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Not To Miss Dish
Da Flora's roasted asparagus and quail egg salad with white truffle vinaigrette
By Bill Knutson
When I peruse a menu, my eyes don’t exactly drift over the list of salads. It’s more like the copyright page in a book … next. Don’t get me wrong, I like salads, but generally I am hesitant to spend $9 for a plate of mixed greens drizzled with an aged balsamic vinaigrette. But, when I was looking over the handwritten menu at Da Flora, a few keywords like quail eggs, asparagus and white truffle caught my eye, and before I realized it, I had ordered a salad.
When it arrived at the table I was pleasantly surprised to find the salad in question was in fact a quail egg salad served over perfectly roasted spears of asparagus. The egg salad was traditional enough to remind me of my mother’s, but the quail eggs gave it a richer flavor and a lighter texture. Plus, my mother never really got into white truffle vinaigrettes when I was a kid.
The earthiness of the tender asparagus works wonderfully as a foil for the rich egg salad, but the understated use of white truffle oil in the dressing helped bring it all together as one of the tastiest dishes I’ve had all year.
Da Flora: 701 Columbus Ave. (at Filbert), 415-981-4664
– B. Knutson
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