How the Caesar Salad Was Invented in Tijuana

Cardini had been born in Baveno, a small town on the shore of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy. He came to America in the early 1900s and eventually settled in San Diego, but he operated his restaurant across the border in Mexico. This was Prohibition, and Americans were thirsty. Tijuana became a destination for Californians looking to drink legally, and holiday weekends drew the biggest crowds.

That particular Fourth of July overwhelmed the kitchen. According to Cardini's daughter Rosa, interviewed decades later, her father simply wasn't prepared for that many people. Running short on ingredients, he gathered what he had left—romaine lettuce, olive oil, eggs, lemon, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, Parmesan, croutons—and wheeled a cart into the middle of the dining room. What he couldn't provide in variety, he'd provide in theater.

He made the salad tableside, tossing whole leaves of romaine meant to be picked up by the stem and eaten with your fingers. The eggs were coddled, barely cooked, mixed into the dressing to give it body. The croutons had been rubbed with garlic. The performance was the dish, and the dish was the performance.

Word spread. Hollywood discovered Tijuana's little restaurant, and stars like Clark Gable and Jean Harlow made the drive south. Julia Child ate there as a girl in the 1920s and remembered it years later, calling it "a sensation of a salad from coast to coast." Cardini eventually trademarked his dressing and sold it commercially. The original recipe never included anchovies—those came later, added by his brother Alex, who may or may not have invented his own version called the Aviator Salad. The Cardini family contested the details for years.

The original restaurant on Avenida Revolución in downtown Tijuana is still open. The Caesar salad remains on the menu, made the old way, at the table.