Photo: This is not a chicken ceasar salad. This is… homegrown tomato and cucumber served with a little balsamic vinaigrette on a summer afternoon. Turns out, I don’t take a lot of photos of salads, though I eat them frequently. I suppose I should fix that? Anyway, the salad of this article is from a long time ago, before phones and cameras were all-in-one devices. Ah yes… 200X… can you believe it?

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When I was a teen/tween, there was a place called EatZi’s in Rockville, Maryland. There was one other place like it in the area, Sutton Place, which I specifically remember making a fancy rosemary-forward rotisserie chicken, that was just as good, but very different than EatZi’s. EatZi’s was a weird place in a time when we were just learning that grocery stories don’t have to be regular. It was partially a grocery store–think Whole Foods before we all had Whole Foods or Trader Joes before we had Trader Joes… but what made it special was the special prepared food counters where someone made something for you.

Now, again, I was encountering this place as a teen/tween and my time at the grocery store had been until then at Giant, mostly, which is a very regular grocery store with very regular sort of things. Its purpose is volume, its customer is suburban and urban moms trying to feed an army on a budget, its experience is… regular.

But EatZi’s. EatZi’s was for adults. Adults who wanted to eat something good and have it be made with some sort of care, but not at a restaurant. They played classical music and opera over the speakers rather than the oldies over at Giant. It smelled like fresh bread, rosemary, garlic, and other stuff. There was chocolate that wasn’t Godiva, baked bread that was fancier than basic “Italian loaf.” I’m not a sweets person, so I don’t know if there were baked goods there but I am sure if they were, they came with a $40 price tag and tasted very fancy. This place was… a gateway to my understanding of adult food spaces at the time. A precious introduction to the kind of living I thought I wanted to live. (To be clear, my suburban-mom-ass drives her suburban-ass-minivan to Giant to feed an army. I bop along to oldies–read, The Backstreet Boys— in the aisles while I’m getting taco supplies with the other Millennial moms also trying not to hum along too loudly and be noticed.)

And what I loved most about EatZi’s was, as the blog title eludes to, their chicken ceasar salad which was an experience. Imagine being teenish and walking up to spread of ingredients: lettuces of different types and colors, tomatoes of different varieties, onions, pickled red onions, freshly broiled salmon, seasoned roasted chicken breasts still whole and ready for chopping, hard boiled eggs, artichokes, sauces and dressings and seasoning… and all sorts of other stuff I surely didn’t notice all of them in little metal containers in a sea of ice to keep them crisp and cold, yet pretty and inviting. This was treated, I’m sure, as little better than the college salad bar by the young singles who stood with me in line for this salad station, but for me, it represented the luxury of choice otherwise rarely offered to me. And as a reminder, all with opera as a soundtrack in the background!

My kiddos make fun of me and call me a basic girly. Mostly during pumpkin spice season. I don’t think I’ll ever escape the charges. I know that chicken ceasar salad is a very basic, not terribly healthy, order. I don’t know when I started to love them. I just know that it sounded like a not childish salad order, which I delivered to this person in a chef’s hat at this counter with very confident ease. And this person, began a process. They made me a salad worth remembering over 20 years later.

Maybe it was the metal bowl they used. I actually think it’s a combination of the metal bowl and all that ice because I distinctly remember the ice and the crisp cold of everything involved. I remember the care in which this person selected (selected) the romaine, the croutons, the block of parmesan (which they shaved into the bowl). The dressing that they ladled in–quite a bit of it. The generous chicken portion, diced with care. All tossed within this bowl–not quickly, either–with flair: a combination of tong work and bowl movement. And by the way, each salad was made one at a time. This person made my salad. They paid attention to my salad for those minutes of time. And when they were done, they put it all, so much salad, in a big ol’ plastic clamshell container with a lovely slice of toasted garlic bread on top and sent me on my way.

I don’t know what mom paid for it. I’m sure it wasn’t cheap. I know it wasn’t as much as the salmon ceasar salad, which was also available.

I think what I remember most are two things: the care this person put into the making of my basic-girl salad and the creamy deliciousness of the salad itself. It was perfect from beginning to end: the lettuce crisp, the dressing flavorful, the croutons crunchy and toothsome, the cheese a bit salty and funky in every bite. It was not a healthy salad, but it was a salad that did something good to me. Enough to remember it and wish I could do it myself the same way. (I could. But… the work…)

I have had many ceasar salads since. Perhaps we always romanticize our “firsts.” I’m sure this smacks as a strange thing to romanticize, but I suspect my revisiting this moment and meal is more of a nostalgia for the care and the craft than the taste.

Remember when we had nice things?

(Did we ever have nice things?)

We weren’t EatZi’s regulars. That was a place near the “good” mall and I feel like we were in there when we were at that mall on occasion. That meant I enjoyed that salad a few more times before heading off for college. I don’t know when EatZi’s closed, but I do remember feeling instant regret for not getting in there one more time to have that salad.

(Because… there was a nice thing. A nice thing I took for granted.)

Of course, by that time, chicken ceasar salads weren’t all that special anymore. Just… a thing to eat between classes. Not made with much care and not consumed with any level of mindfulness. Lettuce, dressing, cheese and croutons in combination, nothing more.

I wish I could tell you when that happened: when a precious thing became so very regular.

I’d love to know your precious food memories–what dishes mean to you and how they’ve changed over time.

I’m teaching a class on this for StoryStudio Chicago in November. It’s for writers of all genres, so don’t be shy if you’re not a speculative fiction writer. This one is just to tap into memory and memorialize food on the page. Can you make someone want to eat a chicken ceasar salad for dinner tonight? I’d like to see you try!