Recreating Nana’s Greek Salad

Do you have a favorite lunch place? Or maybe even just a favorite menu item from a certain place? Well, for us, it was the Chicken Soulvaki Salad from Nana’s – a little place in the food court of our local mall. We went there so much it got to the point where the guys would know our order – 2 chicken soulvaki salads – 1 no tomato and 1 no tomato, no onions. It was perfect……

And then they closed that location. No, it wasn’t due to the whole quarantine thing. That particular mall was pretty sad well before any of that. The food court was literally down to 3 places – Nana’s, a pizza place, and a pretzel place. Subway may still have been there pre ‘world shut down’ but I don’t remember. They still had one other location in another mall food court. The only issue with that was….it was over 45 minutes away. Kinda far to drive for lunch. I mean we could, but it just seemed like a giant waste of gas. If I’m going to drive that far, there has to be a purpose other than lunch and there’s not much in that area that we can’t already do much closer to home. Except Nana’s.

After a little bit, we started to really miss that salad. So I started looking up different recipes for the salad dressing. The actual salad components were pretty basic – iceberg lettuce, tomatoes (or not, if you’re Chris), black olives, marinated & grilled chicken, and feta cheese. It was the dressing that required much experimenting. I had once asked the owners if they sold their dressing. They said something along the lines of “Of course not…if we did that, you’d never come back.” Yes, he was smiling when he said it, so I don’t think he was entirely serious. We still would have gone back – it’s nice to not have to be the one making the food from time to time – but it would have been amazing to have a bottle of that amazing dressing at home, too. Plus, I’m not gonna lie, it would have been much easier to recreate with some sort of an ingredient list in front of me.

One of the big advantages of this salad is you can make a bunch of chicken ahead of time and then just prepare the other elements as you need them. If I have leftover lettuce, I’ll put it in an airtight container with a paper towel – helps to absorb the moisture – and it will last and extra day or two. For extra tomatoes and olives, I use these cute little glass cups that have handy lids. They also work great for keeping salad components separate when I take it for lunch.

So after a LOT of experimenting and combining of Greek dressing recipes I found on the internet, I finally settled on the combination you’ll find here. The one point of contention has been the Dijon mustard. Chris is pretty adamant that it wasn’t in the original recipe. He’s probably right. The only reason I say that is because Nana’s original dressing was more clear. The mustard gives it a little more cloudy of an appearance. We’ve tried it both ways and I honestly prefer it with the mustard. Both ways are super tasty, but the mustard adds a tangy depth of flavor that I just really love. I’d encourage you to try it both ways and see which one you prefer. Also, if the amount of garlic seems like a bit much, feel free to cut back a clove or two. And be sure you crush and then FINELY mince the garlic. You do not want big pieces of raw garlic hanging out in your salad for some unsuspecting person to bite down on…that is not tasty.

On the day that I filmed this video, we started talking about Nana’s and how maybe we’d take a trip out there sometime before summer ended. So I looked them up to make sure they were still at the same location and sadly they don’t seem to be there any longer……On the plus side, they’ve opened a new location about 20 minutes closer!!! Yay!! So we’ll definitely be having Nana’s amazing salad again sometime soon….and, of course, I’ll be comparing it in my head to my recreation.

Let us know what you think of this salad – how does it stack up to chicken soulvaki salads that are available where you live? Drop us a comment below and tell us your thoughts. Until next time…..