The Chef

Where The Hell Did You Learn to Cook?  

I mean, who the hell is the "chef" behind the Chef Salad? It's an obvious abomination, and an affront to all things that any proper culinarian would hold sacred, so then, you know... "What gives, Dave?"

Well look: I was on the road, and I needed to procure a salad to meet my obligations to my commitment to 365 Salads, so this is what I got. I considered something up from a gas station, but that was just too grim, and for Day 2 seemed like throwing in the towel before the race had even gotten started. This is a marathon after all, so I fired up the old Google machine and searched for the best salads in Albany, New York, where I currently am. 

The top of the list is a place called La Fountain. Now, I'm guessing they pronounce that name with an American accent because it had the feel of a neighborhood bar, but it was really much more than that. The bartender was so kind, and we had a couple chuckles about the extra blue cheese dressing I ordered because if I'm going to eat a salad, I might as well do everything I can to ruin it's health benifits. I sat with a Coke while I waited for the salad to come, and was able to trot right out the door to my car which was directly out front. All in all, it was a really easy transaction. 

Here, you see the salad, still in it's aluminium container with the lid on, back at my hotel. I'll be honest, I was shocked by the amount of meets and cheeses they put on top of this thing. It really was a fabulous amount of stuff! What you can't see is that under all of that is lots of greens, green peppers - yuck! - cucumbers, tomatoes, and hard cooked egg. I stripped off all of the meats and cheese, and then mixed the dressing into the greens, and put the meats and cheeses back on as I ate through the salad. I only ate about half of the meats and cheese, as it was too much. One thing that was a surprise was the chicken that was obviously cooked in house, and not just a sliced deli meat, which was a surprise. 

Here's the thing though: someone is going to take a swing at this salad and talk about how it's just as bad as anything else I might have eaten. While this salad is not the portrait of healthful eating, what needs to be considered is not the salad, it's what the salad replaces." In this particular case, I would have gone for something like a chicken parmesan, which is one of the restaurant's specialities. 

A Chef Salad has about 150 calories per 200g serving. This salad was huge, so let's quadruple that and call this thing 600 calories. Blue cheese dressing has about 300 calories per cup, and while this wasn't a full cup's worth of dressing, it was a lot. Probably more than half a cup, so let's call it 2/3C and add on 200 more calories for a whopping 800 calories. Certainly a hefty salad, and not on the light side, no? But what of the alternative? 

A Chicken Parmesan dish from 99 Restaurants - only one I could find online that would approximate a restaurant parm, has 1400 calories, 427 of which are from fat, and holy shit that thing has 3030mg of sodium, which is 127% of your daily allowance! That's a big difference from the Chef's Salad I did eat. See? That's the point here: what didn't I eat. 

While we're on the topic of looking up nutritional facts online, be very careful when doing so. I tried to get info on chicken parmesan and I kept finding these things saying a certain recipe had 300 calories, and I would think, "Well, there's just no way that's possible." Look closely and you'll learn they're using all low fat items, and then the thing is baked not fried, and sometimes, in defiance of all things good and holy, they wouldn't even bread the chicken. Don't listen to these people. If you're going to have Chicken Parmesan, do it all the way, otherwise just have a salad. You know? Like me. Healthy.