Top Salad

Having eaten more than my fair share of these sensational salads, I figured I’d better confess: I have a serious thing for the Heirloom Spinach Salad at Avanti. You would too if you could see just how perfectly loaded with that mineraly fresh spinach flavor (Popeye was right!) this lightly dressed creation is. Setting off the spinach intensity (thanks to Windmill Farms) is a hard-boiled egg, which is barely hard so that the yolk retains an unctuous appeal, plus two finger-sized francese toasts wrapped with pancetta. Long, slender ribbons of Manchego cheese spill all over this edible ode to spring. Jocelyn and I exerted our Nietzschean appetites upon one of these last week, and before you could say mi piace, the spinach was gone!