Chopped Salad

Sick and tired of flicking vinaigrette onto your tuxedo or ball gown? Us too.

Enter the Chopped Salad, no longer exclusively designed for the rich and famous.

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One night in the late 1950’s, at La Scala, an Italian restaurant in Beverly Hills, the tuxedo and ball gown crowd were complaining the salads were messy and hard to eat. Restauranteur Jean Leon and his chef figured, “Why don’t we chop it?” and La Scala became the first to put “Chopped Salad” on the menu. It is an addicting combination of finely chopped romaine, iceberg, salami, mozzarella, and chickpeas in a basic red wine vinaigrette.

Earlier versions of the chopped concept exist, but never technically referred to as “chopped”. The Brown Derby in Hollywood invented the Cobb in the 1930s. A hastily arranged creation made from leftovers by owner Bob Cobb for theater owner Sid Grauman. Apparently, Cobb chopped everything fine to accommodate Sid, who had dental work done that day and couldn’t chew well.

In the 1940’s, the Beverly Hills Hotel’s iconic Polo Lounge debuted the McCarthy, named after a local polo playing millionaire and his highly specific request. It is perhaps a more thoughtful take on the Cobb. Tiny bits of iceberg and romaine are accompanied by arranged mounds of tiny squares of beets, tomato, cheddar, grilled chicken, egg, and bacon. A fan of thinly sliced avocado rests on top. The salad is drizzled with a balsamic and roasted garlic vinaigrette, and tossed table side on the Pink Palace’s high-walled patio by your white-jacketed waiter. It is old school LA.

The chopped salad went mainstream in the early 1980’s, when Wolfgang Puck’s Spago debuted the Chino Chopped Salad. The Chino was a combination of local seasonal raw and cooked vegetables. He served it at the Oscars one year. In 1985, Puck’s pizzaiolo left Spago to consult on a new concept called California Pizza Kitchen, and “CPK” went on to bring LA’s chopped salads to malls across the country.

Make your own version

Especially on ‘too-hot-to-cook’ days, we make chopped salads using seasonal ingredients from our garden. However, this is not a “kitchen sink” salad. The idea is to achieve zen-like balance in each bite.

Start with a crunchy lettuce base, and chop it fine. Then load it up like Wolfgang with small bits of raw and cooked veggies that compliment each other in taste and texture. Include a protein or two and a crumbly or shredable cheese. Artistically arrange your ingredients in neat piles on top of the lettuce. Make it look like a little jewel box. Style it. Always style it. It pays to give it a little artistic thought and make it look cool. Toss everything table side with a bold, acidic dressing.

Dice everything about 1/4″. You should not really be able to pierce any of it with a fork. Each forkful should eat more like a spoonful – every ingredient represented in every perfect bite.