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Dressing On The Salad, Not

On The Side
by Adam Roberts
on 08/11/11 at 01:00 PM

My last post was about Caesar salad and how much I love it. One of
the things that I love about it is that, 99 percent of the time, if you
order a Caesar salad at a restaurant, it comes dressed.
That's the whole idea of a Caesar salad: it involves leaves coated with
dressing. That's just what it is. If you serve a bowl of Romaine with
Caesar dressing on the side, that's not a Caesar salad. Which is why I
was a bit flummoxed, the other night, when I ordered--for the
second time in two weeks--a Cobb salad at one of my favorite local
joints here in the West Village.

I should've remembered from the last time I was there that they
serve the dressing on the side. And, sure enough, when the salad
came out this second time, it was a big bowl of stuff with a little
metal container filled with white dressing. (You can see the salad,
with the dressing poured on top, in the above photo.)

With all due respect to the chef: no no no no no no! That's not how
you serve a salad!

What makes a salad great, the reason people eat salad, is the way
that the dressing (an emulsification of oil and vinegar) coats
everything evenly, taking a series of disparate ingredients (here:
corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and lettuce) and
transforming them into a unified whole.

The magic that happens in a bowl of salad is entirely dependant on

everything getting tossed--evenly, methodically--with dressing.

Now you don't have to tell me why they served the dressing on the
side. I get it. DIETERS. Yes, many of you are on diets and would
prefer to distribute your own dressing yourselves. You want to add
the teeniest, tiniest speck of dressing to your bowl of raw vegetables
so you can pat yourself on the back and tell your Weight Watchers
coach that you only collected 32.815 points at that meal you went to
last night with your boss.

Well, I'm all for that! That's wonderful. Congratulations on taking

steps towards healthy living! But does that mean that any restaurant
should serve dressing on the side as a default? Absolutely not. It's an
affront to everything that salad stands for; it's an affront, actually, to
everything that a restaurant stands for.

A restaurant should exist, first and foremost, to induce pleasure in

its customers. If it's not about pleasure, why should we even bother?
We may as well sit at home on the couch, crying, eating a plate of
carrot sticks.

And since pleasure is what all restaurants should aspire to,

kowtowing to dieters is completely misguided (unless that's your
restaurant concept: kowtowing to dieters). Which is all to say that
when someone orders a Cobb salad--a salad that features bacon as a
prominent ingredient--have the courtesy, have the decency, have the
good common sense to mix that salad with dressing before bringing
it to the table.

Otherwise, you may as well weigh your diners at the end of the meal.
You're not running a restaurant, you're running a spa.

Tagged with: Eating Out

Comments (11)

PickleKid I couldn't agree more with the nuisance of

10:34:00 PM on
08/15/11
the dressing on the side. Most of the time the
little serving containers they provide aren't
sufficient for the amount of salad served and
you have to wait for your request for more
dressing.
The person who said you're eating more of
the dressing than the salad is spot on. And I
hate when they pile on the salad ingredients
on too small of a plate! So now you have to
"dump" your dressing on the greens and risk
a lotof it falling off the plate when you
attempt to eat.
 Why can't they do the European method
where the salad is tossed at the table? Or at
least in the kitchen!

drklcw There are other reasons to have dressing on

12:55:46 PM on
08/14/11
the side (or skip it altogether) than just
dieting or a picky palate. I am allergic to all
members of the allium family, which
eliminates 95% of dressing choices. Most
times, I have to resort to oil and vinegar; I
know it's not how the chef envisioned the
entire salad experience, but I have no choice
if I want the salad!

ldivas I totally agrre that a well dressed ( not too

05:46:18 PM on
08/13/11
little, not too much, just right) is a wonderful
part of a meal out. Of course, one of the keys
to achieving this is good dressing. So many
dressings are so creamy and so overloaded
with ingredients that they overwhelm the
salad. The best is a simple vinaigrette (good
Caesar dressing included) that coats the salad
in a blance witht the ingredients.
All this having been said, I work for a retail
grocery that makes Caesar salads to order as
 part of the cafe offerings. I have been asked
to toss this salad with every imaginable
combination of the ingredients (more of this,
less of that, none of this or that). The
dressing is the most hilarious ( and
sometimes horrifying) point. I've been asked
to do everything from put it on drop by drop
to super extra "gloppy" Believe me, a!er 2-3
hours of this, I am ready to do anything else
(including washing dishes)!

stevebirnbaum I agree completely! Default should be

02:53:06 PM on
08/12/11
dressing mixed in. I agree with those whom
are not fans of soaking wet salad, and I
always ask for my salad "lighlt dressed." The
whole dressing on the side thing is just silly.
Let's be honest - you still wind up eating all of
the dressing, it is just not distributed evenly.

heydemann3 But o!en the establishment adds so much

11:35:04 AM on
08/12/11
dressing the ingredients are drowned in a
poorly executed glop. There are places where
I trust the kitchen implicitly, but much of the
time I don't. Mu dining pleasure is enhanced
when my salad has a functional amount of
dressing, which is not .0008 grams, but also
 not enough to float a mouse.
You can feel free to say-please add the
dressing in the kitchen.

prst There are very few restaurants that dress a

09:29:52 AM on
08/12/11
salad correctly. Most of the time the salad is
dripping with dressing, so much you cannot
taste the salad ingredients. Why not just use a
spoon to stuff that "on the side salad
dressing" into your mouth?For many, the
salad is just the vehicle for the salad dressing.
I now judge a restauant by the way a salad is
dressed. I travel the world and can honestly
say, the US generally fails miserably in the
salad department.

Skippy14 I think a lot of it depends on the service level

02:50:47 AM on
08/12/11
of the restaurant. If it's a top flight restaurant
where the staff has been trained to precisely
dress the salad correctly, then of course the
salad is better served with the dressing on. If,
however, the waiters are just hanging back in
the kitchen throwing dressing on with one
hand while they're texting their friends with
the other, I'd be thrilled to have the dressing
on the side. As much as a salad on the side
 lacks elegance, I would much rather have
that and do it myself than be stuck with what
I think is much worse--lettuce leaves and
other vegetables struck limp by an onslaught
of dressing.

ramstutz A restaurant will serve salad dressing on the

04:37:30 PM on
08/11/11
side or un-mixed on the top for the simple
reason that they don't want to dirty an extra
bowl to toss it. This is why a caesar side salad
is generally an extra buck over the regular
side salad. Many restaurants even have a
salad station where the server prepares the
first course salad. I'd rather have my dressing
on the side than have it be over-dressed by a
server with a heavy hand. However, I do
agree that more attention should be paid to
an entree salad, as it will be prepared by the
chef, in the kitchen.

Nikki_in_Cali Whenever possible, I order any chopped

02:34:37 PM on
08/11/11
salad offered. It's cut into manageable pieces,
you can get a little of each component with
each bite and every single bite has dressing
on it.
pm50x Salads properly dressed are a thing of beauty.
01:50:24 PM on
08/11/11
I learned long ago that if the salad greens are
well dried and then tossed in an over-sized
bowl you do not need a lot of dressing. I've
noticed when properly dressed I use less
than I would if it were on the side.

snp1 This is your blog post for today? Seriously? Is

01:45:53 PM on
08/11/11
this all you could come up with to write
about? A salad screed?

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