I was supposed to have lunch today with a new prospective client but she had to cancel so I had a lovely lunch with my husband – novel – at a wonderful Japanese restaurant on the East side of town. Most Japanese restaurants, at least in NYC, have a special lunch menu where you can choose soup or salad to start. And typical is the iceberg lettuce with a ginger sesame dressing, right? Well this place was particularly good, the sushi amazing. And the salad was curly green leaf lettuce, cut in 1/2″ wide ribbons, with one slice of cucumber cut in half, topped with the ginger sesame dressing and some sesame seeds sprinkled on top!

It was just a little thing but something different and surprising, and suddenly it made the salad special!

Think of how many little touches we can do to dishes to delight and surprise. It’s easy with the abundance of fresh herbs in the summer as a finishing touch but I’m going have to work on this for the coming winter.

More later.