Best Of Philly: Caesar Salad In A Jar?


So we were just hanging around Foobooz World Headquarters today when word came that someone had delivered lunch. This was strange since none of us had ordered lunch, but then we remembered: Best of Philly season is upon us, and one of the best things about Best of Philly season? Unexpected treats arriving at the front desk from those trying to earn a little notice for themselves.

In this case, it was a delivery from Drawbag–the new take-away lunch and dinner operation from Main Line chef Larry Ward of Ward Catering. Included were a couple of sandwiches, some less-than-inspiring three-mushroom arancini (three mushrooms is about two mushrooms too many in any application), a crimini-and-black truffle soup and that…thing pictured above.

It was exactly what it looks like–a Caesar salad, packed into a sealed mason jar atop a footed water glass stem. There was something both completely ridiculous and oddly intriguing about this presentation, but it wasn’t until we’d emptied the contents of the Caesar Salad Transport Vessel onto a plate that we realized the two best things about it.

Thing 1: With the exception of some way-out-of-season tomatoes, the finely-diced (and admirably fresh) ingredients made for a really good salad–a sort of Caesar brunoise that mixed every part of the salad together into every single forkful. And the house dressing was excellent as well, both deeply creamy and powerfully flavored.

Thing 2: Once it was rinsed out, the mason jar glass became the perfect vessel out of which to sip from our office stock of Pennsylvania white lightning. I mean, it’s a friggin’ mason jar, right? That’s the ideal glass for serving moonshine. And doing so made us feel like the classiest hillbillys in all the land.

Drawbag @ Ward Catering [Official website]