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    Who was the Caesar in Caesar salad?

    Not Julius Caesar of ancient Rome, but Caesar Cardini, an Italian-born chef who ran a restaurant in Mexico.

    Romaine lettuce, a garlicky dressing, grated cheese and crisp croutons. Caesar salad is a fixture on restaurant menus around the world.

    The name makes many people think of Julius Caesar, the hero of ancient Rome, and you may even have heard that it was his favorite dish. That story has no basis at all. The salad is named after a 20th-century chef who ran a restaurant in Mexico.

    Cesare from Italy

    His name was Caesar Cardini. He was born Cesare Cardini in 1896 in Baveno, a town on the shore of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. “Caesar” is simply the English form of the Italian name Cesare.

    Cardini moved to the United States in the 1910s and went into the restaurant business in California. Then, in 1920, Prohibition took effect across the United States, banning the production and sale of alcohol.

    He turned his attention to Tijuana, the Mexican town just across the border from San Diego. Alcohol flowed freely in Mexico, so Americans crossed the border in large numbers. Cardini opened a restaurant there called Caesar’s Place, and it was soon busy with customers from the United States.

    A hand-colored postcard of a street lined with vintage cars, two-story hotels and bars, with a sign reading “CAESAR” in the distance
    A Tijuana postcard from the late 1920s. The “CAESAR’S PLACE” sign is visible at the far left, on a street of hotels and bars catering to Americans.Source: Uncredited for Western Publishing & Novelty Co., Los Angeles, Calif. / Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

    A salad of leftovers on Independence Day

    According to Cardini’s daughter Rosa, the salad was born on July 4, 1924, America’s Independence Day. The restaurant was overflowing with customers spending the holiday across the border, and the kitchen ran out of supplies.

    So Cardini made a dish from whatever was left: romaine lettuce, olive oil, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, lightly cooked (coddled) eggs, Parmesan cheese and croutons flavored with garlic oil. He tossed it at the table in front of the diners, giving them a bit of a show along with their meal.

    The first Caesar salad is said to have differed from today’s in a few ways. The lettuce leaves were left whole and eaten with the fingers. And the anchovies so common in today’s dressings were not originally used at all, according to Rosa.

    There are other claims about who invented it, though. One story credits Cesare’s brother Alex, who ran the business with him, and another says the recipe came from a cook who worked in the restaurant. Which account is true has never been settled.

    From a border town to the world

    Americans who had crossed the border carried the salad’s reputation home. Julia Child, the American cook famous for her television cooking shows, remembered eating Caesar salad at the restaurant as a child in the 1920s, and later included a recipe in one of her cookbooks.

    Cardini himself began making and selling his dressing in Los Angeles in the late 1930s, and the business was carried on by his daughter Rosa.

    Whole romaine leaves coated with dressing and cheese laid out on a white plate, with a smiling man seated behind it
    Caesar salad served at Caesar’s restaurant in Tijuana (2018). The romaine leaves are served whole, uncut.Source: Keizers / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

    The Tijuana restaurant moved to a larger building in 1931 and was sold in 1936. Even so, a restaurant carrying on the name Caesar’s still operates in downtown Tijuana, and the salad is still tossed tableside. Not a Roman hero, then, but a chef in a border town, whose name ended up on menus all over the world.

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