{"id":409237,"date":"2026-04-24T21:45:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/409237\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T21:45:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:45:15","slug":"we-ate-the-lea-michele-cajun-chicken-salad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/409237\/","title":{"rendered":"We Ate the Lea Michele Cajun Chicken Salad"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Stage Whisperer<\/a><\/p>\n

\n This article first ran in\u00a0Stage\u00a0Whisperer, Vulture\u2019s newsletter about all things theater. Subscribe\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to get it weekly!\n <\/p>\n

\n Do you like Gorgonzola as much as the Chess star does?
\n Photo: Jackson McHenry\n <\/p>\n

Amazing things are happening in the arena of \u201cLea Michele campaigning for a Tony Award for her performance in\u00a0Chess\u00a0by emphasizing how deeply connected she is to the theater industry.\u201d She did a Playbill \u201cMy Life in the Theatre\u201d\u00a0interview<\/a>. She got a\u00a0Sardi\u2019s portrait<\/a>\u00a0that looks like Idina Menzel (Menzel\u2019s own portrait looks like\u00a0someone else entirely<\/a>). And most important, she got a salad at New York\u2019s Joe Allen named after her, which was randomly\u00a0announced on The\u00a0Drew Barrymore Show<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If you go to the Theater District spot right now, you can order a Lea Michele Cajun Chicken Salad for 26 bucks. There are no other celebrity items on the menu, and as far as we can tell, there\u2019s no particular connection between Michele and Cajun cuisine \u2014 paging through Google\u2019s archive of old Joe Allen menus, however, we did notice the restaurant used to serve a \u201cCajun chicken sandwich,\u201d which seems to have been transmogrified into a salad for this press opportunity. (Insiders have told us that Cajun chicken dishes, whether in salad or sandwich form, have rotated through the menu in the past.)<\/p>\n

Before seeing\u00a0Fallen Angels<\/a>\u00a0last week, my colleague Rebecca Alter and I decided we simply had to order the salad, which features a few slabs of well-cooked chicken breast over romaine lettuce with a handful of toasted bread crumbs and a dressing that is Gorgonzola-forward in a way that makes you think,\u00a0I don\u2019t really like Gorgonzola as much as Lea Michele does. (She told Barrymore she loves it.) It\u2019s not a bad salad, but like the musical\u00a0Chess, it\u2019s daring, lopsided, and somehow redolent of the 1980s. It would be improved if the Cajun spice, only really dusted on top of the meat, had more kick to offset the dressing. After a few bites, we both agreed Rebecca\u2019s traditional Caesar-salad order had a more conventional, appealing balance of flavors.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll also note that the food came, as usual, promptly in time for our curtain and that the server didn\u2019t blink an eye over my awkward decision to order the salad by its full listed name \u2014 though she never said \u201cLea Michele\u201d out loud. She presented our entr\u00e9es by saying, \u201cFor her, the Caesar,\u201d and then turned and placed my bowl down on the table without comment.<\/p>\n

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