On Signature Kitchen and the Cobb Salad (con’t)
Updated! I forgot to score Zack’s and Jess added her review of Mikie in the comments
The search for the next great Cobb Salad continues! I had the pleasure of enjoying two more Cobb Salad’s from the Hoboken area and the results are pleasantly positive. We’re headed in the right direction people!
Mikie’s Squared
Every Tuesday a few friends and I meet at Mikie’s Squared on Washington for Trivia Night. On one of these nights my friend Jessica ordered the Cobb Salad and said she would post her review on my blog. This is serving as a gentle reminder ;)
Thanks for the little nudge, Chris. I have been meaning to type up my Mikie Squared Cobb salad review for 2 weeks, but I’ve been a little busy (or maybe I was worried it wouldn’t stand up to your reviews).
I guess I should start off by saying that I often eat at Mikie Squared during trivia, and I really enjoy their food, so I had high hopes for the Cobb salad. The Mikie Squared Cobb included the usual avocado, tomato, bacon (freshly cooked if I remember correctly), egg, and vinaigrette. As with all of their salads you could get chicken, steak, or shrimp on top (for an additional $4-5), and I opted for the chicken to keep things consistent with my previous Cobb salad experiences. The only thing that made this pretty different from the other Cobb salads I have had in the past is that instead of bleu cheese (which I usually substitute with feta, another creamy, soft cheese) it came with shredded Monterey Jack. While I like Jack cheese, it didn’t add the creamy texture that the usual Cobb cheeses add.
My only other real complaint about this salad is that the vinaigrette that Mikie Squared puts on their Cobb salad is a honey vinaigrette, which got to be too sweet for me about 3/4 of the way through my salad (but of course I finished the salad anyway). Oh yeah, and the price was more along the lines of the Zach’s Cobb than Signature Kitchen, with it ending up being somewhere in the $11-12 range with the addition of the chicken.
Now don’t get me wrong, I really liked the Mikie Squared salad. If we are going back to Chris’s previous post and rating the salads on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being Signature Kitchen, I would give this salad a solid 9. I think if I ordered it with a regular balsamic vinaigrette instead of the honey vinaigrette it would probably even get a 9.5, with the only negative being the wrong type of cheese (and I guess the price).
Well, I hope one day we are all able to overcome our Signature Kitchen mourning and enjoy another equally good Cobb salad (and maybe even eat a Flacoz taco? - although I think that will take much longer).
Thanks for the review Jess ;)
Zack’s Oak Bar and Restaurant
This was the first time I’d ever been to this bar. There was a running joke that we were going to have a drunken vigil here while our friend was going through labor across the street, but since that happened while we were all asleep we never made it. I ended up here for some drinks and a light dinner before heading out on the town, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that they had a Cobb Salad on the menu. I wish I would have taken some food porn photos, but after several cocktails the thought didn’t occur to me until after I had devoured everything on the plate.
If you weren’t paying attention to that last bit, the salad was delicious. It had all the required ingredients: chicken, avocado, bacon, egg, vinegrette which started the meal off on the right foot. The chicken was poached instead of grilled, and while it was very juicy it was also a bit bland. The avocado was fresh and delicious, as were the bacon and egg. Everything was well proportioned so that you didn’t end up with a bowl of lettuce, or a pile of toppings left over. Overall it was a great meal, and one that I definitely look forward to having again.
Unfortunately the stellar review does come with some caveats. When the salad arrived at my table, and this is where I wish I had a photo, the chicken was sliced into long strips, the avocado clumped together, and the egg all off to one side. While this made for a very nice presentation, it also meant that I had to spend the first few minutes of my meal cutting and mixing before I could comfortably tuck in. While I didn’t mind the work, it was a little frustrating seeing that I was really hungry and now had to work for my food.
The second caveat was the price. I can’t remember the exact price at Signature Kitchen, but I believe their Cobb Salad (which was notoriously massive) cost somewhere in the realm of $8. While Zack’s version is almost as delicious (and I do mean almost, I scraped that plate clean) it also costs significantly more at $12. While this isn’t outrageous, it’s also not something I’m going to order as frequently. Score: 9.5 / 10
On the score: I decided to score the salad simply on taste, and not the presentation or price.
All in all, I’m glad to have found some local substitutes for the infamous Signature Kitchen Cobb Salad. Hopefully these will improve over time, and maybe even earn the title of “Best Cobb Salad”.
