Bring Disney’s Hollywood Brown Derby Cobb Salad Home For Your Family

 by Beth Keating

Lifestyle – Recipe

DisneyBizJournal.com

April 8, 2024

 

It’s spring, and after a winter of eating veggies from the freezer section (or worse yet, the plastic tasting tomatoes that have been shipped in from elsewhere), the nicer looking greens that have started arriving for fresh salads are a welcome sight.  Particularly post-holidays, when there may have been a few too many chocolate bunnies and one too many handfuls of jelly beans, salads seem like a good idea with the approach of warmer weather.

One of the “go-to” salads that we like to make for dinner at our house is one that you may have had as well… the famed Cobb Salad from the Hollywood Brown Derby.  Over the years, there have been versions of the recipe printed in various places (including Disney Parks Blog’s Disney Eats, here), and they are all pretty identical. And all claim to be the original, original version. (We’ve shared the one we use below.)

If you aren’t familiar with this particular dish, it’s a monster-sized salad with lots of hearty ingredients that has been served up to thousands of diners over the years at the Hollywood Brown Derby ($25.00) at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida (and at MGM Studios before the park’s name change.) It’s probably the dish that the Brown Derby is most known for (or, maybe their signature Grapefruit Cake - $14.00, also a Brown Derby original - but that really is the opposite end of the spectrum, isn’t it?) The Cobb Salad is certainly the dish we order almost every visit to the Brown Derby, whether we eat it inside the restaurant, or at the outdoor lounge.

The Brown Derby's Cobb Salad

Disney’s chefs can’t take credit for the very first Cobb Salad, however.  As the story goes, it’s a nearly exact re-creation of the salad served at the historical (and famous) Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant in California, for which Florida’s Brown Derby is named and modeled, right down to the hand-drawn caricatures of star-studded guests on the walls.

  
The tale’s been told that the Derby’s owner, Robert Cobb, found himself throwing together a last-minute, late night dinner for Sid Grauman (of the equally famous Grauman’s Chinese Theater) one evening near closing time.  He grabbed whatever “leftovers” he had from the night’s meal service, and put together the tossed salad. Sid apparently loved it so much that he came back the next night, and requested it again.  Other diners saw it, and also began asking for “Cobb’s salad.”  Thus, the dish was born.

  
And in a second tie-in, the building at Hollywood Studios that initially was home to the Great Movie Ride (R.I.P.), and is now Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway, is itself a replica of Sid’s “Grauman’s Chinese Theater.” It’s a nice design feature that the two historically-linked buildings are diagonally across from each other in Hollywood Studios. The California version of the Chinese Theatre is nearly 100 years old now, and does, indeed have the hundreds of handprints and autographs of the stars embedded in the cement at its entrance, just like Disney’s Florida version.  Small but important details… Thanks, Imagineers!

Beth's Version of the Cobb Salad

This recipe serves 4 to 6.

 

OLD-FASHIONED FRENCH DRESSING

• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1/4 teaspoon sugar
• 1/8 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, or to taste
• 1/8 teaspoon dry English mustard
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

 

SALAD

• 1 cup finely chopped iceberg lettuce leaves
• 1 cup finely chopped chicory leaves
• 1 cup finely chopped tender sprigs watercress, additional sprigs for garnish
• 1 pound poached turkey breast, finely chopped
• 2 medium-size ripe tomatoes, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 avocado, peeled, seeded, and finely chopped
• 1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
• 6 bacon slices, cooked crisp, drained, and crumbled
• 3 hard-boiled eggs, peeled and finely chopped
• 2 tablespoons snipped fresh chives
• 1/2 cup Old-fashioned French Dressing
• Watercress springs, for garnish

 

FOR DRESSING:

1.    Whisk together water, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, Worcestershire
sauce, salt, garlic, sugar, freshly ground pepper, and dry mustard in
small bowl until well blended.

2.    Whisking constantly, add the vegetable oil and olive oil in slow steady
stream until the dressing is emulsified.

3.    Store covered and chilled until ready to serve. Whisk dressing to blend
just before serving.

 

FOR SALAD:

1.    Toss iceberg lettuce, chicory, and watercress together and arrange in a
salad bowl.

2.    In straight and separate lines, arrange turkey, tomatoes, avocado, blue
cheese, bacon, and eggs on top of greens.

3.    Sprinkle the chives in two diagonal lines across the salad.

4.    To serve, present the salad at the table, toss with the dressing, and place
on chilled plates with watercress sprigs as garnish.

 

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Beth Keating is a theme parks, restaurant and entertainment reporter for DisneyBizJournal.

 

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