Stop me if this sounds familiar: You’re at your neighborhood slice shop and have settled on your toppings and drinks, but you wonder if you shouldn’t add something green. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that an American pizzeria will have a Caesar salad, so you add one to your order for good measure. While your pizza finishes, a cook tosses a bushel of chopped romaine into a bowl with some Parmesan (pre-shredded), a handful of croutons (almost mush or molar-threateningly stale), and a squirt of dressing (either too little or way, way too much) before tossing the whole thing with tongs. You get home and idly fork through a few half-wilted leaves before abandoning the prospect and focusing on the real order, the hot, cheesy one dappled with oil. 

At many pizzerias, Caesar salads feel more obligatory than inspired, and obligation leads to desultory bowls of watery lettuce. But the Caesar is the workhorse of the American restaurant, the old reliable of the room service menu, and, when handled with care, a breezy palate cleanser between bites of cheese and pepperoni. It’s also real crowd-pleaser and, in a city with a fervent farmers market scene, can go beyond the usual chopped romaine. At local Italian institution Nostrana, Cathy Whims—“the region’s unofficial doyenne of Italian cooking,” a former Portland Monthly staffer once called her—serves a vibrant magenta-hued radicchio affair dusted with Parmesan and sprinkled with rosemary-sage croutons. Inspired by a Caesar salad she had at Locanda Veneta in Los Angeles, circa 2000, Whims placed the Insalata Nostrana on the restaurant’s opening menu, where it was an immediate and lasting hit. “It pays the bills. It’s our biggest-selling thing,” Whims says. “People just love it.”

Chef Chris Flanagan, of East Burnside’s modern Neapolitan restaurant Grana, put a Caesar salad on his menu not out of adherence to presumed tradition (he notes that he rarely sees salads in Naples), but because he and his wife eat them whenever they go out, and he wanted to share that experience with his diners. His chicory Caesar swaps in radicchio and escarole for the usual lettuce (“Romaine is just lame,” he says), omits the croutons for seasoned breadcrumbs, and goes heavy on the anchovies for that extra punch of umami. “I want everybody to have a salad and a glass of wine when they sit down,” he says. “It’s all about opening up your palate and getting ready for the meal. Throw in an Aperol spritz, and you’ve started a great evening.”

Caesar variations abound at Portland’s many excellent pizzerias: Scottie’s Pizza makes its version with seasonal greens (like chicories, romaine, and kale) and a milder vegan dressing, and Ranch Pizza’s radicchio rendition lends a welcome counterpoint to its thick, hearty Sicilian-style squares. And not everyone feels the need to flout tradition: Hawthorne’s Apizza Scholls has long served an OG version, with perfectly crisp whole romaine leaves you can pluck with your fingers—the way the salad was originally constructed in 1920s Tijuana, Mexico. How fitting, to eat your vegetables like you eat your pizza: with your hands, with abandon.