Like the name itself, there is also a big debate about its dressing as well. But at the historic Davenport Hotel in Spokane, crab Louis first appeared on the menu the year the hotel opened in 1914 and claims the salad was named after the hotel’s owner, Llewellyn “ Louis” Davenport. One version says is was named after the Italian tenor Enrico Caruso who traveled to Seattle in the early 1900’s, ate crab Louis salads at the Olympic Club and developed an insatiable appetite for it. Other historians suggest that the iconic salad was named after King Louis XIV, who was known for the enormous amounts of food he would eat.Ī San Francisco restaurant, The French Poodle Dog, one of the first restaurants to serve the salad early on claimed to to have named the Louis dressing after its chef, Louis Coutard. The origins of who Louis is, remains in dispute to this day. It was not until the early 20th century that crab began being served with lettuce and other veggies as a healthy option and crab Louis salad, as we know it, was born. After that, Dungeness crab thrived from Northern California to Alaska, and quickly became a commercial hit. When Vancouver and his expedition landed at Discovery Bay in 1792, they hauled in fish and crab for the crew. Looking further back, it was a man named Captain George Vancouver who named Dungeness Spit, in Washington, which was known for its abundance of fresh, sweet, tasty crab and reminded him of the Dungeness back in England. San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver and Portland all served crab on menus dating back to the early 19th century. The salads origin originating on the the West Coast makes a ton of sense to me, because in the late 19th century, there was an abundance of fresh crab in the area. As a Jew, I actually find this tidbit fascinating, depending on how observant you are, eating crab is not typically common.
Dig a little deeper and you find the first printed recipe for the famous salad, including all the traditional ingredients, ( lettuce, two hard boiled eggs and shredded crab meat), first appeared in the Portland Council of Jewish Women’s Neighborhood Cookbook in 1912. Crab Louie salad, ( pronounced LOO-ey), known also as, “ the king of salads“, is a well-known dish, most food historians agree, first began appearing on menus of finer West Coast restaurants, sometime between the turn of the 20th century and World War I.
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