When Dianne Willis brought a chicken salad to a dinner party, she had no idea it would become the most famous bowl of lettuce in Pasadena.
It was 1979, and Willis made a green salad with boiled chicken for friends Michael and Joanne Hawkins. It had crispy fried noodles and toasted almonds on top, and a dressing that was equal parts sweet and tangy. The salad was the undisputed hit of the party.
When the Hawkins and partner Bob Harrison decided to open Green Street restaurant a month later in Pasadena, Willis’ salad was still on their minds.
They asked Willis if they could put the salad on the menu and name it after her.
The restaurant served the Dianne salad on its second day in business (Harrison says they didn’t have all the ingredients prepared the day they opened), and its popularity was immediate.
Neither Willis, Harrison or the Hawkins could predict that the Dianne salad would become Green Street’s signature dish, and account for a third of the restaurant’s sales.
“Nobody knew this was going to be the one,” says Harrison, whose family still runs the restaurant.
For the Dianne salad, the restaurants shreds the iceberg lettuce, fries the noodles, roasts the almonds and sesame seeds and boils the chicken. And they make a few batches of the dressing every day. It’s the specific combination of corn oil, rice vinegar, sugar, black pepper and dry mustard that gives the dressing that distinct tang and mild sweetness. It’s served with a wedge of orange you squeeze over the top for a bright pop of citrus.
Harrison says the restaurant serves around 500 to 600 Dianne salads per week and prepares another 100 or so for takeout. People have it catered for office parties, memorials and all sorts of celebrations. There’s a small refrigerated area off to the side of the entrance where you can buy bottles of the dressing and if you ever move out of state, you can order a Dianne salad kit to be shipped to your home. There are T-shirts for sale that say “Raised on Dianne salad.”
Growing up in Pasadena, I spent many lunches, dinners and weekend brunches at the restaurant. I was a kid raised on the Dianne salad, a dish that’s become synonymous with an unfussy, leisurely cafe lunch in Pasadena.
Researching the origins of the Dianne salad for this column got me thinking about the many other dishes I associate with the city and the places I recommend most to visitors. Here’s a short list of my favorites in the area. Most are old standbys, with a few newcomers I can’t imagine being without.