Chicken Caesar wraps are going viral — these are Chicago’s 5 best

Why on earth is everyone eating chicken Caesar wraps?

That’s the question I blurt out while flipping through TikTok and encountering an endless succession of 20-somethings declaring their love for bulging, sauce-drenched chicken Caesar wraps.

Wraps probably haven’t been trendy since the “Macarena” dance craze swept the country. But while a year or two ago my social media apps were saturated with gratuitous cheese pulls from red-stained quesabirria tacos, this year is all about the chicken Caesar wrap.

One of the first posts I saw was from Ellie Grinter, @elliegrinter33 on TikTok, who started reviewing the chicken Caesar wrap options in Chicago almost by accident. “It started as a joke,” Grinter said. “I feel like I saw (a chicken Ceasar wrap) on TikTok from a New York place. It looked so good. I just decided to go on a hunt and find one here.”

Though she couldn’t remember the exact place, the one New York restaurant that gets the most social media attention is Milano Market, which has multiple locations in Manhattan. As Amy Rosner wrote in a Gotham magazine article ranking the chicken Caesar wraps in New York, “Adding Milano Market to a list of best chicken Caesar salad wraps is the equivalent of putting Levain on a roundup of best chocolate chip cookies — basic, but absolutely necessary.”

What Grinter didn’t expect was the public’s response. “Other things I post on TikTok get like 4,000 views, but the last review got so many views so fast,” Grinter said. She’s not kidding; her review of the chicken Caesar wrap from Punky’s in Bridgeport has nearly 90,000 views.

Chicago restaurant and bar owners agree the chicken Caesar wrap demand is real. Arlene Luna, who co-owns Moonwalker Cafe with her partner Jack Blue, said orders have increased dramatically.

“In fact, I just heard two people order one in line,” Luna said while on the phone with the Tribune. She originally just had a Caesar salad on the menu. “But it wasn’t selling,” she said. “As soon as we offered it as a wrap, it took off. And when the weather got warmer — that’s when it became a top seller.”

Luna is genuinely very proud of her Caesar salad recipe, especially the dressing. “We don’t skimp on the ingredients,” Luna said. “In California, I worked at a couple of steakhouses, so I made a lot of Caesar salads. You can go and buy a bottle of Caesar dressing, or you can make it super special. I use anchovies and really good imported Parmesan.”

Jeff Hoffman, owner of Village Tap in Roscoe Village, wrote in an email that he’s seen a “significant increase” in attention for the dish, and that it’s getting to the point where the kitchen often sells out. “We make everything from scratch in-house with limited space, so demand has often outweighed our ability to keep up,” Hoffman wrote.

While happy for the business, Hoffman did think the rise in orders was a bit puzzling. “We are as surprised as you are,” Hoffman wrote.

I am very surprised. Of all the dishes that I expected to go viral in 2023, I’d have placed the wrap somewhere between other oddballs of the 1990s-era like stuffed-crust pizza and the appletini — items that boomed in popularity, only to fade away.

Writing for the New York Times, Jennifer Steinhauer actually declared the wrap craze over in 1998. “Just two years ago, tiny stores selling wraps sprang up like weeds, enticing curious eaters with their eclectic ingredients and low-caloric, healthful claims,” Steinhauer wrote. But she noted that many wrap restaurants were “mowed down by fast-moving competitors or by mainstream food purveyors like Wendy’s and Au Bon Pain, which both offered cheaper knockoffs.”

So how did the wrap get the attention of the algorithm gods?

First, let’s back up. The origin of what I’m calling the American-style wrap is mired in conflicting tales, though most take place in the late 1970s or early 1980s. My favorite one concerns Bobby Valentine, best known as a former Major League Baseball player and manager.

But as he told Bill Pennington of the New York Times on Feb. 17, 2012, he also owned a restaurant called the Bobby Valentine’s Sports Gallery Café. In 1982, the cheap toaster broke in the kitchen right before a “banker who loaned us money” came in for his usual club sandwich.

Valentine scrambled: “I looked over at the tortillas that were sitting there,” he said. “I grabbed one and put all the ingredients of a club sandwich into the tortilla.” It was a hit, and the dish took off.

What I love about this story is how it showcases what makes wraps distinct and also controversial. Plenty of terrific dishes around the globe feature fillings wrapped up in a flatbread, from Mexican burritos to Greek gyros. But in general, those feature warm fillings in warm flatbread.

The American-style wrap is mostly served with cool fillings. This has consequences for the tortilla, as Lesley Suter notes in a hilarious 2022 article on Eater called “Wraps Are Objectively Terrible.” “Tortillas are amazing, but not when they’re cold,” Suter wrote. “They turn stiff, they tear. The folded up ‘burrito butt’ at the base of a wrap … is here an unchewable rock, a flavorless belly button of starch.”

I’m mostly on Suter’s side with this one. While I’ve done deep dives on burritos, gyros and shawarma, I’ve never considered looking into the world of wraps. I couldn’t even think of one I liked.

This got me thinking: Is there such a thing as a great chicken Caesar salad wrap? When I asked Ellie Grinter, she said it’s easier to point out the attributes of a bad one. “Dry chicken, not enough dressing, if the wrap isn’t pressed, or if it doesn’t have croutons,” Grinter said. “A lot of people don’t put croutons in.”

I agree about the croutons. They lend surprising little pops of crunch, while also soaking up the dressing. To see it done right, check out the chicken Caesar wraps at Nohea Cafe and Village Tap. But not everyone agrees. At Moonwalker Cafe, Luna stopped adding them to her version after so many people asked to have them removed.

As I found eating around the city’s options, it’s pretty common to toast the wrap after it’s stuffed, which does leave lovely brown spots on the exterior. But the process is also fraught with risk. Heat up the wrap too much, and all that cool and crunchy lettuce wilts into mush.

Ian Ciulla from L&M Fine Foods thinks construction plays a crucial role. “You really want it to be Caesar salad, not just a chicken wrap,” Ciulla said. “We add a good amount more lettuce than most would have. It gives each bite a light fresh crunch.”

These are all good points. But for me, there’s only one item that can explain the incredible surge in popularity of this dish: the dressing.

Whatever trepidation I have for the wrap as a genre, my love of the regular Caesar salad knows no bounds. Most likely invented in Tijuana by an Italian chef named Caesar Cardini back in the 1920s, the salad’s pièce de résistance is the umami-packed dressing made by whisking egg, lemon, grated Parmesan, olive oil, Worcestershire sauce, and anchovies. It’s cohesive yet a mess of contradictions, tasting simultaneously creamy, tart, salty and, importantly, a little funky. The dressing is so good, a shocking amount of the world has fallen for it. (While walking recently around Paris, I lost track of the number of restaurant menus that featured the salad.)

When whipped up from scratch, Caesar dressing is one of the finest salad dressings known to the human race. It has the ability to make just about anything taste better, even if that’s a cold tortilla.

Available occasionally as a special, this chicken Caesar wrap tastes more like a salad in a wrap than a chicken wrap with a little lettuce thrown in. This also makes it the lightest of the bunch. 4363 N. Lincoln Ave., 773-825-2370, lmfinefoods.com

This wrap is all about the housemade Caesar dressing, which owner Arlene Luna learned while working in steakhouses in California. The crisp lettuce is wrapped up with tender chicken in a light green spinach wrap. Personally, I wish it had some croutons, but it’s great even without them. 4101 W. Belmont Ave., 773-628-7945, moonwalkerchi.com

If crunch is what you’re after, this West Loop spot loads up each wrap with plenty of croutons and crisp lettuce. The shop also adds a hefty sprinkling of Parmesan to add a salty hit to each bite. 1312 W. Madison St., 773-935-7448, noheacafe.com

Punky’s stands out for making its own wrap, a slightly thick pita-like creation that still manages to be supple when loaded up with lettuce, chicken, Parmesan, dressing and croutons. It’s also massive, so don’t feel bad if you need to share. 2600 S. Wallace St., 312-842-2100, punkyspizza.com

The wrap here is lovingly toasted, ensuring you’ll never be left with cold and stodgy tortilla bits. Inside you’ll find all of the essentials, including lots of juicy chicken. 2055 W. Roscoe St., 773-883-0817, villagetap.com

nkindelsperger@chicagotribune.com