Little Salad Bar Caesar Salad with Chicken
Caesar salad is the changeup salad.
In the universe of salads, you’ve got the standard stuff, which is either a house or chef salad, and then you’ve got the alternatives. If you’re at a restaurant and your meal comes with a salad, the default is often house, but you can also sometimes substitute it for Caesar.
And Americans do plenty of substituting. Caesar salads are popular, enough that even a low-inventory grocer like Aldi carries Caesar salad kits.
Now, Webster’s Dictionary defines a Caesar salad as “a tossed salad usually made of romaine, garlic, anchovies, and croutons and dressed with olive oil, coddled egg, lemon juice, and grated cheese.” I’m not sure I’ve ever had a Caesar salad with all of that, but American Caesar salads do have a distinctive taste that takes inspiration from many of those core ingredients.
Aldi, it should be noted, has single-serve salad bowls in several varieties.
And one of them is Caesar.
The Little Salad Bar Caesar Salad with Chicken is an Aldi Regular Buy. You can find it in stores every day, in the refrigerated section. It comes in a 6.25-ounce bowl and, in 2024, costs $2.89, or 46 cents an ounce. It right now comes in a mixed case that includes a Chef salad and a Santa Fe salad.
It is perishable, so keep in mind the use-by date printed on the top and keep it refrigerated until you prepare it.
Each bowl contains 310 calories, 25 grams of fat (32% of the recommended daily value), 6 grams of saturated fat (30%), and 840 milligrams of sodium (37%). The bowls also have 6 grams of total carbs, 2 grams of fiber, and 1 gram of total sugar. The carbs-to-fiber ratio is 3:1, which is both solid and what you would hope for in a salad. It does have a lot of fat and sodium, likely on account of both the meat and the salad dressing, but it also has 17 grams of protein.
Primary ingredients are Romaine lettuce, chicken breast meat with rib meat, Caesar dressing, and Parmesan cheese. Allergens include egg, fish (anchovy), and milk.
When you peel off the top plastic film, you’ve got a tray on top with the dressing, meat, and cheese, and beneath that is a plastic fork sitting atop a bed of salad. Assembling is as easy as mixing everything into the lettuce bowl. The fork isn’t the most robust, and it takes a little work to scoop all the dressing out of the dressing cup, but with some time and care you can get the salad assembled.
This is my personal favorite of the Aldi salad bowls. The creamy dressing is very good, as is the chicken, which has a nice meaty, salty flavor that complements the fresh lettuce and Parmesan cheese. Everything seems to be in the right proportions, and I liked every bite from start to finish.
The Verdict:
Aldi’s Caesar salad bowl is a strong option for power lunches. It’s easy to put together and has a great Caesar flavor from start to finish. If you need speed and are looking for a Caesar salad, this is definitely one to look for in the refrigerator aisle. The best part is, you can find it just about any time of year.
