You’ve probably had a version of this salad. You might even love this salad. But do you know this salad? While it is often called a Chinese chicken salad, the dish originated in California in the 1960s. Sylvia Wu, a Chinese-American restauranteur, is credited with creating the dish at Madame Wu’s in Santa Monica, at the request of Cary Grant (a restaurant regular and Wu’s longtime celebrity crush). While Wu’s original dish drew loosely from chicken salads she had eaten in Shanghai, she developed it to appeal to the palate of her (American) celebrity clientele. (Paul Newman, apparently, loved the shrimp toast.)
The legacy of this salad, like the Cali-born Cobb, can be seen on menus across the country, cemented as a classic in the lexicon of American salads. You, like me, may have first encountered a version at The Cheesecake Factory—an extremely transformative moment in my suburban Texas childhood that I can’t actually remember because it feels like this salad has always existed in my life.
