You’re not alone. This weekend’s sunny skies inspired some pretty piggy behaviors in all of us—beer and honey-laced wings at Boundary Stone, croquettes on the deck at Jaleo Bethesda, maybe a big old brunch at Green Pig Bistro. Far be it from me to suggest you abstain from anything delicious, but if you’ve got that Monday urge to repent, here are ten spots to head for good salads.
1) Okay, we’re starting with a carb-fueled dish with ham on it, but the crispy rice salad on the Laotian menu at Bangkok Golden, topped with herbs, coconut, onion, and the aforementioned pork bits, must be included in any roundup on the subject. (Don’t worry, thing get greener after this.)
Open Monday for lunch and dinner.
2) The aforementioned wings may be the most famous food at Boundary Stone, but the Bloomingdale bar does a lot of dishes right, and in the way I wish so many tavern-type spots would—with a focus on great flavors rather than unnecessary cheffy frills. Case in point: its rotating selection of fresh salads topped with vegetable combos such as red onion, tomato, and Manchego cheese plus always-on-point dressings.
Open Monday for lunch and dinner.
3) Truth be told, the best pickled tea leaf salad—a Burmese dish with roasted peanuts, fried garlic, dried shrimp, and sesame seeds—is at Sterling’s Taste of Burma, but sadly that restaurant is closed on Mondays. The good news: You could do a lot worse than the version at Burma Road in Gaithersburg. If your server tries to push the Chinese menu on you, just keep saying “pickled tea leaf salad,” and eventually you’ll get your way.
Open Monday for lunch and dinner.
4) Like so much at Palisades favorite Et Voila—a restaurant that favors classic European bistro fare over culinary pyrotechnics—the salade d’endives with Chimay blue cheese, roasted pecans, and Gala apples features classic flavor combinations and tastes great with Belgian beer.
5) The crispy tuna salad at Food Wine & Co. in Bethesda sneaks some gorgeous slices of breaded ahi onto healthy greens. With avocado, haricots verts, radish, and shredded egg in a sherry vinaigrette, this salad makes for a perfect light lunch. (Add a glass of Trebbiano D’ Abruzzo and you’ve got a pretty darn good dinner, too.)
Open Monday for lunch and dinner.
6) The kyona salad at Izakaya Seki comes topped with tuna shavings and a custardy “onsen” egg that gets beaten gently into a mixture of arugula and mizuna.
Open Monday for dinner.
7) In the interest of throwing in some easy to-go options into the mix—and supporting salads where runny eggs are in the picture—I’d single out the Caesar at Bryan Voltaggio’s Lunchbox—open in Frederick and coming to Friendship Heights. At dinner, you want the full anchovy-garlic onslaught from a Caesar, but lunch options need to pull back a little lest your coworkers feel brutalized by your breath all afternoon. This one meets that middle ground, and the poached hen egg makes for way tastier protein that those tepid strips of cold chicken breast that languish on so many fast-casual Caesars.
8) The Market Salad at Clarendon’s Lyon Hall stands out for winning textures—with fennel, radish, and carrot, there’s great crunch going on. Fresh herbs and a tart pop of citrus in the dressing keep things interesting.
Open Monday for lunch and dinner.
9) New chef Marjorie Meek-Bradley is putting out a beet salad at Ripple with spice-roasted beets, frozen yogurt, and radishes over smoked egg—a study in texture and temperature that will rock your world in a way you probably didn’t know beet salads still could.
Open Monday for dinner.
10) Let’s get another fast option in here: At Sweetgreen, I like to go with the Guacamole Greens salad—with a big hit of lime to wake everything up—but I add shrimp and corn because it’s way better that way.
Open Monday for lunch and Dinner.
