(upbeat music)
- So you just saw a bunch of wild footage
you might notice that not all of it is salad,
and that's because today we are exploring great salads
and the foods that you eat with them to make them so great.
Today on Worth It,
we're going to be trying three salads at three drastically
different price points to find out which one
is the most worth it and it's price.
- This is going to be a giant episode.
I mean first off what is a salad?
Fruit salad.
- Is it a salad?
- Macaroni salad.
- Is that a salad?
This is one that I cannot believe we're doing.
- In a lot of ways it feels like the spiritual successor
to our toast video.
- They said we couldn't do it.
- They said we couldn't do it, you know salad.
- Who said we couldn't do it?
Want to see my salad dance?
- You have a salad dance?
- Yeah.
- Yeah, you haven't danced for us in a while Steven.
- You gotta start with plucking the greens,
plucking the greens, mixing the bowl (laughs)
mixing the bowl. (laughs)
Our first salad is a papaya salad.
Brought to us by Chef Pla, and Chef Fern.
- Two of L.A.'s most celebrated Thai chefs.
- They opened a number of Thai restaurants.
We're going to Luv2Eat Thai Bistro.
- Here it is.
The thesis of this video,
all of the best foods get better when you add a salad.
Much like Adam on this show.
- Right, because you could have a good meal,
but you can't have a great meal without Adam.
I mean salads.
(laughs)
- What kind of restaurant is Luv2Eat?
We want people to come and eat and feel like they're eating
at friend's house.
Papaya salad is the most famous salad In Thailand.
It's spicy and sour and sweet.
I love that.
Today I want to make medium spicy.
- Okay, other people who work here
just heard you say medium spicy,
and they were like "Oh, that's very spicy."
- Yeah, that's why we have the signs
to, like, tell people that it's really hot.
- Yeah.
- Okay, I want to try your medium spicy.
- Okay. (laughs)
For the papaya salad, it has green papaya, Thai eggplant.
- [Andrew] What's that?
- It's not the same here, the long one.
- [Chef Fern] The round one.
- [Chef Pla] Yeah, and crispy.
Cut to small pieces
and put in the mortar together with the sauce,
Palm sugar, lime juice, tamarind sauce
and fish sauce and pounding.
- [Andrew] Why is it important to pound it
instead of chopping it and mixing the ingredients?
- [Chef Pla] You want the sauce inside the vegetables.
- [Andrew] So you're like crushing the vegetables,
and then the flavors go in that.
- [ Chef Fern] You're pushing flavor into the vegetable.
Like real spicy.
Simple, but the taste is authentic.
- Is it usually eaten as
an appetizer or with the meal?
- It doesn't matter.
- We put everything-- - Main course can come first.
- On the table.
- I love that.
If the food is done, bring it out right?
Like you don't need to wait.
And so the dish that we're gonna pair
this with is the Crying Tiger?
- Crying tiger beef.
- Why is it called the Crying Tiger?
- Because beef on hot stove has the sound.
- Oh sounds like a tiger that's crying.
- My mom told me like that.
- I don't know about this story.
(laughing)
- My mom told me like that.
- [Andrew] And then I think we're also
going to have Jade Noodle?
- [Chef Pla] It's made from spinach.
- [Chef Fern] And we're topping with roasted duck,
barbecue pork, crispy pork.
- [Andrew] Awesome, just say eat it all.
- [Chef Pla] Thank you.
- Shall I serve you some salad Steven?
- Please please please.
Oh my goodness, I'm eating this like pasta.
- That's a good call.
You can twirl it up like pasta.
- Cheers.
That is insanely good.
It's lingering,
- Yeah.
- It's now tickling the back of my throat.
- The spice?
- Yeah, a little bit of, you know a lover's tickle.
- (laughs) What?
So on the spectrum of tickles, this is like a feather.
Not just like the full goochie goochie.
- (laughs) Oh, my god.
- Goochie goochie.
I love the way this tastes.
You can't hold on to any one flavor.
You're like, "Oh, I taste a little shrimp,
"then the peanut, oh here's lime, oh it's a little spicy."
- How do you not get to the best part of the salad yet?
The texture.
- The texture, yeah.
Let's try some Crying Tiger.
Cheers.
Yes that is exactly what I wanted.
- Juicy, marinated steak dipping in this
very fishy sauce.
Little bit of surf-n-turf here.
- [Andrew] Jade Noodles.
- [Steven] Jade Noodles.
Seasoned noodles.
Whoa, sorry.
- Yeah.
- Just seeing the color right now.
It's green.
I feel like I'm going crazy right now.
- (laughs) You sound a little crazy.
- (laughs) This is amazing, look at this one noodle.
- Do I eat the whole thing in one go?
- I mean obviously.
- That was a struggle.
- I feel like I'm going to regret saying this,
but I could've had this salad a little bit spicier.
- Let's throw some more chilies on here.
So what is this?
- [Chef Pla] Homemade, it's spicy.
- This is scary looking.
(laughs)
- [Chef Pla] Be careful.
- Oh, okay.
- (laughs) Adam!
- Oh you are.
- You are finishing this plate young man.
- [Steven] All right, now we do the figgy right?
- [Andrew] Yes.
- [Chef Fern] We usually grab it,
make it like a ball and dip.
- All right, you want it spicier right?
- No, no, no.
- Just a touch.
- No, I'm good Steven.
- Just a touch, there you go.
- Oh that's a lot spicier.
- This is the first time I've been at a table
where there was beefy steak,
- Crispy pork noodles.
- And the thing that's gone.
- [Andrew] Is the salad.
- [Steven] Is the salad.
(laughs)
- That was a very unique salad.
- A great example of what a salad can be.
It doesn't have to have leaves.
- Just like the salad that we made this morning.
- We're eating Ambrosia Salad.
Truly one of the most bizarre salads in existence.
We couldn't find a place selling it
so we had to make our own.
We actually got the recipe from a former colleague of ours,
Scott Lush who's now a producer at the New York Times.
He grew up eating this, he is a staunch supporter
of the Ambrosia Salad.
- Hey.
- Hi guys, what's going on?
- We're driving to our next salad location,
perfect opportunity to try your Ambrosia Salad.
- It smells delicious.
- It is delicious. (laughs)
- It doesn't sound delicious.
- You have it at fourth of July barbecue
same time as your burger, your mac and cheese,
your potato salad.
- Oh, so this isn't like a dessert course?
- It's like that sweet release between bites.
- Let's pull over and eat this.
- I actually like it a lot.
- You know it's not that crazy.
- It is a dessert for sure.
- It's just like all the ingredients of a cake,
minus the actual cake.
- Salad fact!
- Salad fact.
- Somebody else say salad fact.
- Salad fact.
- Thank you.
The literal translation of ambrosia in Greek is immortality.
It was originally the name used for food
that could only be consumed by gods and goddesses
in Greek and Roman mythology.
- Pretty big praise for this salad.
- It makes sense though.
- I think it's more that you have to have
the strength of a god to eat this as a salad.
(laughs)
Well, thanks for chatting Scott.
- Glad you guys liked it.
- Bye.
- All right so we're headed now to Pizzeria Mozza.
A throw back to our very first episode together.
This time we're going to meet with the chef owner
of Pizzeria Mozza, Nancy Silverton.
- I am so excited about this,
Nancy Silverton is a Los Angeles restaurant legend.
- We're gonna be trying her salad that she put her name on.
- It has to be so good.
We got to get a little pizza too right?
Just a little taste.
- I'm cool with that.
(intense music)
- What makes a really good salad?
- It's not easy to make a salad.
People just think of it as tossing
a bunch of ingredients together.
In composing the salads I think
each one has to serve a purpose.
A chopped, really what you're eating
is a chopped up antipasto tray.
You're getting salami, pepperoncini, onions.
That salad works because you can get
a bite of each ingredient in one mouthful.
Iceberg lettuce and ridicchio which I really love.
Always season those lettuces with
kosher salt, fresh lemon juice, toss that
slice provolone, bonzo beans, sun-gold cherry tomatoes.
The yellow, super sweet ones.
That's tossed with oregano vinaigrette,
and piled high for the drama right?
That salad goes by and everybody can say,
"Oh, I'll have one of those."
(laughs)
- Would you do us the honor of building our
perfect meal with some pizza plus salad?
- [Nancy] So I think with an old-school chopped
you're gonna go old-school pineapple pizza.
- [Andrew] Awesome.
- This pizza is named after my son,
his name is Benjamin and so we call it
Pizza A La' Benno.
Sound better than Pizza A La' Ben.
(laughs)
- But my son would always order the pineapple pizza
and I'm like, "That is awful, how could you do it?"
You know, you knew that pineapple came from the can
and it was sweet and it had I think Canadian bacon
you know but it was really the worst choice.
(laughs)
- So I was determined to make one that I would even like.
The pizza is definitely the focus of this restaurant
and how can you have pizza without salad you know?
- We came back to Pizzeria Mozza.
- Two years ago, to the day.
- Probably not.
- Yeah, it's not I completely made that up.
Now we've been upgraded to the wine cellar room.
- Cheers.
This is a dangerous wine.
It's very smooth.
- I'm going to have to deflate
salad mountain a little bit.
It really doesn't look like any salad I've seen before.
Just the size of the ingredients, the density of it.
It really looks like stuff that fell
out of an Italian Sub.
- I like the color pallette here.
Light pastel-ish colors.
I mean look at what I'm wearing.
Cheers.
- No.
- It's such a good salad.
- Oh, just got a tomato.
That thing burst like a piece of boba.
- The acidity of this salad is making me want
to eat bread and savory stuff next.
- I have like five analogies I could use,
but they're all gross.
- Count them off.
- It's like wetting your toothbrush
before putting your toothpaste on there.
- It's a must-do if you don't do it you're a monster.
Number two.
- It's like putting water on a water slide
before you go down.
- You're asking for your skin to be peeled off
if you don't do that.
(laughs)
Three.
- Bedroom activities.
- I'm getting concerned about the lubrication theme
of all these comments.
(laughs)
Four.
- I'm done, I'm done.
- The pineapple pizza has arrived.
- Oh,
you like that Annie?
Sorry.
- Action.
- I forgot how good the crust is here.
- It's a great pizza.
Let's try a little salad break.
Oh, hell yeah.
You get the acidic salad bounce back
to your sweet and meaty cheesy pizza.
- Listen, as a Cav's fan I went through many, many years
where LeBron James was the only great player on that team
and we couldn't win a championship.
Pizza is LeBron but you can't win
the championship with LeBron only.
- No, you got to have those salad players.
- Sometimes it's too much pressure being a pizza.
- Adam, the salad of our team.
- He's more like the marshmallow.
- [Adam] Some salads have marshmallows.
- Whoa.
The salad is good.
- I was not expecting Nancy to suggest
pineapple and ham pizza.
- We got a pizza to-go as well,
because two pizzas wasn't enough.
- One of the quintessential salad and pizza pairings
doesn't have the salad component at all,
but rather the dressing.
- Yes.
- We're talking about ranch on pizza.
Forgive us Nancy.
We want you on motion--
(group exclaims)
- I thought we were just dipping!
(laughs)
- Adam!
- Here we go.
- We're doing this.
- I'm driving a car and eating a pizza with ranch.
Oh I got to make my turn. - It feels so right.
(laughs)
- Let's pull over, there's a spot right there.
- Pizza cheers.
- Cheers.
- Are we touching?
I can't tell. - We are.
- Oh.
- I don't know.
- Annie almost hurled there.
This is actually pretty good.
- I just had a bite without ranch.
It's way better.
(laughs)
- Ranch fact.
- We got a ranch fact?
- Hidden Valley Ranch is responsible
for introducing ranch dressing.
Ranch-style dressings are now the favorite salad dressing
flavor in the US.
To say that you're the first of anything, very impressive.
- We're heading now downtown
to a place called The Manufactory.
This is a giant complex that has bakery's,
a couple of restaurants, a market space.
One of the restaurants in that space,
Tartine Bianco is where we're going next
and we're meeting up with Chris Bianco,
one of the creative visionaries behind that space
as well as Chef De Cuisine, Camden Hershberger.
So we're having Tagliata a classic Italian steak preparation
typically served with a small arugula salad.
- So are we getting a steak, or are we getting a salad?
- Both.
- So we're ordering Robin, and with Robin comes Batman.
- That's right.
- I don't have to eat bats though, or birds.
Well, no, I like birds.
Is a bat a bird?
- A a bat is a mammal.
They have nipples.
(laughs)
(calm music)
- We're in The Manufactory, built 1917.
Most recently American About was here before
and they manufacture clothes.
Now we manufacture, well I guess the earth manufactures.
(laughs)
That's kind of the crux of our work,
is trying not to screw up what's already perfect.
My partner Chad and my collaborations
really about finding incredibly talented young chefs
like Chef Camden at Tartine Bianco
and working with them to be in a band,
not a solo artist.
- [Andrew] Today we're going to be trying this Tagliata.
What is that dish?
- With Tagliata you know--
- Sorry I wasn't saying that right.
- Yeah.
- Tagliata?
- However you say--
- No G?
- You know the Italians they slide the G.
You know just move like slide steak.
But it sounds better.
- 30 ounce bone in
New York cut about two inches thick.
The beef we get from small farms
either in Washington or northern California.
So we grill that over almond wood,
presented with the bone just in case you want to
kind of gnaw on it afterwards.
- [Andrew] Steven always gnaws on the bone actually.
- It's recommended, yeah.
- Okay, good I'm glad I'm justified here.
- The salad is constructed seconds
before the steak is sliced.
Arugula it's dressed in cherry vinegar,
olive oil, salt, and a little lemon juice.
It has to be fresh because as
soon as the salt hits those greens
it's pulling the moisture out through osmosis.
- [Steven] Why arugula?
- It's nice and peppery.
- What do you need with a piece of protein?
What do you crave?
You know for us, something bitter.
Something to cut the fat.
- [Andrew] And so that's the job of the salad.
- [Chris] Yes.
- You have the steak that's
beefy and heavy and rich.
And then you have the salad that's light,
it's crisp, it's acidic.
- As we get older I think we realize the
secret to any of it is balance.
- Yes.
- Like when you're younger its volume.
All I want to do is make it louder
and then finally you find out
what's the tipping point of volume.
I think maturing is restraint.
Holding something back enough so people can read that.
- Cheers Steven.
- Cheers.
- Salads.
That's a sick wine.
- Yeah I know.
- Like, Adam come here and drink this wine.
(laughs)
- All right, let's bread.
I ordered the porridge first.
- [Andrew] Look how spongy.
- [Steven] This is literally incorporated
porridge into the dough.
- [Andrew] It's such a moist crumb.
- This is my first time having Tartine bread.
Cheers.
(laughs)
This is wild.
The texture is very unique.
- Yeah it's like gummy in a satisfying way.
We had to start with the bread
because Tartine famous for their bread.
They're baking loaves all day.
So you have some bread while
you wait for your salad to come.
But of course it's not the salad that's taking a long time
it's the giant steak we're having along side it.
Thank you.
- Whoa, worth it salad.
- In all fairness the salad
is 50 percent of this plate right now.
Cheers Steven.
- Steak cheers.
(calm music)
- Andrew.
- Wow, that's a great salad.
This might be the best steak that we've had on the show yet.
It coats your whole mouth
it feels like your mouth is drowning in flavor.
This time I'm going to follow up with the salad right away.
- I can already feel myself getting ready for the salad.
- Yeah that rocks.
Just kind of like deletes the steak from my mouth
so that the next time that I eat it
it's like the first time again.
- Steak and salad, opposites.
You, my friend, are the steak.
Slow, rich, beefy.
Me, the arugula.
Little bittery, little peppery.
A nice cut into your sarcastic tone.
- Okay.
- Yeah I am proud to say that I am the salad of this duo.
- If you're this salad you should be proud.
Kim did mention the dandelion and celery salad.
I think Adam should eat that.
- You guys got the wrong salad.
- What a wild place.
That feels like Disney Land for food.
- They've paid so much attention to detail.
I mean we walked in there and Andrew
could not get over how much he loved the chairs there.
- Oh my god.
Before we get to our Worth It winners,
three favorite things from today that weren't salads.
- Oh!
- Go.
- Okay, number three the bread at Tartine.
- Oh so good.
- Number two, Scott Lush and the Ambrosia Salad.
- He took us way deep and dark
into the salad vortex on that one.
- Number one though the sign at Luv2Eat
that said "Caution of Spiciness".
What about you?
- Okay number three pink milk at Luv2Eat.
- [Steven] Oh yeah that was.
- That was wild.
Number two the butter swoosh at Tartine Bianco.
- [Steven] Oh.
- [Andrew] Its stuff like that that just really tickles me.
And my number one favorite moment from this
video that wasn't a salad is I've had your seat heater on
for all of the car rides so far and you haven't noticed.
It's like 80 degrees today.
(laughs)
What does your butt feel like right now?
- No, it just feels like normal.
(laughs)
- Normal hot ass.
- All that being said, Andrew,
which salad was the most worth it to you?
- My Worth It winner today
Luv2Eat Papaya Salad.
Bright, acidic, spicy, hearing that people just
eat that as their meal with sticky rice.
I'm going to start doing that now.
Steven who's your Worth It winner?
- So the Tagliata was perhaps the perfect steak.
All that being said my Worth It winner
goes to the papaya salad.
I cannot believe I'm saying that
because I cannot believe I'm agreeing with you.
Annie?
- Pizzeria Mozza.
Makes sense.
- Adam who's your Worth It winner?
- Tartine Bianco.
But the celery.
- Oh but the celery salad?
- Oh wow.
- Yeah that salad is super good.
- You know when you're playing Madden?
- I don't I've never played it.
- Okay nevermind.
- Roll credits.
(laughs)
(upbeat music)