Caesar Salad

The beloved, classic Caesar salad—that standard you can find everywhere from pizza parlors to supermarkets to upscale eateries—has a somewhat confusing identity. Is it Italian? Mexican? American? The answer is that this garlicky favorite is all three, a food that owes its existence to immigration, American Prohibition laws, and the genius of one enterprising restaurateur. According to legend (and lots of reliable reporting), the salad was created by Cesare Cardini (whose name is sometimes misspelled as “Caesar Cardini”), an Italian American chef who moved his restaurant to Tijuana from San Diego after the start of Prohibition. The spot became popular both with locals and visiting Americans (who poured over the border regularly to wet their whistles); as such, the restaurant often ran out of ingredients. On one such night, when the restaurant’s usual salad was 86’d, Cardini threw together a combination of romaine lettuce, Parmesan cheese, lemon juice, olive oil, eggs, and Worcestershire sauce. The result was so good, he added it to the menu.

In the century since, that simple original recipe has spawned almost countless variations. There are now chicken Caesar salads, kale Caesars, vegan versions, and fusion adaptations galore in pretty much every city across the country. Iterations of the salad’s creamy dressing recipe have add-ins like minced garlic, Dijon mustard, anchovy paste, raw egg yolks without the whites; some Caesar dressings are mixed by hand tableside, others whipped together in a food processor. Crispy homemade croutons, often made with hearty bread, like sourdough, have become de rigueur.

This version comes from former Gourmet food editor Shelley Wiseman. She notes that when her father, John Wiseman, and her stepmother moved from Mexico to England, her father started to help with the cooking—and the first thing he learned to make was this homemade Caesar recipe. It’s a pretty classic version, with anchovies in place of the original Worcestershire. Its utterly perfect flavors remind us exactly why Cardini’s spur-of-the-moment invention has remained popular for so many decades.