Wedge Salads Are a Waste of Money at a Restaurant, but That Doesn't Stop Me From Ordering Them Every Time They're on the Menu

A few months ago, I got angry at a restaurant’s wedge salad and I’m still mortified at the level of ire I harbor towards that plate of lettuce. Clearly there are more imperiled fish to fry vis a vis the state of our crumbling world, but sometimes it's just healthier for my brain to focus on an inanimate object and be really mad at it, so I don't implode into crumbs. When you read "wedge salad," what did you picture? Probably a cored, quartered, head of iceberg lettuce richly slathered in blue cheese dressing and decked out with lardons, bacon bits, halved cherry or grape tomatoes, and possibly an outcropping of croutons or fried onions for a little textural sass?

This wasn't that. What arrived on my plate at this unwarrantedly snooty, definitely pricey, neo-Southern fish shack was instead the butt end of an iceberg head that had been drizzled in a thin vinaigrette that the chef had possibly whispered the words “blue cheese” to while passing by, then sprinkled with dill, tomato halves, and everything bagel spice. Then they'd opted to lightly insult it all with a dusting of bacon cremains, resulting in a weird, watery, gritty ghost of a salad format that I'd previously assumed to be impossible to screw up. The wedge is an edible "you had one job" and this place made the grave mistake of both assuming itself above the banality of said salad, and trying to make it "light," per the post I rage-read on the restaurant's Instagram feed. In their hubris, they violated the entire contract of a wedge salad — thick, creamy, tangy dressing blanketing a crisp-crunch pow-pow of lettuce and its salty accouterments — for the sake of being clever. It made me mad, but mostly at myself because I know I'm just going to keep ordering them.

Why do I do this to myself? A restaurant wedge salad is the football held in place by Lucy Van Pelt and I am Charlie Brown eternally hurling myself toward it, knowing full well that I'll likely end up flat on my back, financially speaking and occasionally culinarily. I just looked up the current price of the wedge at my favorite steakhouse, Keens, (where it should be noted, they make it flawlessly with a kiddie-pool-sized serving of dressing and bacon and have for the past century-plus) and it's $17, plus an extra five bucks if you wanna trick it out with tomatoes and onions. Schlep downtown to Delmonico's where they'll make it with iceberg, heirloom tomato, red onion, Kikorangi blue cheese, prosciutto chips, and yuzu honey vinaigrette, and you're setting yourself back $26. Cecchi's in Manhattan's West Village declares their $18 assemblage of red onion, Russian dressing, cherry tomato, bacon, blue cheese, and chives to be "Not a Wedge," but that's like telling someone not to think about a purple elephant and suddenly they're imagining one as vividly as I am picturing making a last second rez to chomp one of these salads down with a Manhattan this very evening.

Wedge Salad Recipes

Bad Roman Wedge Salad

Wedge Salad with Tahini Green Goddess Dressing

Shrimp Wedge Salad with Old Bay Breadcrumbs and Hot Sauce Dressing

The $21 antipasti and Italian dressing-decked Bad Roman Wedge at its namesake Midtown Manhattan restaurant is practically an Instagram it-girl, but lest you think that the problem is just my unwillingness to escape the island, the most popular steakhouse chain where I grew up in the middle of the country will slap you $15 for "braised bacon, tomato, red onion, buttermilk blue cheese" and you bet your bippy I'm forking over $18 for the "baby iceberg wedges" at the century-old Musso & Frank the next time I hit Tinseltown. The only reason I'm not shelling out $12 for the "tomato and bacon" wedge at The Golden Steer in Las Vegas is because I'm already gonna be on the hook for my $19 Caesar which, in my defense, is made tableside with a whole story and whatnot.

This is what, $2 in ingredients? My local Super Foodtown currently has iceberg for $3.99 a head, a nine-ounce bottle of Ken's Steak House Chef's Reserve Dressing, Blue Cheese with Gorgonzola is a steal at $2.99, a pint of store-brand grape tomatoes is $2.99, and the bacon works out to around $.25 an ounce for the basic brands. Obviously labor, storage, shipping, rent, HVAC, and a billion other invisible factors are what's causing the cha-ching at a restaurant, but while I could just as easily and much more cheaply slap together a satisfying wedge at home, I still can't stop running toward the financial football.

Here's why: As my colleague Ashley Day puts it, "You know what to expect, you get a steak knife, and subtle chef touches easily surprise and delight. It's definitely the OG avocado toast: Completely unnecessary to pay for at a restaurant when you inherently know you could make it at home, but so much more enjoyable when elevated by anyone else, and a dependable option on a menu no matter how basic and predictable you'll inevitably feel ordering aloud."

A wedge is its own occasion. It's so devoid of actual nutritional value and sustenance that the act of eating one is purely for pleasure. My colleague Chandra Ram maintains an annual steakhouse ritual with a friend, starting with a wedge salad, which she says is "just as important as the rest of the meal that follows." This might be a wedge issue, but I'm paying a premium for my own silly delight and I feel like it can't be that hard for a restaurant to deliver on it. Let me have a ball with my overpriced and lavishly-decked salad — and don't even think of ripping it away.