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?

Columbia Restaurant’s 1905 Salad
Makes 2 giant entree portions, or 4 appetizer/side dish portions

For the Salad:
1 small head of iceberg lettuce, chopped
2 vine ripe tomatoes, diced
1/4 lb swiss cheese, sliced extra thick and julienned
1/4 lb deli ham, sliced extra thick and julienned
1/4 lb deli turkey, sliced extra thick and julienned
1/4 cup green spanish olives, sliced
2 tbsp fresh grated romano or parmesan cheese

For the Dressing:
1/8 cup white wine vinegar
1/8 cup lemon juice
3 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tsp Worchestershire sauce
1 tsp dried oregano
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil, preferably Spanish

In a large bowl, whisk together all the dressing ingredients except the olive oil, along with salt and a fair bit of fresh ground black pepper.  Pour in the olive oil in a slow stream, whisking vigorously until fully incorporated.  (Alternatively, you can also drop all the ingredients into the blender, or mix them quickly with an immersion blender as I did here.  The bowl-whisked dressing is traditional.)

You know the drill.  Drop all of the salad ingredients into the large bowl, coating everything in the dressing.  Portion out into serving bowls, and top with more ground pepper and romano cheese as desired.

Pre-dressing…

And yum…

This really makes for a filling, yet light dinner.  The flavors are very balanced and the dressing is super yum.  And I seriously cannot stress enough how quickly you can whip this up on a weeknight.  Enjoy everybody!  Oh, and thanks to that magazine that published this recipe which I found in that snobby coffee shop in Sarasota that I never patronized again.

low carb, quick and easy, salad