The One Salad You Should Avoid Ordering From A Restaurant Menu

In these days of ever-rising food prices, eating out at a restaurant can seem more like an investment than a way to get food in your stomach. When you do decide to dine out, it's important to choose wisely to get the most for your money. There are plenty of overpriced menu items you'll want to avoid, and one of them (much as it pains me to say this, since I love it) is the wedge salad.

A wedge salad is basically a honking big chunk of iceberg lettuce. It may be a quarter of a head, but I've had wedge salads where the restaurant went with half a lettuce. It's typically covered with a creamy dressing and delicious toppings like bacon bits, blue cheese crumbles, and chopped tomatoes. Some restaurants offer a wedge salad for $10 or $12, but if you dine at ritzier establishments the cost could be closer to $30. (To be fair, the $28 wedge salad from Delmonico's does include fancier ingredients like prosciutto chips and a yuzu honey vinaigrette.)

Assuming you bought the ingredients for a wedge salad at the grocery store, you might spend around 50 cents for ¼ of an iceberg lettuce and the same for two ounces of blue cheese dressing. You could shell out another 50 cents each for a good-sized chunk of tomato and $1 for a few slices of bacon and an ounce of blue cheese crumbles. That's approximately $3.50 worth of ingredients for a salad that takes minimal effort to make.

I haven't been tempted to order a wedge salad from a restaurant for years now, most likely because I haven't eaten anywhere that offers them. Writing about my old favorite has triggered a familiar craving, but with today's prices you bet I'll be making my own. It really couldn't simpler since it starts by chopping a head of iceberg lettuce into four parts (or two if you want an extra large salad). You then put the wedge in a bowl to contain all the messiness (a plate is too risky as the toppings tend to escape) and let it sit there while you fry and crumble a few strips of bacon and chop the tomato.

The next step is to smother the lettuce with a creamy dressing. (I'm usually more of a balsamic person, but with a wedge salad the dressing needs to be creamy so the other ingredients stick.) Blue cheese dressing is a classic choice but you could go with ranch, thousand island, or the elegantly-named green goddess. Scatter the toppings over the lettuce, letting them fall where they may. If tomato, bacon, and blue cheese crumbles aren't enough to satisfy, you could also include chopped green or red onion, crumbled hard-boiled eggs, dried cranberries, candied pecans, or walnuts.

The tricky (but fun) part is eating the salad. You'll need both a knife and a fork for this, but the first bites are bound to be awkward and messy. It gets easier to eat as you go, though. From first bite to last, it's pure, crunchy deliciousness.