When to comes to the city’s culinary contributions, today’s world knows L.A. better for its French dips and Korean tacos, often at the expense of more widespread innovations like the Cobb salad. Today Los Angeles mag pays tribute to the guy behind the greens, Bob Cobb. Changing the course of brunch forever, Cobb came up with the recipe in the thirties while poking around the kitchen at the original Brown Derby restaurant, which he opened with Herbert Somborn in modern-day Koreatown during the previous decade.
Positing the salad as a symbol of the city, Chris Nichols calls the Cobb a “great microcosm of L.A. history recalling abundant crops of once exotic foods like avocado, celebrity culture, the beginnings of California cuisine, and the scrappy beginning of a restaurant success story.”
Although the historian knows there are numerous versions of the Cobb to be eaten around town, a studio-engineered twist only Hollywood could fabricate reveals that the original version of Cobb’s recipe is still served at a replica of the hat-shaped restaurant in Disney World.
