Dear Chipotle Chicken Caesar Salad: A love letter to the Frontera secret menu
<3 <3 <3
Dear FCCCS (Frontera Chipotle Chicken Caesar Salad),
I ordered you last semester because I wasn’t basic enough to go to Sweetgreen, but not hungry enough for my normal Frontera pigging out. I didn’t expect much – with Penn Dining experiments, it’s hit or miss. I also wasn’t sure about the combination of “chipotle seasoning” and caesar. Latino seasoning with Italian dressing? This sounded like my ethnicity, but not a great combination for a salad.
Oh I was SO wrong.
Everything about you, oh wonderful salad, is wonderful. You’re tasty when they put a lot of dressing, or when they put a little bit of dressing. Your chicken is good and not questionable cubes, and your mixed greens kick ass, unlike that weak iceberg shit they usually put in salads. Your croutons are HUGE and made of real bread – and you have cheese. So. Much. Cheese.
I can get tired of any other food, but you, FCCCS? I ate you every day for 2 weeks during finals, because the combination of tastes that you provide is perfect.
I relished in your beauty, you tasty salad, knowing that you were just a special, and that your beauty was only temporary.
In the back of my mind I hoped that you were just listed as a special so people would buy you, and that you would stay forever. But I didn’t know. So I came back to Penn expecting that I’d never see you again, that I could only relish in the memories of our past. Being the lovesick caesar salad lover that I am, I forlornly asked the nice Frontera cashier if they still made you on my first visit back in the fall semester. She checked her computer, and after 5 minutes said “yeah, apparently we still do”.
This was music to my ears. Because even though you are not on the menu anymore, you now hold a special place not only in my heart, but on a secret menu only your lovers (like me) know of.
So FCCCS, I just want you, and the rest of Penn to know, my undying love for you. You make every lunchtime seminar better (and your roommate Mexican Coke isn’t too bad either :-)).
May you forever grace the Arch,
Klaudia