The Best Chain Restaurant Caesar Salad Has Unique Toppings And Bold Flavor

A good Caesar salad can really set the mood for the entire dining experience. If the restaurant brings out a salad with limp shreds of lettuce, stale croutons, and a mere sprinkle of dressing, you just know that the rest of the meal can't be trusted. Before you throw in the towel completely on finding the best Caesar salad, we compiled and ranked a list of seven chain restaurant Caesar salads and determined that the house Caesar salad from the Yard House was worthy of all praise.

This may not be the most aesthetically pleasing salad, but the taste was pleasantly surprising, as many of its most unique parts were hidden beneath layers of kale and romaine. There was a delicious balance between sweet and nutty elements, with everything tied together thanks to the strong, tangy dressing. The roasted Brussels sprouts, one of those surprise elements, were the ideal amount of charred, creating a dynamic to the salad that was wildly different from other kinds that we tried. The portion size of this Caesar salad was just enough to fill us up without feeling like too much, with that depth and variety of flavors and textures easily earning it first place on our list.

The Kale & Romaine Caesar salad from the Yard House is $10.99 for a small and $12.49 for a larger size, depending on location, but given the complexity of toppings, you're getting quite a lot for your money. This salad begins with a mixture of kale and romaine greens, and is then loaded with roasted Brussels sprouts, pistachios, raisins, baby tomatoes, and parmesan. Besides the Kale & Romaine Caesar salad, the Yard House also offers four other kinds of salads, including a Cobb Salad, a BBQ Chicken Salad, an Ahi Tuna Crunchy Salad, and a Poke Salad. They also boast an impressive array of other appetizers, which we laid out in our ranking of 15 popular Yard House appetizers.

The Yard House opened in 1996, the creation of Steele Platt, Carlito Jocson, Steven Reynolds, and Harald Herrmann, in Long Beach, California (speaking of, here are 20 of the best restaurants in Long Beach). The restaurant's goal was to open a taproom with hundreds of beers for customers to pair with their meals, which it accomplished on opening day with a premiere of over 250 beers. Today, there are over 90 Yard Houses scattered throughout 26 states, stretching from its home base in California to Eastern states like Florida and New York. The restaurant aimed to go beyond that stereotypical atmosphere of bar food by creating unique dishes, and if its Caesar salad is evidence of anything, we'd have to assume that mission still rings true.