Caesar salad
salad of romaine lettuce and croutons
A Caesar salad (also spelled Cesar, César and Cesare), also known as Caesar's salad, is a green salad of romaine lettuce and croutons commonly dressed with lemon juice (or lime juice), olive oil, eggs, Worcestershire sauce, anchovies, garlic, Dijon mustard, Parmesan and black pepper.
The salad was created on July 4, 1924, by Caesar Cardini at Caesar's in Tijuana, Mexico, when the kitchen was overwhelmed and short on ingredients. It was originally prepared tableside, and it is still prepared tableside at the original venue.
History
The salad's creation is generally attributed to the restaurateur Caesar Cardini, an Italian immigrant who operated restaurants in Mexico and the United States. Cardini lived in San Diego, but ran one of his restaurants, Caesar's, in Tijuana, Mexico, to attract American customers seeking to circumvent the restrictions of Prohibition. His daughter, Rosa, recounted that her father invented the salad at the Tijuana restaurant when a Fourth of July rush in 1924 depleted the kitchen's supplies. Cardini made do with what he had, adding the dramatic flair of table-side tossing by the chef. Some other accounts of the history state that Alex Cardini, Caesar Cardini's brother, made the salad, and that the salad was previously named the "Aviator Salad" because it was made for aviators who traveled over during Prohibition. A number of Cardini's staff have also said that they invented the dish. A popular myth attributes its invention to Julius Caesar.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q275508. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caesar salad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.