The "Thai Caesar Salad" from Poltergeist at Button Mash in Echo Park, Los Angeles.
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Topline:
The Caesar salad is ubiquitous in the U.S., from Italian American restaurants to fast food places. These days, the salad can also be found on the menus of some of L.A.’s most cutting-edge restaurants, from a group of chefs experimenting with the format and bringing new life to the classic dish.
The backstory: Caesar salad has been around for almost 100 years, invented in Tijuana as a dish to offer Americans. It had become a safe and mainstream choice, but it wasn’t until a few years ago that it came back into vogue on newer restaurants’ menus. More and more chefs are taking this classic salad as inspiration and infusing it with their own cultures and techniques.
What types of salads are we talking about here? The salads we see on L.A. restaurants’ menus use ingredients from a variety of cuisines, such as Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese, to emulate the umami bomb that is the Caesar-like fish sauce instead of anchovies or miso to get that creaminess of the dressing.
Caesar salad, with its luscious dressing, crunchy croutons and sprinkled parmesan, is one of the most popular salads in the United States, ubiquitous across Italian American restaurants, steakhouses, even fast food restaurants (McSalad Shakers from the 2000s, anyone?)
It’s no surprise, given it was created specifically in 1924 to appeal to American customers at an Italian restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. Caesar Cardini whipped up the salad to offer to American merry-makers crossing the border to get away from Prohibition, specifically on July 4, it's said.
But while it’s eaten widely today, it’s only in recent years that the Caesar salad has returned to the menus of L.A.’s hottest restaurants, in many cases taking new forms. Drawn to its umami notes, chefs have reinvented the salad, often using Asian ingredients, while keeping the essence of what makes this salad so good.
“I think the reason why I love and everyone loves the Caesar salad is because it’s like an umami bomb,” says Klementine Song, the chef de cuisine at Tsubaki, “it just hits every taste bud.”
A Caesar salad traditionally calls for romaine lettuce and a dressing made with egg yolks (though these days, many substitute mayonnaise), anchovies, Dijon mustard, olive oil, lemon and parmesan cheese. It’s then topped with croutons or bread crumbs and sprinkled with parmesan.
“Caesar salad is probably personally the one type of salad that I order all the time,” Cassia’s chef-owner Bryant Ng admits. “I think for me, more often than not, it has to do with the dressing. I feel like everything else is just the vehicle for the dressing itself.”
“It’s the creaminess of it, so there’s a textural component to it,” he says. “And then there’s the umami funkiness that comes from the anchovies, and then you add that with parmesan cheese, which is a load of umami also. And you have acidity from the lemons. You add all that together, and to me, it’s just this perfectly balanced dressing.”
Here are some places breathing new life into the venerable dish:
Cassia
The "Vietnamese Caesar Salad" from Cassia in Santa Monica.
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For the Vietnamese Caesar Salad he created for Cassia’s menu, Ng opts for fish sauce instead of anchovies. “For all intents and purposes, it’s liquefied anchovies,” says Ng. The remaining dressing is fairly traditional with lemon juice, mayonnaise, parmesan and black pepper.
For the lettuces, Ng uses romaine lettuce but also throws in frisée because he likes the slight bitterness that it adds. For the croutons, he breaks a country loaf into bite-sized pieces and tosses it with a sauce made with pureed salted anchovies, olive oil and garlic.
He tosses white anchovies in the house chili oil and throws them in the salad. What’s particularly different in Ng’s salad is the presence of figs. The sweetness of the figs tempers the spiciness and the strong anchovy flavor and somehow brings everything together.
The "Japanese Caesar Salad" from Tsubaki in Echo Park.
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Ashley Balderrama
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The Japanese Caesar salad at Tsubaki came to be because the restaurant had a surplus of Parmigiano Reggiano. Charles Namba, the executive chef and co-owner of Tsubaki, had asked the chef de cuisine, Klementine Song, to develop a salad that would use a lot of the parmesan. Song had an Italian cooking background, having worked at Alimento and Cosa Buona, so naturally, she wanted to do a Caesar to make it more Japanese while retaining the essence of the salad.
“In my head … it has to have garlic, it has to have parmesan,” Song says. She replaces the anchovies with fish sauce and the lemon juice with ponzu. To make it smooth and creamy, she added saikyo, a white miso. She then uses Kewpie mayo to help bind it together. For the salad, Tsubaki uses lettuce from The Garden Of …, a family-owned farm in Santa Ynez, topped with shredded bonito flakes and nori.
Her inventiveness has paid off. “It’s a huge hit,” Song says. “People love it so much, we can’t take it off [the menu] even if we wanted to.”
The new Caesar salad on the menu at Yangban in the Arts District of Los Angeles.
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For Katianna and John Hong, the concept of their restaurant, Yangban, is a take on their Korean-American identity. “Our cooking is pretty autobiographical,” Katianna says. She grew up in a white family in upstate New York, and while John grew up in a pretty traditional Korean household, he was living in a very Jewish suburb of Chicago, so they both had a lot of Caesar salads growing up.
“When we look back on our childhood food memories, there’s this very Americana influence. Whenever we see a Caesar on the menu, because it’s so familiar we always order it,” says Katianna.
The Caesar salad at Yangban marries the traditional salad with Korean cuisine. “Koreans cook with a lot of anchovies. When I first started being introduced to Korean food, I loved the tiny dried anchovies that are kind of glazed with a little bit of soy, garlic and sugar,” Katianna explains.
With the recent remodel and restaurant reopening, Yangban’s Caesar salad also got a facelift. It’s now presented as lettuce cups rather than a traditional salad. Little gem lettuce leaves are covered in a traditional Caesar dressing and then topped with radish kimchi, glazed Korean anchovies, gochujang and toasted bread crumbs. The salad has the essential components of a Caesar salad: the umami, the pungency of the anchovies, the creamy dressing, and the textural contrast from the toasted bread crumbs. But it has extra layers as well. The anchovies are sweet and salty, and there’s the heat coming from the radish kimchi and the gochujang drizzle. All the components sit on a leaf of lettuce, meant to be eaten with one bite, much like how the original Caesar salad was meant to be eaten with your fingers.
Location: 712 S. Santa Fe Ave., Los Angeles
Hours: Wednesday-Sunday 5:30 p.m.- 9:30 p.m. (Closed Monday and Tuesday)
Exterior of Yangban in the Arts District, Los Angeles.
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Ashley Balderrama
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Poltergeist
The "Thai Caesar Salad" from Poltergeist at Button Mash in Echo Park.
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Ashley Balderrama
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Chef Diego Argoti knew he wanted to make a Caesar salad for Poltergeist’s menu before he even tried it out. Argoti’s concept with Poltergeist is to take something familiar and turn it on its head, and that’s what he did with his Thai Caesar salad.
“There’s an expectation of what [a Caesar salad] is, and then I just broke it down,” he says.
Argoti went through a couple of iterations with his salad. The final version has a sauce made with lemongrass oil blended with lime leaves. The oil is then emulsified and mixed with anchovies, more lime leaves, and mustard seeds pickled with rosewater. For the lettuce, Argoti uses friseé and drops in handfuls of fresh basil. Between the lemongrass, lime leaves and basil, it adds a complex and refreshing layer of flavors.
Instead of the usual bread-based crouton, Argoti makes a rice puff “crouton” sprinkled with a bit of parsley powder and blue fenugreek powder. The salad is assembled into three layers, each layer covered with cheese. Argoti didn’t set out to make a specifically “Thai” Caesar salad, but the name fits the flavor profiles he ended up leaning towards, and Thai food was the food that opened Argoti’s eyes to different cuisines.
“I’m not trying to use Thai as an adjective,” Argoti says as he talks about the idea of authenticity with his Caesar. “If you really think about it, it’s hard to be authentically a Caesar salad when it comes from Mexico,” he notes. “I don’t want to mention too much stuff about ethnicities. I just kind of mishmash so much stuff because it’s how I was raised in L.A.”
When Poltergeist opened, Argoti joked to his crew that he wanted to be known for his salads. Now, the Thai Caesar salad is the restaurant’s best seller.
The interior of Button Mash + Poltergeist in Echo Park.
An aerial view of snow-capped trees after a winter snowstorm near Soda Springs on Feb. 20, 2026.
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Stephen Lam, San Francisco Chronicle
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Topline:
California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season. It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.
What happened? Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.
Why it matters: Experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains. State data reports that California’s snowpack is closing out the season at an alarming 18% of average statewide, and an even more abysmal 6% of average in the northern mountains that feed California’s major reservoirs. “I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.
California clocked its second-worst snowpack on record Wednesday, a potentially troubling signal ahead for fire season.
It’s an alarming end to a winter that saw abnormally dry conditions briefly wiped from California’s drought map in January, for the first time in a quarter-century.
Though precipitation to date has been near average, much of it fell as rain rather than snow. Then March’s record-breaking heat melted most of the snow that remains. The state’s major reservoirs are nevertheless brimming above historic averages and are flirting with capacity, and a smattering of snow, rain and thunderstorms are dousing last month’s heat wave.
But experts now warn that California’s case of the missing snowpack could herald an early fire season in the mountains.
On Wednesday, state engineers conducting the symbolic April 1 snowpack measurement at Phillips Station south of Lake Tahoe found no measurable snow in patches of white dotting the grassy field.
“I want to welcome you call to probably one of the quickest snow surveys we’ve had — maybe one where people could actually use an umbrella,” joked Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources. “We’re getting a lot of questions about are we heading into a hydrologic drought? The answer is, I don’t know.”
Only the extreme drought year of 2015 beat this year’s snowpack for the worst on record, measuring in at just 5% of average on April 1st, when the snow historically is at its deepest.
“I think everyone's anticipating that it will be a long, busy fire season,” said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources Fire Network.
“Without a snowpack, and with an early spring, it just means that there’s much more time for something like that to happen.”
‘It’s pretty bizarre up here’
In the city of South Lake Tahoe, which survived the massive Caldor Fire in the fall of 2021 without losing any structures, fire chief Jim Drennan said his department is already ramping up prevention efforts.
“It's pretty bizarre up here right now. It really seems like June conditions more than March,” Drennan said. “People are already turning the sprinklers on for their lawns.”
Without more precipitation, an early spring may complicate prescribed burning efforts. But Drennan said fire agencies in the Tahoe basin can start mechanically clearing fuels from forest areas earlier than usual.
“That means we can get more work done,” he said.
It also means homeowners need to start hardening their homes now, said Martin Goldberg, battalion chief and fuels management officer for the Lake Valley Fire Protection District, which protects unincorporated communities in the Lake Tahoe Basin’s south shore.
Goldberg urges residents to scour their yards for burnable materials, create defensible space and reach out to local fire departments with questions. The risks are widespread — from firewood, wooden fences, gas cans, plants, pine needles — even lawn furniture stacked against a house.
“In years past, I wouldn't even think of raking and clearing until May,” Goldberg said. “But my yard's completely cleared of snowpack, and it has been for a couple weeks now.”
‘A haystack fire’
Battalion chief David Acuña, a spokesperson for Cal Fire, said fire season is shaped by more than just one year’s snowpack.
Climate change has been remaking California’s fire seasons into fire years. And California’s recent average to abundant water years have fueled what Acuña called “bumper crops of vegetation and brush.”
“Most of California is like a haystack. And if you’ve ever seen a haystack fire, they burn very intensely because there's layers of fuel,” Acuña said.
Like Quinn-Davidson, Acuña wasn’t ready to make specific predictions about fires to come.
But John Abatzoglou, a professor of climatology at UC Merced, said the temperatures and snowpack conditions this year offer a glimpse of California in the latter decades of this century, as fossil fuel use continues to drive global temperatures higher.
How this year’s fires will play out will depend on when, where and how wind, heat, fuel and ignitions combine. But it foreshadows the consequences of a warmer California for water and fire under climate change.
“This,” Abatzoglou said, “is yet another stress test for the future in the state.”
What we know: The city is in the very early stages of planning how to transform the 192 acres into a park. The preliminary report shows some potential amenities of the park, such as gardens, biking trails, art galleries, a community center and much more.
Background: After a long legal battle between the city and the Federal Aviation Administration, a settlement was reached that ruled that the city could close the more than 100-year-old airport. The park was controversial among residents because of air quality and noise concerns, and was the subject of many legal battles in recent decades.
What’s next? The city wants to hear from residents. You’re encouraged to review the framework and fill out this survey. Feedback will be accepted until April 26.
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Elly Yu
typically reports on early childhood issues and from time to time other general news.
Published April 1, 2026 1:41 PM
Thousands of immigrants, including refugees and asylees, in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.
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Brandon Bell
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Topline:
Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.
What’s new: The changes apply to certain immigrants who are here lawfully, including refugees and asylees. It also applies to people from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special visas for helping the U.S. military overseas.
Why now: The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.
What’s next: Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.
Thousands of immigrants who are lawfully in California are set to lose their food assistance benefits, known as CalFresh, starting this month.
The new restrictions stem from H.R. 1 — also known as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — which Congress passed last year.
The changes remove eligibility for certain noncitizens, including people with refugee status and victims of trafficking. It also applies to immigrants from Iraq and Afghanistan who have special immigrant visas for helping the U.S. government overseas.
”These are folks … many of whom have large families that we have a commitment to as a country because we welcomed them and invited them here to find a place of refuge,” said Cambria Tortorelli, president of the International Institute of Los Angeles, a refugee resettlement agency. “They’re authorized to work and they’ve been brought here by the U.S. government.”
The federal spending bill, H.R. 1, made sweeping cuts to social safety net programs, including food assistance and Medicaid. In signing the bill, President Donald Trump said the changes were delivering on his campaign promises of “America first.”
Officials estimate 23,000 people in Los Angeles County will be affected. The state estimates about 72,000 immigrants with lawful presence will be affected across California.
CalFresh is the state’s version of the federally funded Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Undocumented immigrants have not been eligible to receive CalFresh benefits.
State officials say noncitizens who are currently receiving benefits will continue to get them until it’s time to renew their benefits — adding that people might be able to receive benefits again if their legal status changes to lawful permanent residents.
Who the changes apply to:
Asylees
Refugees
Parolees (unless they are Cuban and Haitian entrants)
Individuals with deportation or removal withheld
Conditional entrants
Victims of trafficking
Battered noncitizens
Iraqi or Afghan with special immigrant visas (SIV) who are not lawful permanent residents (LPR)
Certain Afghan Nationals granted parole between July 31, 2021, and Sept. 30, 2023
Certain Ukrainian Nationals granted parole between Feb. 24, 2022, and Sep. 30, 2024
Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.
CSU AI survey: CSU polled more than 94,000 students, faculty and staff, making it the largest survey of AI perception in higher education. Nearly all students have used AI but most question whether it is trustworthy. Both faculty and students want more say in systemwide AI policies. Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research.
The results: Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions. Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom. In addition to clarity around use of AI policies, students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”
Nearly every student in the California State University system has used artificial intelligence tools, but most don’t trust the results, are worried about how AI will affect their future job security and want more say in systemwide AI policy.
That’s according to results of a 2025 survey of more than 80,000 students enrolled at CSU’s 22 campuses, plus faculty and staff — the largest and most comprehensive study of how higher education students and instructors perceive artificial intelligence.
Nationwide, university faculty struggle to reconcile the learning benefits of AI — hailed as a “transformative tool” for providing tutoring and personalized support to students — and the risks that students will depend on AI agents to do their thinking for them and, very possibly, get the wrong information. Educators want a say in how and which AI tools are used. Students across the CSU system want to be included in those discussions.
Some professors teach students how to use AI and encourage students to use it, while others forbid its use in the classroom, said Katie Karroum, vice president of systemwide affairs for the Cal State Student Association, representing more than 470,000 students.
“Both of these things are allowed to coexist right now without a policy,” she said.
Karroum said that faculty practices are too varied and that what students need are consistent and transparent rules developed in collaboration with students. “There are going to be students who are graduating with AI literacy and some that graduate without AI literacy.”
In February 2025, the CSU system announced an initiative to adopt AI technologies and an agreement with OpenAI to make ChatGPT available throughout the system. The system-wide survey released Wednesday confirms that ChatGPT is the most used AI tool across CSUs. The system will also work with Adobe, Google, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft and NVIDIA.
Campus leaders say the survey and accompanying dashboard provide much needed data on how the system continues to integrate AI into instruction and assessment.
“We need to have data to make data-informed decisions instead of just going by anecdote,” said Elisa Sobo, a professor of anthropology at San Diego State who was involved in interpreting the survey’s findings. “We have data that show high use, but we also have high levels of concern, very valid concern, to help people be responsible when they use it.”
Faculty at San Diego State designed the survey, which received more than 94,000 responses from students, faculty and staff. Among all responding CSU students, 95% reported using an AI tool; 84% said they used ChatGPT and 82% worry that AI will negatively impact their future job security. Others worry that they won’t be competitive if they don’t understand AI well enough.
“Even though I don’t want to use it, I HAVE TO!” wrote a computer science major. “Because if I don’t, then I’ll be left behind, and that is the last thing someone would want in this stupid job market.”
Faculty are divided about the impact of AI on teaching and research. Just over 55% reported a positive benefit, while 52% said AI has had a negative impact so far.
San Diego State conducted its first campuswide survey in 2023 in response to complaints from students about inconsistent rules about AI use in courses, said James Frazee, vice president for information technology at the campus.
“Students are facing this patchwork of expectations even within the same course taught by different instructors,” Frazee said. In one introductory course, the professor might encourage students to use AI, but another professor teaching the same course might forbid it, he said. “It was a hot mess.”
In that 2023 survey, one student made this request: “Please just tell us what to do and be clear about it.”
Following that survey, the San Diego State Academic Senate approved guidelines for the use of generative AI in instruction and assessments. In 2025, the Senate made it mandatory that faculty include language about AI use in course syllabi.
“It doesn’t say what your disposition has to be, whether it’s pro or con,” Frazee said. “It just says you have to be clear about your expectations. Without the 2023 survey data, that never would have happened.”
According to the 2025 systemwide survey, only 68% of teaching faculty include language about AI use in their syllabi.
Sobo and other faculty who helped develop the 2025 survey hope other CSU campuses will find the data helpful in informing policies about AI use. The dashboard allows users to search for specific campus and discipline data and view student responses by demographic group.
The 2025 survey shows that first-generation students are more interested in formal AI training and that Black, Hispanic and Latino students are more interested than white students. At San Diego State, students are required to earn a micro-credential in AI use during their first year — another change that was made after the 2023 survey.
Students in this year’s survey said they want training that will be relevant to their careers. “I want to learn AI tools that are actually used in my industry, not just generic chatbots,” a mechanical engineering student responded. “Show me what engineers are actually doing with AI on the job.”
The California Faculty Association, which represents about 29,000 educators in the CSU system, said in a February statement that faculty should be included in future systemwide decisions about AI, including whether the contract with OpenAI should be renewed in July.
“CFA members continue to advocate for ethical and enforceable safeguards governing the use of artificial intelligence,” the CFA said in the statement, asking for “protections for using or refusing to use the technology, professional development resources to adapt pedagogy to incorporate the technology, and further protections for faculty intellectual property.”
EdSource is an independent nonprofit organization that provides analysis on key education issues facing California and the nation. LAist republishes articles from EdSource with permission.
