It’s true! Albeit by an Italian living in Mexico avoiding the restrictions of Prohibition in the United States during the 1920’s… but nonetheless, it was restaurateur Caesar Cardini who on the Fourth of July, no less, in 1924 came up with the simple and delicious recipe that makes up the Caesar salad. According to Wikipedia, this invention of the Italian immigrant’s ingenuity took place in Tijuana, Mexico, on that Fourth of July when he had to make do with what he had in his kitchen! The story goes that Cardini had run out of most of his food supplies and still had hungry customers waiting. Instead of giving up and turning clients away, Caesar developed what would become his most famous signature dish: the Caesar Salad!
And aren’t we grateful he did!
Besides the Greek salad, the Caesar is my other favorite.
More about Caesar Cardini
Cardini operated restaurants in Mexico and the US. In 1924, Cardini was living in San Diego but also working in Tijuana. American chef “Julia Child claimed to have eaten a Caesar salad at Cardini’s restaurant when she was a child in the 1920s. Nonetheless, the earliest contemporary documentation of the Caesar Salad is from a 1946 Los Angeles restaurant menu, twenty years after the 1924 origin asserted by the Cardinis.“
Whatever the case, I’ll have a Caesar salad in his honor today!
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