Month of Salads: Lüke

by Sydney "Brown Nose" Blanchard

There is nothing like the taste of a real tomato, you know? One that grew up basking in sunlight, and wasn't picked until it was perfectly ripe on the vine.

As a kid, I loved the tomatoes my grandmother grew on our ancestral family farm. Picked, sliced, and sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, homegrown garden tomatoes were all I ate in the summer.

Now, I mostly only have access to grocery store tomatoes. And they just don't cut it for me. They're pale and they taste like nothing.

But recently at John Besh's Lüke (located on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans), I had the pleasure of eating the best tomato salad of my life.

Heirloom tomato salad at Lüke in New Orleans

Lüke's heirloom tomato salad consists of sliced heirloom tomatoes, garden herbs, burrata, and country ham.

Heirloom tomatoes just taste better. In recent years, this non-hybrid tomato has become more readily available, and I can't get enough of them.

The burrata adds a nice touch. For the uninitiated, burrata is an Italian cheese made from combining mozzarella and cream.

It's simple, but it works. And it tastes like my childhood.