I\u2019m dripping with sweat in an \u201cair conditioned\u201d room as I write this, and although I know the heat is not going to last forever, it\u2019s like living through heartache: It\u2019s hard to imagine life on the other side.<\/p>\n
And what that means, when it comes to cooking, is that the only thing I can think of is not cooking.<\/p>\n
Enter the chopped salad.<\/p>\n
The chopped salad, or at least a well-made chopped salad, is one in which all the components are chopped to roughly the same size and shape and then tossed together with a dressing, usually some kind of vinaigrette.<\/p>\n
The best part about chopped salads is that kind of like heat waves in Southern California, they\u2019re not relegated to one season. The other thing we love about them: They\u2019re not just a salad. They\u2019re a meal.<\/p>\n
There are many contenders for the title of Original Chopped, but one thing is certain, the chopped salad is Angeleno through and through. The Cobb salad<\/a>, invented in the 1930s at the legendary Brown Derby restaurant, is a top contender. (If you are interested in the history of salads, you really should read this<\/a>. Even if you\u2019re not, you\u2019ll be interested once you start reading.)<\/p>\n Even though it\u2019s often served composed, the ingredients \u2014 bacon, tomatoes, egg and blue cheese \u2014 are cut (or crumbled) to the same size. And that is a key to what makes the Cobb the truly great salad that it is.<\/p>\n The ingredients for chopped salads are chopped just so not because we are control freaks. (We are not control freaks. We are Californians. We have signs in our restaurants that say, \u201cNo shirt, no shoes, no problem.\u201d)<\/p>\n They\u2019re chopped that way because we need to eat the salad with this thing called a fork, and the fork needs to go through all the ingredients, so you get every flavor in each bite. With a leafy salad, you hope the shaving of cheese or the candied pecan (heaven help us) surf atop the leaf and make their way into your mouth. You might even pick up a pecan with your fingers and put it there.<\/p>\n With a chopped, you take a stab at the veritable haystack of vegetables with your mini-pitch fork and have at it. Anyone who has ever sat before a Nancy\u2019s Chopped at Pizzeria Mozza or a veritable trough of Joan\u2019s on Third\u2019s Chinese Chicken Salad<\/a> knows: A chopped salad is fun to eat precisely because it is chopped.<\/p>\n The original chopped salad as we know it (or at least the Italian-style chopped) is the La Scala Chop Salad, invented in the 1960s at the Beverly Hills institution, La Scala.<\/p>\n I visited the restaurant a couple of decades ago for a story and had the privilege of going into the kitchen to witness the spectacle of that salad being made. The chef held two knives, parallel, strapped together with, if memory serves me, rubber bands, and hacked at an enormous pile of iceberg, salami, mozzarella cheese and pepperoncini for about 15 violent seconds before inverting this minced overdressed masterpiece in a smooth dome on a dinner plate with a pile of marinated garbanzo beans on top.<\/p>\n The ingredients are not shredded or neatly sliced. They are butchered. And that\u2019s the beauty of it. The tangy vinaigrette has all that surface area to cover. It\u2019s like an antipasto plate that hardly requires you to chew.<\/p>\n Wolfgang Puck, the man who brought you smoked salmon on pizza<\/a> and other studies in California fusion cuisine, made quite a mark on the chopped salad, contributing not one, but two game-changing salads to the canon: One was the Chinese chicken salad from his Asian fusion place, Chinois on Main<\/a>. Madame Wu\u2019s version<\/a> was supposedly the original and the salad has roots in Chinese cuisine, but with his fancier version, it seems like Wolfgang took it mainstream.<\/p>\n And the other was the Chino Ranch chopped salad, which he began serving at Spago in the 1980s, inspired by the vegetables delivered regularly from the famous San Diego farm, Chino Ranch<\/a>. (The salad is no longer on the menu.) The salad was a story in seasonal, farmstand abundance. For me, early on in my culinary career, it was a master class in use what you have.<\/p>\n I was not born with the Alice Waters gene where you go to a farmers market and let the ingredients inspire what you make. Instead, I go to a farmers market, let the ingredients inspire me to spend a lot of money, and then all too often watch those ingredients wilt in my home because I don\u2019t know what to do with them. The chopped salad changed all that for me.<\/p>\n Today, I make a good tangy vinaigrette \u2014 usually the sherry vinaigrette<\/a> from \u201cThe Mozza Cookbook\u201d (which I co-authored) \u2014 chop up my loot \u2014 zucchini, carrots, celery, onion of some kind, green beans (I always buy them, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019re that tasty, frankly), fennel, red or yellow peppers, sugar snaps and halved cherry tomatoes. (I don\u2019t do raw chopped tomatoes; all those seeds and that slimy stuff in the middle = not for me.) I\u2019m not going to win an award for a masterful combination of flavors. But I like the kitchen sink aspect of it. I might toss in some chickpeas if I have them. Or hard salami if I\u2019ve got that rolling around. A good dressing and grated parm, Pecorino or crumbled feta cheese tossed in there brings it all together.<\/p>\n My chopped salad is a kitchen helper. It allows me to get a little wild and crazy at the market \u2014 no matter what time of year \u2014 and not to throw out any produce. Now that\u2019s a friend.<\/p>\n Eating out this week? Sign up for Tasting Notes<\/a> to get our restaurant experts\u2019 insights and off-the-cuff takes on where they\u2019re dining right now.<\/p>\n Jar Chopped Salad<\/p>\n What makes this salad from chef Suzanne Tracht\u2019s steakhouse, Jar, special is that such an unusual and unexpected combination of ingredients \u2014 roasted chicken, prosciutto, olives, celery, carrots (huh?) \u2014 come together and somehow make sense. No longer on the menu, the good news is it\u2019s easy to make yourself. (Hanna Carter \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n Nancy\u2019s Chopped Salad<\/p>\n Nancy Silverton\u2019s chopped salad, a stalwart of Pizzeria Mozza, has become as much a national icon as Nancy herself, copy-catted, often even attributed to her, on menus nationwide. A mountain of radicchio, iceberg, red onion, halved cherry tomatoes, salami, provolone cheese and chickpeas and tossed in a tangy red wine oregano vinaigrette \u2014 it\u2019s refreshing, flavorful, packed with the word of the moment: protein. It\u2019s a hearty meal for two. No cooking required. (Kirk McKoy \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n Chinois Chicken Salad<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to imagine where we Southern Californians would be without the Chinese chicken salad, and we have the Chinois chicken salad from Chinois on Main, Wolfgang Puck\u2019s Santa Monica institution, to thank for that. It\u2019s sweet, a bit spicy (the dressing is made with Chinese hot mustard) and a delight of contrasting flavors and textures. Once you get past the word \u201cfry,\u201d as in \u201cfry the wontons,\u201d you\u2019ll see that it couldn\u2019t be easier to put together. (And, hint: Frying wontons is easy. So is buying them fried.) (Al Seib \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n La Scala Chop Salad<\/p>\n The grandaddy of all chopped salads \u2014 and, for what it\u2019s worth, a Kardashian favorite \u2014 this masterpiece in iceberg form from the Beverly Hills institution, La Scala, went viral when it was learned to be a Kardashian favorite. The lettuce is chopped super fine, which means more surface area for the vinaigrette. Like Nancy\u2019s Chopped Salad, it\u2019s laced with Italian antipasto platter flavors. Make it a meal. The Kardashians do.
Get the recipe.<\/a>
Cooking time: 30 minutes. Serves 2.<\/p>\n![\"Animated](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789214309_955_.gif\")
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Get the recipe.<\/a>
Cooking time: 30 minutes. Serves 6.<\/p>\n![\"Nancy's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789214309_763_.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Get the recipe.<\/a>
Cooking time: 30 minutes. Serves 6.<\/p>\n![\"Chinois](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789214310_217_.jpeg\")
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Get the recipe.<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You are reading our Cooking newsletter Sign up to get a taste of Los Angeles \u2014 and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":461624,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[51804,51810,4462,51808,51805,2882,51803,2303,48,52,51,47,50,49,63,5463,51809,51807,38221,51806,315],"class_list":["post-461623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-caribbean-recipe","tag-curry","tag-dish","tag-good-caribbean-restaurant","tag-hot-sauce","tag-hour","tag-jerked-catfish","tag-l-a","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-minute","tag-restaurant-expert","tag-scotch-bonnet-pepper","tag-spice","tag-spice-courtesy","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=461623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/461623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/461624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=461623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=461623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=461623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}