The Caesar salad face-off

It is rarer for me to be seen at a restaurant having a salad as my only course, than it is to be seen cooking for myself, but once in a while I do it in a miserable attempt at healthy living. Still, I always look for a meaty salad.

It so happened that this week I ordered the oldest salad found on Nairobi menus from two different spots and while each sated my appetite, one emerged as my favourite. This is why. My first was at Mediterraneo Restaurant and Pizzeria, conveniently located smack-dab in the middle of Westlands. I ordered a crisp chardonnay to see me through the wait as I was ravenous and needed a distraction.

The bread basket was a bounty of assorted guilty pleasures accompanied by a decadent garlic herb and butter spread which I devoured greedily.

When my Caesar salad arrived, I was pleasantly shocked by the generous portion and size of the grilled chicken breast chunks. The components which included cherry tomatoes, romaine lettuce and grated parmesan cheese were neatly arranged, providing great visuals which greatly pleased me.

It hurts to say this because the Mediterraneo Group is in my opinion among the top providers of Italian cuisine in the country, but I was disappointed upon biting into my meal. While both the lettuce and tomatoes were fresh and crispy, the chicken left a lot to be desired.

It was slightly overdone giving it a rubbery texture, and was perhaps the most tasteless chicken I have had in a while. No amount of salt, pepper and the delicious caesar dressing could make me ignore this fact. Starkly absent were croutons, which I have come to expect along with any Caesar salad anywhere in the world.

In comparison, the smaller chicken slivers that were in my order at Artcaffe were well-seasoned and actually tasted of poultry rather than the insipid nothingness of my previous dish. I can’t tell if the problem lies in how the different chicken sourced by the two places are raised before slaughter or if it is simply the attention paid when seasoning it.

The portion here was laughable compared to what I got at Mediterraneo, but this advantage combined with the crunchy, buttery croutons added in the salad made theirs a clear favourite for me.

Would I choose Artcaffe over Mediterraneo for a pasta dish? Not in a million years.

But a Caesar salad should not be that hard to perfect and that Artcaffe cares to make this simple dish the best it can be, makes it my obvious choice for the next time I want to make another try at healthy eating.