The Bob Cobb Quest – J|A Prep Kitchen

After sampling an embarrassing version of the Cobb salad at the Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant in Orlando, I’m on a quest to simply find a good Cobb salad.

One night, we were about to catch a movie at Crossgates. We had a few minutes to grab dinner, and I noticed that one of the closest restaurants to the theater in the mall has a Cobb salad on the menu. So, we stopped in to eat (even though the first visit at this place wasn’t exactly impressive.).

The Cobb Salad at the prep kitchen hit almost of the mnemonic “EAT COBB” elements [Egg, Avocado, Tomato, Chicken, Onion, Bacon, Blue cheese]; it was missing onion.

Everything on the plate was piled in distinct regions and was actually pretty decent. The blue cheese was pungent in a good way (I’m of the mind that the whole experience of blue cheese is that pungency). The tomatoes were ripe and flavorful. The avocado was scooped on like a puree. It was almost like guacamole, but it didn’t seem like it had anything else other than avocado in it.

The egg was cooked and crumbled nicely. The chicken was a little tough and overcooked, but it was nicely seasoned. There was a hefty amount of bacon, which would please the bacon-philes out there.

They served it with a gravy-boat full of dressing. I don’t think I even used half of what they provided.

There wasn’t a set dressing for the salad; I was asked to choose from all of their dressings. I chose the Vidalia onion vinagrette, you know, to make up for the missing onion. It was good, but it tasted familiar.

The lettuce on the plate was a spring mix that had some shredded carrots dispersed throughout.

All in all, the Cobb salad experience at this place in the mall was above average.

I give it 3.5 out of 5 Brown Derbys on the Bob Cobb scale.