summer gem caesar with smoked salmon, sungolds, and kettle chip “croutons”

Author Notes

The summer I turned 23, I would spend Friday afternoons counting the minutes until 6:01pm, at which point I was finally free to unpeel my “work clothes,” emerge from my dark office into the blinding light of golden hour, and start a sticky .8 mile walk through a haze of car exhaust, humidity, and chocolate-factory fumes to a restaurant on the edge of downtown called Gilt Bar. This was when New American brasseries were The Thing among chic, effortlessly cool people—dim dining rooms glowing with Edison bulb chandeliers, black-and-white tile floors, tufted leather booths, fancy hand soaps, lo-fi playlists, ”secret” speakeasies in the basement—and though I would never be mistaken for one of those chic, effortlessly cool people, that didn’t stop me each Friday from trying to be.

Gilt Bar is known for doing old-school brasserie staples extremely well, including their house take on a classic Caesar. Having grown up in the land of the Midwestern Side Caesar—an obligatory pre-dinner portion of sad soggy leaves, gloopy dressing, stale bagged bread cubes, and dried-out yellow shards of Parmesan—trying the Gilt Caesar was like visiting a new planet. At the time, it was a towering pile of cool chopped romaine and pulled smoked whitefish bathed in creamy-yet-light savory dressing, topped with a mountain of freshly-grated Parmesan cheese and, in a stroke of genius, scattered with crunchy potato chip bits instead of croutons. Which friend I met there varied by the week that summer, but whoever it was, we’d order that salad, a plate of truffle pasta, two vodka smashes, and the crusty house bread for the table, then watch the sun go down, eavesdrop on first dates, chat up the bartenders, and try to score an invite for live jazz in the basement before getting on a sweaty train home to our un-chic neighborhoods.

This recipe is both an homage to and reinterpretation of the original, intended for those days when it’s too hot to think, let alone cook. Little gem leaves, my summer salad lettuce of choice, stay extra-crisp and fresh under the thin creamy dressing, a minimal-effort approximation of the truly homemade stuff using Japanese mayo, anchovy paste, Worcestershire, garlic, lemon, and a few dots of hot sauce. Because smoked whitefish is hard to come by where I live, I use a little brick of cold-smoked peppered salmon instead (incidentally, Gilt Bar uses smoked salmon for theirs today, and it is every bit as great as I remember); sliced sungolds, not part of the original, add pops of acid and summer-specific sweetness. The whole thing takes seven minutes and zero sweat to pull together. But the real magic is still the kettle chip topping, fresh from the bag, lightly crushed, and scattered on at the end so they stay crunchy. Of course, there is also the mountain of parmigiano reggiano, just like there was back then; a lot may have changed since the summer I turned 23, but when something is just right, it tends to withstand any test time throws at it. —@italianenough_