little dill, aioli and lemon juice.

In the Texas capital of Austin, beef is big anytime of the day. At Cover 3, a restaurant and sports bar, where Albert Benitez is chef, lunch is a busy time, with 300 to 400 covers. One of the top sellers at lunch is the beef tenderloin salad. “Guys, girls, everyone loves it. When we ask them why, they tell us the meat is incredible and the dressing is delicious,” Benitez says.

To make the $14 salad, he marinates and grills the beef with an Asian-style barbecue sauce of ginger, soy and black bean sauce. The beef tops the salad of baby spinach, wild mushrooms, grilled leeks, blue cheese and walnuts. The sweet onion dressing is made with onions cooked down with vinegar and sugar.

Lunchtime at Cover 3 also brings numerous orders for burgers and for ruby trout with pancetta, a light dish that’s extremely popular.

WASHINGTON, D.C.

“If you love avocado, the turkey burger is the way to go,” says chef Spike Mendelsohn. He and his family serve the burger at their three Good Stuff Eatery locations in the Washington, D.C., area. It’s a big seller on an all-day menu that caters to “business people, tourists and neighborhood burger junkies at lunchtime,” Mendelsohn says.

Good Stuff Eatery specializes in burgers, shakes and floats, and wedge salads. The burgers can be topped with bacon, several varieties of cheese or even a fried egg. Any burger and topping becomes a chicken sandwich with the substitution of a chicken breast.

The turkey burger is a standout option, Mendelsohn believes. It begins with free-range ground turkey combined with apple, “which gives it the moisture most turkey burgers lack,” he says. It’s served on a Pennsylvania Dutch whole-wheat bun with chunky avocado, Muenster cheese, lettuce and ruby tomato for $6.89.