Why millennials are feral for chicken Caesar wraps

For most Americans who have ever eaten lunch, a chicken Caesar wrap is simply a tortilla-wrapped tangle of lettuce, grilled chicken, and creamy dressing. But aficionados see this midday meal item as exponentially more than the sum of its simple parts. 

They’re the singular glimmer of happiness in a work day that’s designed to humble us. They’re comfort food for a swath of burnt-out millennials. They can foster tremendously useful office small talk. They’re also very good, sometimes, I’m told. 

That’s perhaps why people post prolifically about them. When those humans aren’t posting, they’re ostensibly eating them. When they’re not eating them, they’re telling us that they’re in hot pursuit of the next one.

People have strong feelings about the beloved CCW. Its meteoric ascent and vocal fandom are evidence of that. Like any obsession, though, these feelings often say more about us than they do the thing we’re infatuated with.

Why wouldn’t you want a chicken Caesar wrap? 

The first thing you need to know about the chicken Caesar wrap is that it is, scientifically, delicious. Dan Souza, chief content officer at America’s Test Kitchen and expert in the unfathomably expansive subjects of food and taste, says the wrap (and the salad it is adapted from) can be a truly fantastic bite of food. 

Romaine and croutons are crispy and crunchy, two extremely desirable textures. Its dressing is liquid umami; there’s a distinct savory flavor hiding in the filets of anchovies and within the tiny crystals of Parmesan. Lemon juice adds acidity, and olive oil and egg yolk impart fat. Rich and delicate, buttery and tangy, salty and bright — these are all combinations that spark attention in human tastebuds. 

Many recipes are works in progress. Some can always be a little bit better. But a Caesar salad offers little room for improvement. “It’s sort of the conclusion of a recipe,” Souza told Vox. “I don’t think it needs to be tweaked or changed in any way.”

While Souza’s case for Caesar salad is convincing, I told him that I didn’t fully understand the necessity for a wrap. Why add another variable to what is a theoretically perfect food? Why not just have a Caesar salad?

“Oh, so you’re in that camp,” Souza said, before making his next argument.

Souza says there is something deeply American in turning food on a plate into something we can eat with our hands. “We’re a sandwich nation,” he said. Burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, burritos, hot dogs and corn dogs, and various meats and cheeses on a stick — Americans love them. Given our track record, it is only natural that the citizens of this great country would prefer to eat Caesar salad with our hands. 

“For me, just picking it up and being able to get that sort of perfect bite is more satisfying than stabbing your fork into a salad over and over again and possibly getting big leaves in your mouth,” Souza said. “You are sort of able to eat it in a nicer way.”

That nicer way is what’s made the Caesar wrap, to its many admirers, such a perfect lunch food. Souza and his CCW-loving cohort say the wrap feels more sophisticated than a sandwich or a burger, but isn’t as fussy to consume as a large bowl of salad.

Caesar wraps are also, I’m told, aspirational enough for a midday meal without being too ostentatious or luxurious. They are indulgent (glistening with rich dressing), but still feel light and vaguely healthy (there’s lettuce, after all). Ordering a Caesar wrap multiple times a week for lunch wouldn’t be weird, but getting a glamorous omakase twice in five days would definitely, totally be weird. (Speaking of weird: CCW purists told me the wraps are only to be enjoyed while the sun is up, and that eating one for dinner would be sort of sad.)

Because the qualities that make good chicken Caesars are so distinct, it’s easy to pinpoint what makes for mediocre ones. Instead of being made fresh, they’ll likely be premade and refrigerated, an act that kills the wrap’s varying textures. The tortilla becomes a cottony crime, while the chicken lies limp and slippy. The dressing won’t have any memorable flavor, as if it were only a suggestion of Caesar rather than the actuality. They exist, seemingly, to inflict torment.

“The worst ones will be slimy and mushy and gross and won’t have any type of definition in its parts,” Katie Krzaczek, an editor and CCW enthusiast, told Vox. Krzaczek recently moved back home to Philadelphia and found that the City of Brotherly Love doesn’t have a chicken Caesar culture as robust as the one she enjoyed in New York City.

“The consistency of chicken Caesar wrap is also part of the appeal,” Krzaczek said. There shouldn’t be any wild variations or our guesswork involved, even if some are better than others. A chicken Caesar in Philly should be the same as a chicken Caesar in New York City which should be the same as a chicken Caesar in Los Angeles. 

The worst thing that could happen is ordering a chicken Caesar wrap and being met with some kind of surprise.

“Knowing what you’re getting with a chicken Caesar wrap is part of the appeal and also part of the reason people are so hell-bent on finding the best, because everyone’s competing in that same category,” Krzaczek said.  

What if real friendships were the Chicken Caesar wraps we ate along the way?

For one woman, the chicken Caesar wrap has become a scam within a scam.

Sam, 33, works at a billion-dollar tech company and told Vox that she and her wrap-loving coworkers have enacted a ruse where they simultaneously suggest having team lunches to their most gullible members. Since the meals are technically on-the-clock meetings, the company pays for catering. This ploy has allowed Sam and her team to taste test New York City’s best chicken caesies.

Vox agreed to let Sam use a pseudonym because we’re not snitches.

“People like Lenwich the most because the lettuce is chopped within the wrap, which is not common,” Sam said. “Milano Market is good, but it’s such a hassle from either the Upper West or the Upper East Side…or we get delivery from Bobwhite Counter, which is good, but it’s fried chicken and it’s like a whole thing.”

Perhaps the most riveting thing about Sam is that despite this elaborate scheme and encyclopedic database of chicken Manhattan’s Caesars, she doesn’t seem particularly fond of CCWs. Chicken Caesars have become more of a self-fulfilling gimmick and social bonding vehicle than they are particularly delicious.

“It was kind of put on me that I was obsessed. So then I was like, Okay, I’ll inhabit the obsession,” Sam said, adding that wraps are an ideal team lunch item because they can easily be split and shared, and that they’re perfect fodder for small talk. Because everyone has some baseline knowledge of CCWs, it’s an easy subject to weigh in on. How does it taste? Is it good? Is it better than the other one? What do you love about this one? What don’t you like about the others?  

“I don’t care about them that much, but it is something that I guess I’m known for probably by my B-tier friends — the people that I’m mainly internet friends with or I don’t see that often, I think they’re like, Oh my God, she’s so into this. I have to send her this TikTok,” Sam said, explaining that she politely accepts these memes and TikToks even though she is living a lie. 

“That’s been fun because otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to those people,” she added.

The memes and posts Sam receives are mostly idealizations. Some of the stuff she’s sent are riffs on “girl dinner.” Other times it’s an implicit ask to behold a beautiful chicken Caesar wrap. Sometimes, the memes suggest pairing it with crisp Diet Coke or even take it a step further: They declare that a chicken Caesar wrap has the unique power to heal.

Chicken Caesar wraps are a millennial comfort food

Peter Turo, 41, is a true believer. “It heals the wounds of elder millennials,” Turo told Vox. Turo is speaking figuratively, because putting a creamy salad on an open wound is not sound medical advice. He then clarified, pointing to the psychic damage that this generation has endured.

“The culture is crushing us. We had all this promise back in the day and the world was supposed to be nice,” Turo said, explaining that a bite of a wrap won’t change history, but it does allow him to think of a simpler time and that, in itself, is a kind of healing. 

“So I will have it at 1:45,” he said.

Turo and the other wrap lovers I spoke to all pointed to the nostalgia factor being a major part of the appeal of a CCW. For them, a chicken Caesar salad was one of the first “adult” foods they had as tweens and teens, usually ordered at the mall, at a chain restaurant, while also enjoying one of the first moments of adolescent freedom. Even if the salad was mediocre, it still tasted like adulthood. It’s no surprise, especially when coupled with the popularity of wraps in the late ’90s and early 2000s, that a swath of millennials mythologizes the Caesar wrap. 

Nostalgia could very well explain why CCW content regularly goes viral and why a certain type of person may line up for hours waiting to taste some restaurants’ CCWs — a person, let’s say, who may still say FOMO earnestly, who may or may not have early onset lower back pain, and who may send Sam (the scammer) Instagram reels about Caesar wraps. But that isn’t the case for everyone.

“It was something we never ordered, and I had never tried earnestly until I went to college, so I don’t feel any of that nostalgia,” Beatrice Forman, a 25-year-old Philadelphia-based food writer, told Vox. “I think my mom thought it was kind of tacky because it’s like, as she would call it, a philistine’s idea of what a fancy salad is.” 

Forman is friends with Krzaczek, the editor who yearns for more robust chicken Caesar culture in Philly, and she explained that a shop near her apartment had long waits for a “an incredibly mid, but incredibly viral” chicken Caesar salad hoagie (hoagie is the way Philadelphians refer to long sandwiches).

For a brief time, those waits ruined Forman’s neighborhood.

“Every weekend there would be lines wrapping around the street,” Forman said. “You couldn’t walk down the sidewalk of people just standing to either wait for this hoagie or sitting on people’s stoops.”

I asked her to describe the stoop-sitters and their lack of spatial awareness.

“DINKS or young couples who had babies — they have a kid in the stroller or [are] baby wearing and the kid’s crying while they’re eating the chicken Caesar. And a lot of couples,” Forman added. “I assume it was a date activity which, like, imagine telling your partner, Hey, let’s go wait in line for an hour for a fucking hoagie.”

While not everyone may feel that strongly about the combination of salty Parm, tangy dressing, and crisp lettuce, many do feel that way about the taste of adulthood before the 2008 financial crisis.  

Is there perhaps something a little sad in the fact that a salad one can eat with their hands is our generation’s version of mac and cheese, chicken noodle soup, or fried chicken? Instead of eating something actually indulgent, we reach for a salad that’s fatty in secret. In an attempt to capture a favorite memory or a feeling, we opt for something that reminds us of possibility rather than something concrete we experienced.

It’s hard for Forman to comprehend the level of devotion a chicken Caesar wrap commands. Perhaps, some of it is generational disdain, as she is Gen Z. It’s not that she doesn’t understand food obsession that becomes irony, but, rather, she doesn’t understand the obsession with something she believes to be so dull. 

“The perfect salad is obviously a Cobb salad,” she said. “I think you can understand why that needs no elaboration.”

I can certainly understand why a Cobb is superior. But I also have come to know that perfection is not necessarily what people want from a CCW. They want umami, nostalgia, a touchstone, a scam, sometimes mid, and always an afternoon luxury — all in the palm of their hands.

The post Why millennials are feral for chicken Caesar wraps appeared first on Vox.