Where have all the Caesars gone?
The classic Caesar salad has descended into such mutant variations as adding "creamy" to the dressing description, "with chicken/shrimp", and - the worst offender of all - the non-adjective"garlicky". The presumed original recipe is fairly simple - garlic, olive oil, salt, anchovies, dry mustard, an egg, lemon juice, Romaine lettuce, grated Parmigiano Regiano, and black pepper. Then, of course, you get into variations - with or without Worcesteshire, Dijon mustard vs. dry, etc. But as far as I'm concerned, there are a few ingredients that can be substituted. In particular and most frequently violated, is the "vinegar for lemon" trick. Presumably restaurants are doing this for a practical and understandable reason - vinegar is far cheaper than lemon juice, especially fresh lemon juice. Then they add a similarly distorting ingredient - "shrimp or chicken". As there isn't much in the way of protein in a classic Caesa...