Southern food staples have crept into the mainstream. Ten years ago, chicken and waffles was inescapable. More recently: pimento cheese. (Next: Pawpaws? Scuppernong?)
Every restaurant, Southern or not, finds a way to use this shredded, creamy, piquant concoction, whether it’s smoked and served with crackers or layered onto a giant pub burger. Green Pig Bistro rolls pimento into balls and fries them, like a Southern bar snack version of Italy’s arancini.
The Arlington restaurant embodies that type of modern American restaurant borrowing flavors from around the world, like in the soy-sesame sauced albacore; elevating home cooking staples, like the no-frills pork and veal meatballs, loosely packed meat seemingly crumbling into tomato-sauced polenta; and flirting with fine dining with crispy skinned salmon dabbed with chimichurri next to Brussels sprouts, whose leaves avoided the fryer and instead arrive in soft scoops.
Green Pig Bistro
Modern American | $$$
1025 N. Fillmore St., Arlington
