I Would Change Absolutely Nothing About the Wedge Salad at Red Hook Tavern

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The issue I have with most wedge salads is that they…aren’t very good. Instead of crunchy, watery lettuce, we get sad, plastic-y leaves. Instead of a bright, clean buttermilk dressing, we get tasteless goop. Instead of crispy, salty, smoky pieces of bacon, we get weakly flavored bacon bits. EXCEPT for the wedge at Red Hook Tavern, a cozy, casual spot in Brooklyn by Billy Durney. He’s also the guy who convinced me that there is in fact good barbecue in New York (see: his other restaurant, Hometown Bar-B-Que). And now he’s done it again with the wedge salad.

Here, the salad comes as five gorgeous, seemingly hand selected cups of lettuce, drizzled but not glopped with a buttermilk dressing that’s flecked generously with herbs and big buttery breadcrumbs. But the best part is the one long, thick, platonic strip of bacon splayed over the top. You can eat the wedge like a hand salad. You can casually snack on the piece of bacon. You can get the perfect ratio of crumb to lettuce to dressing to bacon in every bite. I have already forgotten about the burger—the keynote item on the menu, which is great, but…it’s not the salad. Which is just so good, it improves on every single thing that can make a wedge salad so bad. Is there even one thing that I would change about this wedge salad to make it better? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’s already perfect.

Go there: Red Hook Tavern

Originally Appeared on Bon Appétit