The Greatest Niçoise

Hand on heart. Salade Niçoise. From Nice, France, an actual city, a beautiful city, and the salad they sent us is TREMENDOUS. The greatest composed salad in the history of composed salads — and I include all the others, the wedge, the chef's, the cobb, all of them, no offense. They've been making Niçoise on the Mediterranean coast since before the printing press. Older than France itself, some food historians will tell you, and I have spoken to food historians, very smart people, the kind of people who care a lot about whether your potatoes are warm when you dress them.

Here is the thing nobody will tell you. The tuna is the whole ballgame. The WHOLE thing. Most chefs are afraid to spend money on tuna, so they cheap out, they grab the cheapest can on the shelf, the kind packed in WATER. Water. That's not tuna. That is a sad fish bath, water that has been bullied by a fish for six months and is now lukewarm and gray. NO. Tuna in olive oil. Italian. Spanish. The good stuff in the glass jar that costs eight dollars and is worth every penny. If your chef tells you otherwise, find a new chef. It's not even close. It's a slaughter.

Then we build. Like architecture. Like the cathedrals of Europe, except edible. Boiled potatoes. Blanched green beans — BLANCHED, not boiled to death, the beans need snap, no snap and you have embarrassed yourself in front of the salad — eggs cooked exactly seven minutes for that jammy yolk, olives, tomatoes, anchovies if you have any courage at all, and a vinaigrette so sharp it deserves its own zip code. People at the table go quiet. Tough guys. Tears in the eyes. It's a thing.

This is the salad that proves salads can be SERIOUS food. Not rabbit food. Not 'oh I'm just having a salad' apology food. This is a full meal. This is the meal you eat on a sunny afternoon with a glass of crisp white wine and you think, you know what, life is actually pretty good. Compose it on the biggest platter in the house. Bring it to the table whole. Let people see it before they touch it — the eyes eat first, the eyes always eat first. Beautiful.