table talk / By Joseph Byrd

Hail Caesar!

(Aug. 2, 2007)  I never truly realized what a Caesar Salad was until 1969. We were celebrating a special occasion, and my girlfriend insisted that we go to the legendary Paul’s Duck Press, then the most elegant and exotic restaurant in downtown Los Angeles.

Don’t bother to Google — you’ll find only two references to Paul’s Duck Press; one has a quote from Dining Out In Hollywood and Los Angeles by Craig Davidson (1949). It reads, “You will offend him … if you don’t order Romaine ala Paul, because he tosses it up with the dressing he invented 30 years ago and never changed, and which now is known in Los Angeles as Caesar dressing. The name ‘Caesar Salad’ was given the dressing by Paul’s former partner in Mexico, whose brother bore that name. This is the real dish and Paul mixes it at your table and dresses long cool green leaves of Romaine — uncut.”

Caesar Salad prepared tableside in Tijuana. Photo by Bob Doran.

GALLERY >

Alas, there are half a dozen “real” origins of Caesar Salad, and it’s likely more than one holds an element of truth. Paul Maggiora was indeed a partner of Caesar Cardini and his brother Alex in the Hotel Caesars in 1920s Tijuana. Julia Child, who had dined there as a girl, sought out the inventor’s daughter, Rosa Cardini, for the recipe, which she then published. It differs from most in that whole leaves of coated romaine lettuce are intended to be lifted by the stem and eaten with the fingers. Neither anchovies nor croutons are included. This may be a sincere recollection, but it is not what became traditional in the 1930s and ’40s.

Paul’s Duck Press was, like its peers — Chasen’s, The Brown Derby, The Mocambo, Perino’s, Musso & Frank Grill and Scandia — at the end of an era. They were legends built on celebrity, where well-heeled regulars could demand and get virtually anything, although the cuisine was often remarkably lowbrow. (The famous chili at Chasen’s was ground filet mignon in a spiced, cornstarch-thickened tomato sauce.) But since I was hardly a member of that society, I was fortunate to have one memorable meal there.

By the way, pressed duck (see www.epicurious.com) is something one should have at least once. Famously complex in its preparation, there is nothing quite so transcendent. Like Russian caviar, black truffles or foie gras — it’s something you might taste only on a single occasion in a lifetime, yet still be forever touched by.

But that’s not today’s topic.

Caesar Salad is something else — an invention that almost anyone can be touched by, if they are willing to take the trouble. Even in Humboldt County. We most recently had a good Caesar Salad at Sunset Restaurant in Cher-Ae Heights Casino. Before that, the best we had tasted locally was at Avalon, in Eureka, soon after they first opened, nearly a decade ago. It approached perfection.

There are recipes so demanding they are virtually impossible for any but the most skilled cooks, using rare ingredients. Caesar Salad is the opposite of these: Anyone who takes the effort can make it. The problem is not the difficulty — the problem is that the detail and time involved are incommensurate with the price a restaurant can charge. The ingredients are relatively cheap, but the labor is intensive. Customers do not want to pay $20 for a salad for two. Yet if done right, that’s a reasonable price.

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