The only thing better than having a favorite local restaurant is when your fave spot knows what you like, and offers more of it.
Green Street Restaurant (Not Green Street Café. That’s on Green Street. I’m talking about Green Street Restaurant. On Shoppers Lane. Yes, it could be a little confusing) is adding a few special items to its already-popular menu, to greet the turning of the leaves, such as they are in California.
(But don’t fret, fans, the Dianne Salad is sacrosanct.)
The new items are surprisingly evocative of and appropriate to the fall season.
We loved the Cheddar, Apple and Pastrami Sandwich, which we had with traditional french fries instead of the advertised sweet potato fries. Quite okay. Things happen.
It’s a surprisingly tasty sandwich which never occurred to us—apples and pastrami? Seriously? Take that whole pastrami on a huge french roll configuration out of your mind. This isn’t Lucky Boy or The Hat, as yummy as those are. This is far more subtle. And délicieux.
The Creamy Butternut Squash Pasta is penne pasta mixed with creamy butternut squash, goat cheese, parmesan cheese and walnuts (!) Talk about comfort food. If mac and cheese is a king size bed, this pasta is a serious Barcalounger with a massage element built in. Even though our table was seriously groaning with the weight of dinner, I could have easily brought more of that home.
Because we could, we also sampled the Snapper with Orange Chipotle Vinaigrette, with seasonal vegetables and brown rice. This could easily be a brand new old favorite.
Adding a hot splash of color to that crowded table was Green Street’s Butternut Squash Soup. Like the best cream soups, it was hot, tasty, and filling, and like the best soups, not quite enough. Full disclosure: They actually only brought one soup for the table at first . When I suggested that they might want to bring another, my dining companion declined, to my dismay..
What do we learn from this, class?
One very filling hour later, as the Braves finished off the Houston Asterisks, the Brown Butter Buttermilk Cake arrived. Butter cake, a traditional American cake, is baked with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and leavening agents such as baking powder or baking soda.
It’s also a close cousin to the English pound cake, which also traditionally used equal amounts of butter, flour, sugar, and eggs to bake a heavy, rich cake.
Green Street’s Brown Butter Buttermilk cake does a lot with a little. The substantial, sweet and rich cake is made for sharing, but that sort of depends on who you’re sharing your table with.
Doesn’t everything in life?
Green Street Restaurant is at 146 Shoppers Lane, Pasadena, CA.
(626) 577-7170. Greenstreetrestaurant.com.
