Last week, I started a 2026 dining journal in a tiny, grid-paper notebook. It was the day before my birthday, and I was feeling reflective. I scrolled through my camera roll during lunch to create retroactive entries: Barker in Bed-Stuy on Jan. 2, Dean’s in the West Village on April 7, a Chili’s in Glendale earlier this month. To the best of my porous memory, I jotted down what I had eaten and with whom.
The next day, I found myself back at Barker with my pals Luke Fortney and Becky Hughes, who helm our Where to Eat restaurant newsletter. Luke had just written about the delightful cafeteria, triggering my craving.
There, I denied myself nothing, as every great birthday demands. We got two sandwiches, including a saucy fried eggplant number. We got an apple fritter and a blueberry buckle. I got a ginger limeade AND a beer. But it’s the salad I haven’t stopped thinking about: matchsticks of raw, crunchy zucchini and soft chunks of roasted potato embellished with slivered almonds, plenty of basil and oh-so-much pecorino. “This is just like that Lex salad,” Becky said between bites.
I know the one. Alexa Weibel’s five-star recipe for zucchini salad with pecorino, basil and almonds will come in handy as I take a necessary pause from filling my dining journal after a little too much birthday and a lot of dining out. It’s just the kind of dish I’m craving right now: crisp, bright, effortless.
Zucchini Salad With Pecorino, Basil and Almonds
The New York Times Cooking database is rife with recipes that conjure beloved restaurants. That eggplant sandwich? I can make one from another New York establishment, Frankies Spuntino, thanks to Melissa Clark’s recipe. “It’s not a sandwich to make on a whim,” she writes. But I raise any skeptic this reader comment: “Great and worth the work.”
The exceptional mushy peas I had at Dean’s? Eric Kim has us covered with a recipe he adapted for the British classic from the food writer Ruby Tandoh. Plenty of mint on top for me, please. The perfect guacamole I had not just at my birthday dinner but the day after, as well, at Mariscos el Submarino? Take your pick: Pati Jinich’s chile verde guacamole, which holds the lime; Eric’s four-ingredient simple guacamole, which doesn’t; or Florence Fabricant’s five-star guacamole, adapted from Rosa Mexicano.
You don’t need to know how many journal entries there are for Panda Express. That’s between me and Chase Bank. Jenné Claiborne’s orange cauliflower bites and J. Kenji López-Alt’s smoky lo mein with shiitake and vegetables are the dupes of my dreams, and maybe yours, too. Jenné keeps things vegan with nondairy milk in the dredge and sweetens her orange sauce with three medjool dates, a flourish I love. Watch her make the dish — in an air fryer! — right on the recipe page.
And Kenji’s recipe is a great exercise in harnessing wok hei, the smokiness achieved in high-flame restaurant cooking, in your own kitchen. Does he call for a blow torch? Maybe! Do our readers have other ideas, including using a broiler? You bet.
On my birthday eve, I took myself and my new journal for a celebratory solo French 75 at Bar Pisellino in the West Village before seeing Cat Cohen’s “Broad Strokes.” The bar serves the drink with Cognac by default, but I prefer mine with gin. At home, we can choose! On the way to the show, I strolled by Via Carota and reminisced about the restaurant’s iconic insalata verde, which Samin Nosrat has recreated for us, house dressing and all. Go ahead and save that to your recipe box for when we’re feeling more at ease about lettuce.
The smashed cucumber salad I had after the show? I made it at home last night with Julia Moskin’s recipe for Chinese smashed cucumbers with sesame oil and garlic, though I might take a page from the wine bar I had it at, Binx, and serve my next salad over a swoosh of cooling labneh. Or maybe I’ll just make Alison Roman’s labneh dip with sizzled scallions and chile and serve it with cucumber spears.
The day after my birthday, I went on one of those long, contemplative, slightly hungover strolls that take you clear across Brooklyn and, for me, near Dumbo and Vinegar Hill House. Contemplative, indeed: I should make the restaurant’s cast-iron sourdough pancake, I thought.
One More Thing!
Do you love a discount? Me, too. A little birdie has informed me that our cookbook, “Veg Everything,” is on sale not only at Barnes & Noble but also on Amazon and at Walmart. You can get it now for half price if you haven’t preordered a copy already. (And if you have, my biggest thanks!) Sept. 15 can’t come soon enough. Have any questions about the book? Let me know, and I’ll answer a few next week.
Thanks for reading!
Email us at theveggie@nytimes.com. Newsletters are archived here. Reach out to my colleagues at cookingcare@nytimes.com if you have questions about your account.
