The story behind Caesar salad

Summary

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).Crisp, fresh and satisfying, Caesar salad is a dish that’s conquered dining outlets the world over, from your neighbourhood bistro and Pret A Manger to Michelin-starred marvels like Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles. While mayonnaise-heavy iterations haunt room-service menus in hotels far and wide, Caesar salad purists live and breathe its original recipe: whole romaine lettuce leaves, crunchy garlic croutons tossed in a tangy, raw-egg-based dressing of minced anchovies and garlic, dijon mustard, lemon, salt and pepper, topped with shaved parmesan.This punchy salad’s basic, accessible ingredients mean it’s a fabulously flexible dish, easy to spruce up, adding extras to the core ingredients. That’s maybe why, in 1953, the Paris-based International Society of Epicures hailed the recipe as ‘the greatest to originate in the Americas in 50 years’ and why it hasn’t fallen off the restaurant radar in its 101 years of existence.Take LA’s Bar Etoile, where the salad is transformed into a mighty beef tartare hybrid. Thick slices of toasted bread are layered with the dressing and raw beef mixed with speckles of anchovy plus freshly grated lemon zest and parmesan. But if you’re a Caesar purist, you might want to instead sample the original at Quebec’s Le Continental, complete with the spectacle of it being put together tableside.The original recipe of Caesar salad consists of whole romaine lettuce leaves and garlic croutons tossed in a dressing of egg yolks, anchovies, garlic, dijon mustard, lemon, salt and pepper, topped with shaved parmesan.Photography by Lisovskaya Natalia, Getty ImagesOriginThe Caesar salad was born in 1924 in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, where Italian immigrant Caesar Cardini had opened Restaurante Caesar's to attract US visitors craving an escape from the prohibition laws. The story goes that on a bustling Fourth of July, the restaurant was running short on menu items, so Caesar snatched up...