Pistachio Crusted Chicken Salad at Elli’s Diner in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
I usually order Cobb Salad when I go to Elli’s Diner in Salinas, California on South Main Street. However, when I want a treat, I order Elli’s Pistachio Crusted Chicken Salad.
Both these salads remind me of the kinds of salads you could get in fancy department stores when I was growing up like Hudson’s in downtown Detroit (Michigan) – now closed.
For the Pistachio Crusted Chicken Salad, Elli’s rolls a flattened chicken breast in crushed pistachios and grills it before chopping it up into strips.
These strips are then placed on a bed of mixed organic greens with chunks of Granny Smith apples, diced cranberries and cherries, sliced almonds, roasted onion, and goat cheese. Honey-mustard dressing and a slice of grilled flatbread come on the side.
I feel like I am in a show biz entourage with a delicious and elaborate salad like that. If I sit in the glassed-in terrace, I could eat the Pistachio Crusted Chicken Salad with my sunglasses on and feel like a movie star myself at Elli’s Diner in Salinas, California.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
