If you’ve never heard of Columbia Restaurant, it means you haven’t spent much time in Florida.  It’s a chain of about a dozen restaurants that to my knowledge is restricted to the Sunshine State.  To be perfectly honest, it’s not a very spectacular restaurant overall.  It definitely caters to the tourists and the snow birds, and as a college student, I found it severely overpriced.

So why is it worth mentioning?  Because they have a spectacular salad on their menu, called the 1905 salad, named for the year their flagship restaurant opened in Ybor City, a district in Tampa.  The 1905 salad is Columbia’s big ta-dah, because all the servers know the recipe by heart and whip it up table-side.  This should clue you in to how simple and fast you can prepare this for a weeknight dinner.  The classic is with ham, which you can swap out for turkey or shrimp.  I like the combo of ham and turkey, but rock it out to your tastes.  Oh and did I mention it was really delicious?

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I’m a big advocate for whisking up a super simple salad dressing rather than relying on the fatty, chemically bottled alternatives from the super market. I mean, seriously, it takes all of 3 minutes.   Typically I just rock a vinaigrette on some baby greens.  Tonight, however, I spotted a mixed container of mache and butter lettuce on the refrigerated shelf at Trader Joes, which made me a very happy lady.  If you’ve never tried mache, do it.  Do it now.  It’s tiny, sweet, tender and slightly nutty.  And for a lettuce as mild and gentle as mache, this called for a special dressing.
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