Jimmy John's Has Two Cool New Salad Wraps For Hot Summer Days

We've reached the point in the summer when temperatures have soared above 90 and the humidity has risen accordingly, the days when you feel too hot and sweaty and gross to turn the oven on or put anything warm into your body. This is salad weather, my friends. And in an ideal world, you would be making those salads with your own two precious hands, using vegetables you grew in your own backyard garden or hauled in from the farmers market or a particularly picturesque farmstand.

The world is not ideal, though, and some days we are just want other people to prepare our food for us and bring it to us, preferably for not very much money. This is, I assume, the rationale behind Jimmy John's two new salad-inspired summer wraps. The Chicken Caesar Wrap features the classic chicken, Parmesan, Caesar dressing, and crouton combo in a garlic and herb wrap, while the Beefy Ranch Wrap contains roast beef, cheddar, onion, lettuce, tomato, mayo, cucumber, ranch dressing, and mini croutons in a flour wrap. (Both are also available as lettuce-wrapped "Unwiches.")

These both sounded satisfying, at least in theory. These are simple, serviceable, mostly uncontroversial (aside from the beef part) salads—salads that are readily available at restaurants, salad bars, and grocery stores—in a neat and handy and easily transportable wrap form: chicken Caesar and a Midwestern ranch salad (with its classic partners, mayonnaise and cheddar cheese).

I tried the Beefy Ranch wrap first and was slightly shocked to feel something crunch as I bit down. Then I realized it was a crouton; I had completely forgotten that they were in there. The next bit of unpleasantness was the meat itself. Steak in a salad can be delightful, especially if it comes in thick slices. I've never seen a roast beef salad, but I'm not entirely willing to rule it out. The beef in this wrap, however, was the lunchmeat interpretation of roast beef. Which is not really roast beef. It is its own thing entirely. It doesn't taste like much of anything at first, but then it has a strange, lingering, leathery aftertaste.

I honestly would have enjoyed the wrap a lot more if it had just been cheese and vegetables and creamy condiments without any lunchmeat in it at all.

The Chicken Caesar was more successful, in my humble opinion, because it did use slices of actual chicken breast (or at least something that passed for chicken breast) instead of pressed chicken. The Caesar dressing was a little too sweet, but the rest of the sandwich was a nice combination of flavors and textures—especially the croutons, once I got over my initial startle.

A warning: just because these are salads in wrap form does not mean they are healthy, except maybe in comparison to a double cheeseburger and fries. But they are a cool, summery alternative to a hot lunch.

The true revelation of the meal, though, was the serving of potato chips that came with it. Jimmy John's makes a truly excellent kettle chip. I think we've all been napping on these. Even if you have no use for a wrap.

Calories: 910Total Fat: 55 gSaturated Fat: 13 gCholesterol: 95 gSodium: 2390 mgCarbohydrates: 90 g

Calories: 820Total Fat: 44 gSaturated Fat: 13 gCholesterol: 95 gSodium: 2080 mgCarbohydrates: 66 g