North Beach is not built for people looking for a salad. It is a neighbourhood of red-sauce institutions, focaccia, cured meat and pizza, and the food culture here is a century of Italian-American cooking that has never regarded a bowl of leaves as a serious proposition. Searching for a salad near you around Columbus Avenue and expecting the results you would get on Valencia Street will produce a disappointing lunch. There is an answer, though, and it is a better one than the neighbourhood gets credit for — it just requires accepting that a salad here is a meal rather than a lighter alternative to one.
The good salads in this neighbourhood are hidden inside Italian menus rather than sold as salads, and they are considerably larger than you are expecting. Tell Karpo what you actually want from lunch and it will translate.
The chopped salad, which is the tradition
Original Joe's at 601 Union Street does the version to know. Its chopped salad is romaine and radicchio with salami, cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, pepperoncinis, fennel, olives, provolone and parmesan, in an Italian vinaigrette. That is eleven ingredients before the dressing, several of them meat or cheese, and it is not a light lunch — it is a complete one.
This is the Italian-American chopped salad as a form, and it is genuinely good rather than a concession. Everything is cut to roughly the same size so that every forkful carries the whole idea; the salami and provolone provide the salt; the pepperoncini and vinaigrette carry the acid. It has survived unchanged for decades because it works, and Original Joe's — a room that feels frozen in time, all shiny maroon booths and unhurried service — is the correct place to encounter it.
The lighter end, on Columbus
Il Casaro Pizzeria at 348 Columbus Avenue does a kale Caesar among its antipasti, which is the closest thing in the neighbourhood to a salad in the contemporary sense. Ordering an antipasto as a main course is slightly against the grain of an Italian menu, and nobody will mind.
Red Window at 500 Columbus Avenue is Spanish rather than Italian, doing small plates in a bright room with a colourful parklet. The vegetable end of a tapas menu — grilled things, marinated things, plates built around one ingredient — is the most flexible answer in North Beach for anyone who wants to eat well without eating heavily, because you control the total simply by ordering fewer plates.
The outlier
Georgian Cheese Boat at 1224 Grant Avenue is the neighbourhood's most useful surprise. Alongside the khachapuri and khinkali it does refreshing salads and grilled chicken and lamb, ordered from a screen by the bar. It is the one address here where you can have something genuinely fresh and green without negotiating an Italian menu to get it — and being able to order at a screen rather than explain yourself to a waiter is, in this specific situation, an advantage.
What to expect
Two things worth setting expectations on. Portions in this neighbourhood are large across the board — Trattoria Contadina at 1800 Mason Street is known for portions described as gigantic, and that instinct runs through the whole area — so a salad ordered as a main will be a main. And a salad here will usually contain cured meat and cheese by default rather than as an addition; if that is not what you want, the Spanish and Georgian options are the ones to steer toward rather than trying to modify an Italian order.
Choosing
The full traditional version, as a proper lunch: Original Joe's chopped salad. Something recognisably light: the kale Caesar at Il Casaro. Controlling exactly how much you eat: Red Window, ordering plate by plate. Actually fresh and green with no negotiation: Georgian Cheese Boat. And if it is a warm day, Molinari at 373 Columbus Avenue plus Washington Square Park remains the better lunch anyway, salad or not.
Practical notes
Addresses: Original Joe's 601 Union St; Il Casaro Pizzeria 348 Columbus Ave; Red Window 500 Columbus Ave; Georgian Cheese Boat 1224 Grant Ave; Trattoria Contadina 1800 Mason St; Molinari Delicatessen 373 Columbus Ave. Original Joe's sits on the Washington Square corner of Union Street; the Columbus addresses are a few minutes' walk south. Georgian Cheese Boat takes walk-ins and orders through a screen by the bar. The 8 and 30 Muni lines run along Stockton and Columbus, which is the practical way in at lunchtime — parking here between noon and 2pm is not worth attempting on a break.
Tags: #SaladNearMe #NorthBeach #SanFrancisco #ColumbusAvenue #OriginalJoes #ChoppedSalad #IlCasaro #RedWindow #LittleItaly #SFLunch #ItalianAmerican #CoffeeAndDessert #SFEats #GrantAvenue
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
In North Beach the good salads are buried inside Italian menus as antipasti and chopped plates, and none of them are light. Ask Karpo what is actually on the menu near you, which rooms will do something green without cured meat in it, and how big the portion is before you order two things.
