Chinese chicken salad
Photo: phototram · CC BY 2.0

History

The salad's modern shape came together at Trader Vic's, Madame Wu's in Santa Monica and Cecilia Chiang's The Mandarin in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square through the 1960s and 1970s. Chiang opened The Mandarin in 1968 and introduced San Franciscans to the regional cooking beyond Cantonese (Sichuan, Shanghai, Hunan); the salad as a composed plate of cool chicken with crisp aromatics was on her menu. It moved into chain kitchens (Wolfgang Puck's at LAX, P.F. Chang's nationally) by the 1990s, then back to the chef-driven rooms (Mister Jiu's serves a refined take). The dish is now closer to the city's Cal-Chinese vocabulary than to any single mainland origin.

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Common allergens: Gluten, Soy, Sesame, Egg

Make it at home

Yield 2Hands-on 20 minTotal 25 minDifficulty Easy

Ingredients

  • 2 cooked chicken breasts, shredded by hand
  • 1 head romaine lettuce, sliced into ribbons
  • 1 small carrot, julienned
  • 1 cup sliced red cabbage
  • 2 spring onions, sliced on the bias
  • Small handful of toasted slivered almonds
  • Small handful of toasted sesame seeds
  • 12 wonton skins, cut into 1cm strips, fried in 1cm of oil until golden
  • For the dressing: 3 tbsp rice vinegar
  • 2 tbsp soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
  • 1 tbsp honey
  • 1 tsp grated ginger
  • 1 small garlic clove grated
  • 4 tbsp neutral oil

Method

  1. Whisk all the dressing ingredients in a small jar until emulsified. Taste and adjust salt with another splash of soy if needed.
  2. Toss the romaine, carrot, cabbage and spring onions with two thirds of the dressing in a large bowl.
  3. Pile the shredded chicken on top. Drizzle the remaining dressing.
  4. Scatter the almonds, sesame seeds and crispy wonton strips. Serve immediately, before the strips lose their crunch.

Tip from the editors. Fry the wonton strips the morning of serving and store in a sealed tin; they go limp in the fridge.

Where to eat chinese chicken salad

Chinese chicken salad in San Francisco

Mister Jiu's 1 ★ ★ 4.7

$$$$ Tasting $185 chef's selectionChineseChef Brandon Jew

Mister Jiu's in San Francisco is Brandon Jew's one-Michelin-star Cal-Chinese flagship in Chinatown, with whole-duck dinners and an upstairs cocktail room.

Book3 weeks ahead

TipBook the whole roast duck 48 hours ahead by phone; it does not appear on the website ordering form.

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