Why It’s The Great British Baking Show In The U. This recipe was semi-inspired by the Chinese Chicken Salad at The Cheesecake Factory. I fell in love with dish in eighth grade—it made me feel grown up ramen cabbage salad sophisticated.
Twenty something years later, I still find the salad delicious. It’s sweet, savory, refreshing, and extremely crunchy. I’m a huge sucker for iceberg lettuce. The exact origin of “Chinese Chicken Salad” is unknown. However, legend has it that it was invented in the 1960s at Madam Wu’s in Los Angeles because Cary Grant requested it.
Sunset magazine published a recipe in 1970, and Wolfgang Puck created his own version of it in the 80’s. The salad itself is much more American than it is Chinese. In China, lettuce was imported and rare and salads were things that were pickled. Because my recipe is based on a American chains version of a very American dish, I decided to change the name to more accurately describe what it is: a crunchy salad with chicken and mandarin oranges. Many restaurant versions of the dish, including The Cheesecake Factory use wonton strips and crispy rice noodles. I sub in a block of broken up ramen—the cheap, dried stuff, not the fresh noodles that come refrigerated. Broken up, the crunchy, wavy noodles act as croutons.