Cobblog - All Cobb, All the Time

First shockingly bad review

Out of respect for real Cobb Salads, I will not use a capitalized c when referencing this particular wrongdoing. Because of the number of participating vegetables and meats in a Cobb Salad, chefs have a certain amount artistic license when making adjustments.  I understand this. I welcome this. I anticipate this. If it were always the same, then there would be no need -and there is a need- for this blog. This was not artistic license, this was disrespect and an affront to the words Cobb Salad and to cuisine.

I’ve stayed at the WLake Shore in Chicago four or five times now. I got in around 1PM yesterday after a much delayed flight and called room-service. What arrived to room 2810 that day was not a Cobb Salad. It was a salad whose recipe had been run through a game of Telephone with ADD afflicted eight year olds.  Swiss cheese, garbanzo beans. If you’re feeling dizzy, stop reading now because it only gets worse. I’m reminded of when Ms. MacNeil says “…that thing upstairs is not my daughter!”.

Beneath the dome was an anemic assortment of lettuce, dull pink tomato, perhaps some chicken, and generic bacon (far from the pancetta proclaimed on the menu), a bit of blue cheese and the above mentioned illegal Swiss and garbanzo immigrants. It was as if someone spilled a meager handful of random ingredients onto the plate, tried to tidy it up and put a ramekin of watery Dijon vinaigrette on the side.

Mustard, no matter how rare the variety, doesn’t capture my fancy.  Like Impressionism though, I appreciate its artistic value and therefore didn’t substitute the recommended dressing. It was well suited to this cobb salad because it was thin, watery and insipid. The mediocre rolls were the best part of this meal even though the butter came in cheapo bulk food service style plastic foil topped individu-serv containers.

I guess what I’m saying is that one has certain expectations from certain places. We expect iceberg lettuce with julienned carrots, purple cabbage and thousand island dressing at a roadside diner. We expect award winning (or at minimum tasty) cuisine from luxury hotels. As I write this the morning after, I am waiting almost an hour for my coffee from room service.  I’ve now had to call twice. I guess they’re changing the meaning of their service motto, Whatever Whenever to mean “Whatevs… I’ll get to it Whenever”.

Chop’t - 17th at Broadway NYC

It’s a salad but it has more calories than a whopper with cheese.  Weighing in at  800-900 kcal, we have in this corner the Chop’t Cobb Salad.  It’s not a complaint, just an objective observation.  I don’t start to re-think it until it approaches 1500 or so.

Chop’t is in the salad business, as well they should be since they delivered a truly scrumptious two-pounder chopped and tossed. (For you history buffs, this was one of the original choices of how it could be served at the Brown Derby)  Everything was right with the world there except that I had to wait 5 minutes for a seat holding a salad, can of diet coke, cup of ice, napkins, fork, my skates and helmet. (this was my apres-patiner meal and it’s near Paragon Sports)

Since this was a “create your own” type deal, I decided to go for the Tzatziki-Yogurt dressing this time. It was remarkable (as evidenced by the blog entry). When the salad is chopped and tossed, one really enjoys ten layers of flavor in each bite. Of course the bacon was a bit tough as happens in this environment, but everything else was right on. They even used a mixture of romain and iceberg lettuces which the best for a Cobb in my opinion. Definitely recommended and if it weren’t so far from work, I’d probably eat here 3x per week.

The Ear Inn, Soho, NYC

I finally got back to the Ear today to try their $10 Cobb Salad.  I refused to go here for lunch for a long time because I thought it was only a bar and the only thing I had ever had there was beer!  Finally my friend, Blair, wore me down and I agreed to go a couple of months ago.  It was a great find for lunch in Soho.

Fast-forward to today: The salad was the most basic of Cobb Salads and that is a good thing. Some restaurants tend to over marinate the chicken in garlic or some other flavorful marinade, but this thinly pounded paillard of chicken breast was perfectly moist and very simply seasoned with just a bit of salt and maybe some browned butter.  Everything else was a solid example of textbook Cobb Salad assembly.  Onions were absent (for which I am grateful).  This one had a great flavor throughout and didn’t require more than a teaspoon of the balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

Good job Ear Inn!

Mae Mae, Soho, NYC

Wow.  The Ear Inn was closed, so we were walking over to Chipotle for the old lunch standby and came across Mae Mae on Vandam between Varick and Hudson.  The restaurant was cute, cozy, and reasonably priced!  I saw the Turkey Cobb on the menu and went for it… natch.  When it came out, I was pretty impressed.  It was the perfect size for lunch.  The roasted turkey breast was warm and sliced thin but definitely not deli meat, this was real turkey from a real breast that had come out of a real oven (recently).

The greens were mesclun and the dressing was a 27 year old Sherry Vinaigrette.  Instead of the usual crumbles of blue cheese, there was a little wedge of a beautifully veined bleu (not sure of the variety) it was firm and slightly crumbly but had a creamy flavor and a nice smooth texture.  Additionally there were two strips of freshly fried bacon, a perfect quarter of an avocado, a quarter of a chilled roasted yellow pepper, and five tiny perfectly globular grape tomatoes.  The absence of the egg and onion was actually refreshing here.  The dressing really took care of those things I think.  A definite place to return for a wonderful Cobb Salad.

Westin Book Cadillac, Detroit MI

12/14/09

This was a hearty, good basic cobb.  The chef here was of the “finely chopped” school of Cobb Salads.  Even the bacon was julienned! The egg was minced (not chopped) and the greens were a mix of romaine and mesclun. There was too much of the strong red onion, it stayed with me for some time.  Otherwise, the usual suspects were there, tomato, cucumber, chicken, served with a very thick/emulsified balsamic vinaigrette on the side.  What set this salad apart was the summery green taste, almost like it had been sprayed with wheatgrass juice or something.  Overall, it had a nice balance, no one ingredient (except the onion) was too strong.

35,000 Feet, Seat 2D LGA to MSP

12/7/09

I’m sure you can imagine my excitement when the flight attendant listed a Cobb Salad as one of my meal choices on my recent flight from LGA to MSP (that’s New York to Minneapolis for land lubbers).  I should have known it was too good to be true. It came and it was a Cobb Salad WRAP! 

I decided to review it anyway though because they actually did a pretty decent job on it.  I know that the tendency for wrap is to stuff a spinach tortilla full of lettuce, throw some bacon bits on it, douse it with a nondescript fatty dressing and call it a day.  Well whomever catered this did well.  The spinach tortilla was moist and tender with the proper amount of chewiness.  The contents were the usual suspects of pieces of chicken breast, boiled egg, bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, and blue cheese.  There were so many ways to mess this up, especially since it was airline food.  The chicken was tender and perfectly cooked, the boiled egg was also freshly made and had a wonderful flavor.  The bacon was real and they hold back; the tomatoes were diced smaller than I like, but that was necessary because of the small scale of the wrap.  The only negative criticism I have is that there was too much blue cheese in it.  That being said, it would have been really cheap and easy to just fill up the thing with lettuce and skimp on the other stuff, kudos to them for not doing that. I did end up eating the second half with a fork, holding the tortilla like a cup (watching the ol’ carb intake).

Lord Nelson, Halifax NS

Tuesday, May 20, 2008 

Ok I realize that I’m straying from the original purpose and mission of this blog which is to be All Cobb All the Time. Sometimes I just have to write about that which inspires me. 

I eat a lot of room service and hotel food.  Typically I try to keep it on the healthy side and typically I expect the food to be good but not necessarily excellent.  That is why I still can’t find my socks since they were knocked off by the Lord Nelson Hotel in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  I am not certain, but I believe that the name of the hotel restaurant is Victoria Arms.  Roasted Tomato and Spinach Salad is my subject here.

For the first time in recent memory, I had a meal at a hotel that was truly spectacular. There wasn’t one single wilted leaf in the bowl and a perfectly fresh, green, and plump spinach leaf brings us closer to God.  Many times the delicate unenhanced flavor of a green is overpowered by its bowl mates; not in this case.  The aforementioned flawless leaves were joined by several roasted Roma Tomatoes.

They had a full flavor from perfect seasoning and smoky grill essence. It was as if the skins had been emptied, the contents cooked, and then reassembled, all the while maintaining that ever elusive tomatoness found only in freshly picked, organically grown-on-a-grandpa’s-back-porch-in-a-black-plastic-pot-tomatoes.

I don’t know why these two ingredients worked so perfectly together but they did. I was actually smiling while eating it.  There was just a bit too much balsamic vinaigrette on it, but otherwise, it was truly a perfect meal.  The two main ingredients were exquisite in their simplicity and their noncompetitive partnership.