Cobb salad recipe from the Hollywood Brown Derby (2024)

Ingredients and instructions to make the Hollywood Brown Derby cobb salad recipe at home:

The Hollywood Brown Derby restaurant in Disney World’s Hollywood Studios is a pretty cool restaurant, because it’s a replica of the Brown Derby in LA. The original restaurant has a lot of history in Hollywood and was a popular place for stars to dine – particularly in the 1930’s, 40’s, and 50’s. So it fits in well with the “old Hollywood” aesthetic that Hollywood Studios has going on (at the entrance to the park, at least).

The Cobb salad has become a fairly common and well known salad, being available at many restaurants around the country. But it was first invented at the original Hollywood Brown Derby, at least according to many stories. Some stories say that the owner of the Brown Derby worked a long shift and hadn’t eaten anything by the end of the night, so he just threw together a bunch of leftovers as a salad. Another version says he was trying to come up with something to serve an important visitor who had just had dental work done and needed something finely chopped. However it came to be, the cobb salad is a delicious salad!

It’s an amazing combination of flavors and there’s a lot packed into a cobb salad. Some restaurants will put their own twist on it, but of course the restaurant in Hollywood Studios at Disney does their best to replicate the original cobb salad.

A few notes about my version of the recipe:

This is based as closely as possible on Disney’s version, but in all my recipes I typically make a few adjustments. These are usually to simplify things for at home cooking. Sometimes Disney uses ingredients that are very difficult to find, so I come up with a substitute. Often their recipes are to make huge portions so I try to adapt it for normal sized servings.

In this case I couldn’t find chicory so I used dandelion greens instead. This recipe uses a lot of different kinds of greens and lettuce. I like the variety, but if you don’t want to get all of these things you could just one one type of lettuce, and either the chicory or watercress. If you can’t find watercress, arugula would probably be your next best bet.
I mentioned above you can leave out anything you don’t like. I actually forgot to buy an avocado so I had my salad without it – however I love avocado so I don’t recommend forgetting it! It’s in the recipe but if you are looking closely at my photos you might notice it’s missing.
I modified the dressing to make a more reasonable amount, but it’s really good and would be wonderful on other salads as well, so you can always double the recipe if you think you’ll use more of it.
I made this for dinner one night and then saved the leftovers for a few lunches later in the week. It stored and held up really well in the fridge!

Helpful kitchen items for this recipe:

Good quality chef’s knife. There’s a lot of dicing in this recipe so a good knife is going to help a lot. This one on Amazon is a good basic multi-purpose chef’s knife.
Herb scissors. This is one of the best little kitchen gadgets I’ve ever purchased. These herb scissors make it easy to chop herbs. I used it for the chives in this recipe.
Types of knives kitchen poster. It’s hard for me to keep track of which knife to use for which item, so I like having a poster like this in my kitchen for easy reference.

And here’s the Hollywood Brown Derby cobb salad recipe:

Ingredients

1 cup chopped iceberg lettuce leaves
1 cup chopped romaine lettuce leaves
1 bunch chicory
1/2 bunch watercress
2 medium tomatoes
1 pound cooked turkey breast
3 hardboiled eggs
6 strips of crisp cooked bacon, crumbled
1 avocado
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
2 tablespoons fresh chopped chives

For the salad dressing:

2 tablespoons water
1/8 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon worchestershire sauce
1/2 clove garlic, chopped
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon dry mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 cup vegetable oil
ground black pepper to taste

Instructions

Make the salad dressing first: whisk together all ingredients except the olive oil and vegetable oil. Add olive oil and vegetable oil, whisking constantly until everything is completely blended. Store dressing until ready to use.
Chop all of the greens very finely (iceberg lettuce, romaine lettuce, chicory, and watercress).
Finely dice the tomatoes, turkey, eggs, bacon, and avocado.
Assemble your salad: start with a base of the greens and then arrange lines of the tomato, turkey, egg, bacon, avocado, and blue cheese.
Garnish with the chives in a diagonal line across the plate.
Toss with the dressing and enjoy!

Thinking about a trip to Disney World to try the Cobb salad yourself? Check out my Ultimate List of Disney World planning resourcesto get you started. If you’d like the assistance of a travel agent at no extra cost to you, email me at[emailprotected]and we start planning and booking your trip!