Trying the $25 Steak Salad at Rosebud Prime

[Photograph: Joe Roy]

I've been spending a bit of time in front of Rosebud Prime as of late, and I've noticed a fairly high number of steak-topped iceberg lettuce salads being routed throughout the outdoor dining space. Fine—why you'd lunch at a steakhouse and order "just a salad" is a little beyond me. Maybe I'm just old fashioned. But back in the office the other week, my ears perked at a conversation two rooms down about said steak salad, the substance consisting of nothing but rave endorsements met with reciprocated excitement.

Almost on cue, I began to obsess. The menu lists the Steak Salad ($22.00) as the "House Specialty." Right next to the $22 price tag. For an iceberg salad. Before cheese is even added. The obsession built. Something beyond complacency must be driving these orders, right? What's under all that iceberg, anyway? With little attention given to the subject online and my sanity in the balance, there was nothing to do but try it myself to see how it measured up.

Maybe I should've left well enough alone. The salad—a giant mound of chopped iceberg, tomatoes, carrots, red and green peppers, corn off the cob, beets, garbanzo beans, hearts of palm, and kalamata olives—tastes exactly like what it is: a jumbled mix of most everything you'd find on a typical salad bar line. The upcharge bleu cheese crumbles adds needed richness (total cost, $24.50), while the under-salted steak, a tap past my requested medium rare, has an appealing smoky crust from its time on the grill.

All this is not to say that the salad doesn't taste good—it just tastes good in a chopped-salad-and-steak kind of way. With my curiosity satisfied, I probably won't order this again—unless someone else is picking up the tab.

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