At first glance, Vert Kitchen’s location could be considered a handicap. It’s on a small, oft-forgotten strip at the corner of South Pearl Street and East Exposition Avenue, just a few blocks west of Washington Park. There are three or four storefronts here, but this stretch of sidewalk is anything but bustling.
And for a casual sandwich place like this, you’d think that foot traffic would be the make-or-break factor.
But Vert Kitchen, open for lunch every day except Monday, is nearly always full. Any more foot traffic, and the place would be crushed.
It’s full because the lunches are good — sandwiches at once sophisticated and homey, prepared with the kind of country-style urbanity that informs contemporary neighborhood cooking in cities of a certain size. Pristine, well-chosen ingredients. Focused, detail-oriented examples of recognizable, simple fare. Nothing too heady.
Take, for example, the BLT. Whereas every other restaurant in town tries clumsily to twist their BLT, serving instead a BLFGT (bacon, lettuce, fried green tomato) or BLGCT (bacon, lettuce, green chile, tomato), Vert Kitchen’s version marries perfectly cooked smokehouse bacon (crispy but still porky and chewy), refreshing bibb lettuce and a bit of mayo, with a small wedge of absurdly fresh mozzarella providing the only delicate diversion. The sandwich comes on sourdough, but on a recent visit, the kitchen was out of sourdough and so piled the fillings on a fresh, crispy-soft baguette — the result was even better, with no sourdough tang to distract.
Egg salad (called egg mayonnaise here) made another superb sandwich, a tasty mix of eggs, sharp- sweet shallot and a distant bite of mustard. The lemon tuna salad with creamy Greek yogurt was rich and refreshing. The roasted turkey with chevre a rainy-day treat.
Missteps? Few. The curried chicken salad sandwich was nicely textured, but lackluster in flavor, and the braised pork shoulder stringy and frustratingly quiet in flavor.
Here’s my theory as to why the sandwiches at Vert Kitchen work so well: This kitchen isn’t preoccupied with showing off. These cooks are focused on pleasing customers, on creating relatable but elevated versions of food that people already know they like. It’s a significant (and rare) asset, in this chef-obsessed world, for a kitchen to show that they’re as interested in the patrons as they are in themselves — this team proves that when it comes to quality control and customer loyalty, a sense of hospitality trumps a sense of self-exaltation every time.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t always translate into the swiftest service in the city. Come at peak lunchtime and you may stand in line for several minutes before placing your order, then hover for a time waiting for a table to open, then cool your heels a bit before seeing your sandwich. But the wait is never so bad that it spoils lunch; by the time you’ve got your sandwich, the delays are forgotten.
Another drawback to Vert Kitchen’s overall appeal is that it doesn’t serve breakfast or supper. Normally, I would admire the narrowness of the mission, because I often believe that going deeper, rather than broader, results in richer, more nuanced cooking. But you get the feeling that, having nailed lunch, Vert Kitchen could absolutely crush dinner, if they’d only go for it. After the fifth or sixth visit, you start to feel cheated that you can’t swing by later in the week for an early-evening piece of fish and a glass of wine. One can hope.
There is an old maxim that says you get what you pay for, and at Vert, you’ll pay. Lunch for two (two sandwiches, two lemonades, a shared cookie) can push you past $30, which is too much to eat there every day. But once every few weeks, when you have an extra half-hour to sip your blackberry lemonade and talk about nothing much over a well-crafted sandwich, it’s well worth the price.
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VERT KITCHEN
Lunch
704 S. Pearl St., 303-997-5941; vertkitchen.com
** 1/2 (out of 4)
Very Good/Great
Atmosphere: Small room contains open kitchen, order counter, several tables. Small patio out back, a couple of sidewalk tables.
Service: Smart, informal, sometimes slow
Prices: Sandwiches $8-$12. One side complimentary.
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; closed Monday
Details: Street parking. Takeout available. Daily specials. Call for catering, boxed lunch service.
Four visits
Our star system: ****: Exceptional ***: Great **: Very Good *: Good
