The Canlis Salad is a classic and pairs very well with most main dishes.

This salad is amazing and it's awesome that the recipe is available online. Salad is such a simple, fundamental dish that is easy to do well and extremely difficult to do extraordinarily. The key to the perfection of the Canlis Salad as opposed to just another tasty green salad lies in the exacting process and selection of ingredients that Mark Canlis is known for. The way the recipe is described on the Canlis website, it is suggested that the lettuce be CUT as opposed to shredded. This may sound trivial but cutting the leaves reduces the amount of sensitive surface area exposed to air, which reduces wilting. Additionally, the recipe calls for washing the lettuce in warm water, drying completely and then refrigerating. I don't know what natural porcesses occur, but cold lettuce certainly has a much more pleasant crispness to it, and avoiding wilting is clearly the primary goal for the preparation of the lettuce. Next, the Official Canlis recipe suggests using cherry tomatoes. This is just speculation, but I find cherry tomatoes to be more acidic that other varities, and acidity is an integral component of brightening and embellishing flavors in food (acid+salt+fat=delicious). Once again, this might sound trivial, but all of these minor details contibute to perfection on the plate. Probably the biggest difference between this recipe and the official one is the substitution of garlic powder for fresh garlic in the dressing.... HUGE difference... nuff said... Finally, this is once again my own reflections on the recipe, not part of the official MC Salad recipe, but in the restaurant, they use big chunks of really thick sliced, high quality (probably house smoked) bacon. This is sort of a captain obvious comment in that, the better ingredients you use, the better the end product will taste, but in the interest of frugality, the ingredients that I think are most important to be discerning about are the bacon, tomatoes and the Romano, or the three ingredients responsible for the fat, salt and acid in the dish... Other than the dressing of course... I recognize that it's impractical to expect people to go to such lengths for a salad but try it once the way Mark Canlis intended it to be made and I gaurantee it will be worth while...

[I made edits to this recipe.]

I have had this salad, I use to live in Northpark Seattle area and bro-in-law still works at Ballard fire station, I ate here once in the mid 80's, I will have this for dinner tomorrow with my gazpacho, it was 108 here in the shade, suppose to be hotter tomorrow. No way the oven or stove is going on

[I made edits to this recipe.]

I didn't see the green onions you use in the ingredient list.

[I posted this recipe.]