Pecorino, Pickled Peppers, Prosciutto & Escarole—Hello, Utica Greens

Welcome to Road Show, a series where our Test Kitchen creator Noah Tanen dives deep into a regional recipe and tries it out for himself. First up? New York’s Utica Greens.

---

It’s no secret that New York loves its food destinations. It’s likely you’ve heard of Rochester, where residents ride for the notorious garbage plate. In Buffalo, it’s wings. But let’s take a trip together, to a lesser known food haven resting in the Central New York valley between the Catskills and Adirondack Mountains: Utica, an old railroad town and former industrial center. There, the draw is Utica Greens.

The story goes that Joe Morelle invented “greens Morelle” in the ’80s at Chesterfield Restaurant in east Utica. It instantly caught the attention of other local restaurants, and “Utica Greens” or “Village Greens” started cropping up on menus all around the small city. (Though according to the New York Times, if you’re in Utica, you better call them “greens Morelle.”) It’s still available today at restaurants like Georgio’s Village Cafe, Michael T’s, or even the recently reopened Chesterfield’s Tavolo.

There has always been some variation, but the recipe is basically a riff on classic Italian-American braised escarole, but kicked up with the generous addition of pickled cherry peppers, heaps of pecorino cheese, and breadcrumbs that both thicken and crisp the greens when you finish them under a hot broiler. Don’t be surprised if you find versions made more hearty with cubed potatoes, or maybe studded with fried salami. Still, the flavor profile will be salty, spicy, and sharp, all balancing that bitter, cooked escarole.

On a recent trip up into the Adirondacks, some friends and I stopped off for a meal at Georgio’s, just outside of Utica in New Hartford. In addition to the “Village Greens,” their version being especially thick thanks to an oreganata of breadcrumbs and pecorino, the menu also included mountains of rigatoni, veal and eggplant parms, and a dirty martini the size of my face. It is a restaurant with an old soul, a happy place to be, if a little weathered, just like the nearby village where these greens have reigned supreme for decades.

Utica Greens are easy to make at home, I often make them myself and think fondly on that trip. You can use my recipe to try them out for yourself!

---

What regional cuisine should I look into next? Let me know in the comments!