Where to eat Cobb salad:

An ideal summer lunch: outside, by myself, with a magazine or a chapter or two of a book, many glasses of iced tea, bread inside a linen napkin and a big cold meal-size salad.

        The classic meal salad is the Cobb salad. Created in 1926 at the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles by owner Bob Cobb, the original was designed to use up leftovers. It included chopped lettuce, watercress, chicory and romaine, with tomatoes and boiled chicken breasts arranged in strips on top, avocado around it, with bacon, hard-boiled eggs, chives and Roquefort sprinkled on top.

        After having a good Cobb salad at Claddagh Irish Pub at Newport on the Levee and an unusual seafood version at Kingfish Grill in Symmes Township, I thought I'd make a mini-project of deciding who makes the best Cobbs in town.

        Lots of restaurants have a Cobb salad on the menu, but none is exactly the same as the original. Here are a few I tried:

        At Trio in Kenwood, salad ingredients are tossed together with exactly the right amount of a slightly creamy dressing — and artichokes instead of avocado, cheddar instead of blue cheese. It's nicely done but doesn't count as a Cobb because the ingredients aren't on top. (Also, there's nowhere to eat it outdoors.)

        The Vineyard in Hyde Park also tosses its salad ingredients together, and uses chopped turkey instead of chicken. There is avocado sliced on the side and, of course, a nice outdoor setting, but this salad is too restrained.

        The Palm Court, downtown, has had a Cobb salad on its menu for a long time, and it gets the ingredients on the top. But again, no avocado, and the dressing is a too-sharp vinaigrette. (The Palm has nice salty crescent rolls and an indulgent luncheon-alone atmosphere, even if it's inside.)

        The Cobb salad at Kingfish Seafood Grill is the most interesting variation. It adds crab and lobster and has avocado, though it wasn't quite ripe — a common problem and probably reason few restaurants include the avocado. The honey mustard dressing is a little too sweet.

        So, I was back where I started. There is nothing remotely Irish about a Cobb salad, but I didn't find one better than at the Claddagh Irish Pub. If it had avocado, it would be just right. Instead, it has fresh mushrooms and an abundance of bacon and way too much bleu cheese to fool anyone that their “just having a salad.” There's even a view of the river from the outside dining area to go along with it.

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