www.theatlantic.com Open in urlscan Pro
199.232.198.133  Public Scan

Form analysis
1 forms found in the DOM

GET /search/

<form method="GET" action="/search/" class="SearchOverlay_searchForm___U0R_" data-action="search submit">
  <div class="SearchInput_root__6XLPB">
    <div class="VisuallyHidden_root__yoK4r"><label for="search-input-:R2srl2mm:">Search The Atlantic</label></div><button type="submit" title="Submit" class="SearchInput_searchButton__u0CP0"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 16 16"
        aria-hidden="true" width="20">
        <path d="M15.85 15.15l-5.27-5.28a6 6 0 10-.71.71l5.28 5.27a.48.48 0 00.7 0 .48.48 0 000-.7zM1 6a5 5 0 115 5 5 5 0 01-5-5z"></path>
      </svg></button><input type="search" name="q" id="search-input-:R2srl2mm:" class="SearchInput_searchInput__5hWhI SearchInput_hideClear__re5AE" placeholder="Search The Atlantic..." autocomplete="off" required="" value="">
  </div>
  <div class="QuickLinks_quickLinksContainer__F_iFd">
    <div class="QuickLinks_quickLinksHeading__ms7Ht">Quick Links</div>
    <ul class="QuickLinks_quickLinksList__e7x66">
      <li class="QuickLinks_quickLinkListItem__59_09">
        <a class="QuickLinks_quickLink__w_Fp0" href="/projects/dear-therapist/" data-action="click link - quick link" data-label="Dear Therapist" data-event-element="quick link" data-event-position="1"><img alt="Dear Therapist" loading="lazy" class="Image_root__XxsOp Image_lazy__hYWHV QuickLinks_quickLinkImage__FTMBA" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/img/specialreports/lead/2020/10/14/Thumbnail.jpg" width="148" height="148"><div class="QuickLinks_quickLinkLabel__TYtIC">Dear Therapist</div></a>
      </li>
      <li class="QuickLinks_quickLinkListItem__59_09">
        <a class="QuickLinks_quickLink__w_Fp0" href="/free-daily-crossword-puzzle/" data-action="click link - quick link" data-label="Crossword Puzzle" data-event-element="quick link" data-event-position="2"><img alt="Crossword Puzzle" loading="lazy" class="Image_root__XxsOp Image_lazy__hYWHV QuickLinks_quickLinkImage__FTMBA" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/files/nav-crossword.png" width="148" height="148"><div class="QuickLinks_quickLinkLabel__TYtIC">Crossword Puzzle</div></a>
      </li>
      <li class="QuickLinks_quickLinkListItem__59_09">
        <a class="QuickLinks_quickLink__w_Fp0" href="/archive/" data-action="click link - quick link" data-label="Magazine Archive" data-event-element="quick link" data-event-position="3"><img alt="Magazine Archive" loading="lazy" class="Image_root__XxsOp Image_lazy__hYWHV QuickLinks_quickLinkImage__FTMBA" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/files/archive-thumbnail.png" width="148" height="148"><div class="QuickLinks_quickLinkLabel__TYtIC">Magazine Archive</div></a>
      </li>
      <li class="QuickLinks_quickLinkListItem__59_09">
        <a class="QuickLinks_quickLink__w_Fp0" href="https://accounts.theatlantic.com/accounts/subscription/" data-action="click link - quick link" data-label="Your Subscription" data-event-element="quick link" data-event-position="4"><img alt="Your Subscription" loading="lazy" class="Image_root__XxsOp Image_lazy__hYWHV QuickLinks_quickLinkImage__FTMBA" src="https://cdn.theatlantic.com/media/files/YourSubscription_300x300.jpg" width="148" height="148"><div class="QuickLinks_quickLinkLabel__TYtIC">Your Subscription</div></a>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </div><button type="button" aria-label="Close Search" class="SearchOverlay_closeButton___zntA" data-action="close search" data-event-verb="closed" data-event-element="close icon"><svg viewBox="0 0 16 16" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"
      class="SearchOverlay_closeIcon__DrMMb">
      <path d="M9.525 8l6.159 6.159a1.078 1.078 0 11-1.525 1.525L8 9.524l-6.159 6.16a1.076 1.076 0 01-1.525 0 1.078 1.078 0 010-1.525L6.476 8 .315 1.841A1.078 1.078 0 111.841.316L8 6.476l6.16-6.16a1.078 1.078 0 111.524 1.525L9.524 8z"
        fill-rule="evenodd"></path>
    </svg></button>
</form>

Text Content

Skip to content


SITE NAVIGATION

 * The Atlantic
 * PopularLatestNewsletters
   
   
   SECTIONS
   
    * Politics
    * Ideas
    * Fiction
    * Technology
    * Science
    * Photo
    * Business
    * Culture
    * Planet
    * Global
    * Books
    * Audio
    * Health
    * Education
    * Projects
    * Features
    * Family
    * Events
    * Washington Week
    * Progress
    * Newsletters
   
    * Explore The Atlantic Archive
    * Play The Atlantic crossword
    * Listen to Podcasts and Articles
   
   
   THE PRINT EDITION
   
   Latest IssuePast Issues
   
   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
   
   Give a Gift
 * Search The Atlantic
   Quick Links
    * Dear Therapist
    * Crossword Puzzle
    * Magazine Archive
    * Your Subscription
   
   
 * Popular
 * Latest
 * Newsletters


 * Sign In
 * Subscribe



Culture


SOMETHING WEIRD IS HAPPENING WITH CAESAR SALADS

With chefs tossing in pig ear, tequila, and other wacky ingredients, when does a
classic dish become something other than itself?

By Ellen Cushing

Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
April 17, 2024
Share
Save


Listen to this article

00:00

09:46

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

On a July weekend in Tijuana, in 1924, Caesar Cardini was in trouble.
Prohibition was driving celebrities, rich people, and alcoholics across the
border from San Diego, and Cardini’s highly popular Italian restaurant was
swamped. Low on ingredients, or so the legend goes, he tossed together what he
had on hand: romaine lettuce, Parmesan cheese, and croutons, dressed in a slurry
of egg, oil, garlic, salt, Worcestershire sauce, and citrus juice. It was a
perfect food.

On a November evening in Brooklyn, in 2023, I was in trouble (hungry). I ordered
a kale Caesar at a place I like. Instead, I got: a tangle of kale, pickled red
onion, and “sweet and spicy almonds,” dressed in a thinnish, vaguely savory
liquid and topped with a glob of crème fraîche roughly the size and vibe of a
golf ball. It was a pretty weird food.



We are living through an age of unchecked Caesar-salad fraud. Putative Caesars
are dressed with yogurt or miso or tequila or lemongrass; they are served with
zucchini, orange zest, pig ear, kimchi, poached duck egg, roasted fennel, fried
chickpeas, buffalo-cauliflower fritters, tōgarashi-dusted rice crackers. They
are missing anchovies, or croutons, or even lettuce. In October, the food
magazine Delicious posted a list of “Caesar” recipes that included variations
with bacon, maple syrup, and celery; asparagus, fava beans, smoked trout, and
dill; and tandoori prawns, prosciutto, kale chips, and mung-bean sprouts. The
so-called Caesar at Kitchen Mouse Cafe, in Los Angeles, includes “pickled
carrot, radish & coriander seeds, garlicky croutons, crispy oyster mushrooms,
lemon dressing.” Molly Baz is a chef, a cookbook author, and a bit of a Caesar
obsessive—she owns a pair of sneakers with cae on one tongue and sal on the
other—and she put it succinctly when she told me, “There’s been a lot of
liberties taken, for better or for worse.”

It’s all a little peculiar, at least in the sense that words are supposed to
mean something. Imagine ordering a “hamburger” that contained a bun and some
lettuce, with chicken, marinara sauce, and basil Mad-Libbed between. Or cacio e
pepe with, say, carrots and Christmas ham. To be clear, modifying the Caesar
isn’t fundamentally a bad thing, as long as the flavors resemble those of the
original. Baz likes her Caesar with anchovies (traditional! controversial!
correct!) but said she’s happy to swap in fish sauce, capers, or “other salty,
briny things.” Jacob Sessoms, a restaurant chef in Asheville, North Carolina,
told me he doesn’t mind an alternative green but draws the line at, say,
pomegranate seeds. Jason Kaplan, the CEO of a restaurant-consulting firm in New
York, doesn’t mind a miso Caesar. “Because of the saltiness and the complexity,
because it’s a fermented soybean paste, you know?” he told me. “That doesn’t
piss me off as much as somebody saying that ‘this is a Caesar salad,’ when
clearly there’s nothing to say it’s even closely related.”

The Caesar’s mission creep toward absurdity began long before the tequila and
the fava beans. In fact, it has been going on for decades—first slowly, then
quickly, swept along by and reflective of many of the biggest shifts in American
dining. Michael Whiteman is a consultant whose firm helped open restaurants such
as Windows on the World and the Rainbow Room, in New York. He remembers first
seeing the Caesar start to meaningfully change about 40 years ago, when “hot
things on cold things” became trendy among innovative California restaurants,
and his friend James Beard returned from a trip out West raving about a Caesar
topped with fried chicken livers. This was also, notably, the era of the power
lunch, when restaurant chefs needed dishes that were hearty but still
lunchtime-light, and quick to prepare. The chicken Caesar started appearing on
menus, Whiteman told me, followed by the steak Caesar, and “it went downhill
from there.”



In the 1980s and ’90s, as advances in agriculture, shipping, and food culture
increased Americans’ access to a variety of produce, chefs started swapping out
the traditional romaine for whatever the leafy green of the moment was: little
gem, arugula, frisée. At that point, the Caesar was still found mostly in
Italian American and New American restaurants. But as “fusion” took hold and
culinary nationalism abated, the Caesar became a staple of Mexican American and
Asian American chain restaurants, zhuzhed up with tortilla strips or wontons for
a mainstream dining public who wanted something different yet familiar.


RECOMMENDED READING


 * DEAR THERAPIST: I’M TIRED OF EXPLAINING WHY I DON’T WANT TO GET PREGNANT
   
   Lori Gottlieb
   


 * SOMETHING WE CAN ALL AGREE ON? CORPORATE BUZZWORDS ARE THE WORST.
   
   Kate Cray
   


 * THE TYRANNY OF WORKPLACE FOOD-SHAMERS
   
   Amanda Mull
   

More recently, stunt food has come for the Caesar. “We’re living in a period of
extreme eating, meaning extreme in terms of outlandish,” Whiteman told me, in
which “innovation for its own sake” seems to be motivating chefs and restaurants
up and down the price spectrum. Whiteman calls the resulting dishes “mutants.”

Read: How American cuisine became a melting pot

To some degree, the reason for all of this experimentation is obvious: Caesar
salads—even bastardized ones—rock, and people want to buy them. “Isn’t it
perhaps kind of the case that the Caesar salad might be close to the perfect
dish?” Sessoms said. “It hits all of your dopamine receptors that are palate
related, with umami, fat, and tons of salt.”

The Caesar is a crowd-pleaser salad, a name-brand salad, a safe-bet salad. It’s
also a format that allows for a sort of low-stakes novelty. That helps explain
the rise of the fake Caesar too. Though demand for restaurants has generally
bounced back since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, labor and ingredient
costs are much higher than they were four years ago. Just like Caesar Cardini
before them, chefs are looking for relatively cheap, relatively fast dishes, and
creative ones are looking for classics they can riff on without alienating
customers. “Would untrained American eaters be more likely to order a Caesar
salad than any other salad? Yes,” Sessoms said. Sometimes, when he’s trying to
find a use for specialty greens—celtuce, radicchio—he’ll douse them in Caesar
dressing to get diners to order them.



At the same time, Kaplan told me, it’s hard to overestimate how important the
widespread adoption of the online menu has been over the past decade or so.
Recognizable favorites sell. When diners can see what’s available before they
make a reservation or leave the house, the menu is as much an advertisement as a
utilitarian document. Appending the name “Caesar” to a salad is a shortcut to
broad appeal.

Last week, I called up Stewart Gary, the culinary director of Nitehawk Cinema,
the Brooklyn dine-in movie theater where I ordered that almond-and-pickled-onion
salad. He told me essentially the same thing: In his line of work, people have
limited time with the menu, and Caesar is a useful signifier. “Look,” he said.
“If we called it a kale salad with anchovy dressing, no one would order it.”

Read: In 1950, Americans had aspic. Now we have dalgona coffee.

Ancient philosophers were bedeviled by the question of whether the ship of
Theseus retained its fundamental essence after each of its component parts was
replaced one by one over the course of centuries. I’ve been thinking about
salads for a few weeks now and feel pretty sure that a true Caesar requires, at
minimum, garlic, acid, umami, cold leaves, hard cheese, and a crunchy,
croutonlike product. Beyond that, you can get away with one or maybe two wacky
additions before you start straining the limits of credibility. It’s about
principle, not pedantry.

Besides, the more you learn about Caesar salads, the more you come to realize
that pedantry is useless. The original Caesar was reportedly made with lime
juice instead of lemon. It was prepared tableside and intended to be eaten by
hand, like a piece of toast, “arranged on each plate so that you could pick up a
leaf by its short end and chew it down bit by bit, then pick up another,” as
Julia Child and Jacques Pépin explained in their version of the recipe. It was
meant to be dressed in stages, first with oil, then with acid, then with a
coddled egg (to coat the lettuce leaves, so the cheese would stick to them), not
with the emulsified, mayonnaise-adjacent dressing common today. Crucially, it
didn’t have whole anchovies.



As soon as the recipe began showing up in cookbooks, in the early 1940s, it
started changing: Some recipes called for rubbing the bowl with garlic, or
adding blue cheese or pear vinegar or mustard. In her headnotes for one of the
earliest printed versions of the Caesar recipe, published in West Coast Cook
Book, in 1952, Helen Evans Brown described the Caesar as “the most talked-of
salad of a decade, perhaps of the century.” She then went on to note that “the
salad is at its best when kept simple, but as it is invariably made at table,
and sometimes by show-offs, it occasionally contains far too many ingredients.”
The Caesar is forever, which means it’s forever being manipulated. For better
and for worse.


Ellen Cushing is a staff writer at The Atlantic.