I have been obsessed with this salad for YEARS. It is a copycat recipe of the “Seasonal Goat Salad” they have at Mendocino Farms, one of my favorite lunch spots. It has a mix of greens and torn fresh mint. It’s topped with orange segments, tender rotisserie chicken, sliced fennel and pickled onions, and crushed honey-roasted almonds. Then you add a huge scoop of herbed goat cheese that melts into the salad, and douse the whole thing in hot honey and balsamic vinaigrette. IT’S. INCREDIBLE. I can’t stop.

A colorful salad bowl with sliced grilled chicken, orange segments, mixed greens, pickled onions, cheese, nuts, and fresh herbs, served with a small jug of dressing and a bowl of orange slices nearby.

WHEW! Are you, too, feeling like you are whirling around on a merry-go-round of summertime craziness?? I barely know what month it is, let alone what day of the week it is. We live in a world of swimsuits-all-day, constant snacking (lunch? What’s that? I think I’ll eat this entire bag of chips now), and sleeping in late (I am learning, actually, just HOW late a 15-year-old can sleep. It’s impressive, honestly.)

The whole thing has been insane and SO much fun. Eric and I went to Italy with our best friends (where we made plans to retire in Florence and be street artists, of course), and we had a family reunion in Colorado where we celebrated my mom’s birthday and all 30 of us got tattoos of my mom’s face:

A large group of people, young and old, gather indoors, smiling and posing closely together, some showing off matching temporary tattoos on their arms, creating a lively and joyful atmosphere.

(I’m on the left, pointing at my face tattoo 😂 but my dad wins with the neck tat I think)

Then my daughter Charlotte and I went to “Girls Camp” like we do every summer. It’s a church camp with about 200 girls and staff, and we sing crazy songs and swim in the lake and talk about Jesus. If you’ve ever seen the Parent Trap, it reminds me of that camp!

A hand pours dark dressing over a salad bowl with grilled chicken, greens, red onions, orange slices, nuts, and a cheese-topped ball on a woven mat.

I was a counselor this year and slept upstairs in Charlotte’s cabin, with about 15 girls downstairs. One night, we stayed up late playing cards and eating contraband candy. I finally went to bed but the girls were just getting started, setting up a braid-train.

I was almost asleep when suddenly the ENTIRE cabin started shaking. An insanely loud banging noise was coming from downstairs. It felt like a giant was pounding on the entire structure with a club. The other adult counselor called down to the girls and the noise stopped, and I drifted off to sleep.

The next day I asked Charlotte, what on earth was that noise? She said casually, “Oh yeah, Claire was showing us her tap dance routine.” It was 1:30 in the morning. Yup, that pretty much sums up girls camp, haha!

A salad bowl with sliced grilled chicken, mixed greens, orange segments, red onions, nuts, seeds, and a scoop of herb butter, all drizzled with dressing.

The Seasonal Goat copycat

Have you ever been to Mendocino Farms? It’s a salad and sandwich restaurant that I love. They have locations mostly on the west coast (and also Illinois and Texas, I just checked).

I’m utterly obsessed with their “Seasonal GOAT Salad” as they call it. I try to order other things, but I hardly ever do, even though they have a phenomenal menu. There is just something magically fresh about this salad that gets me every time.

Fresh mint. 3 types of salad greens. Chopped honey roasted almonds. Fresh whole orange segments. Tender rotisserie chicken. Sliced fennel and Pickled Onions. An ice-cream-scoop size ball of softened herb goat cheese!! And the whole thing is topped with not just Balsamic Vinaigrette, but hot honey too, for the perfect little kick. This combination might sound odd to you at first but I’m telling you.

I really struggled with what to call this salad. There are so many ingredients that are important!! I can see why Mendocino’s just shortens it to “The Seasonal Goat.” It’s like that part on Princess Bride when Inigo has just awoken the mostly-dead Wesley: “Lut me ‘splain…No, there eez too much. Lut me sum up.” 😂

A close-up of a vibrant salad with sliced chicken, orange segments, goat cheese, pickled onions, fennel, kale, nuts, and fresh mint leaves.

Make it a party

The thing about a salad at a restaurant is that they are making orders on a grand scale, so it’s easy to serve a salad with 12 ingredients. They already have all the kale chopped for all their salads that require kale, etc.

At home, it’s a little less practical. That’s why I love putting this salad together as a team with the family. Or it would be fun to throw it together with friends for a dinner party. One team handles slicing the rotisserie chicken and segmenting the oranges, another team chops the nuts and slices fennel, etc. The end result is intensely satisfying, especially when the weather is hot.

A close-up of a fork holding a bite of salad with grilled chicken, orange slices, kale, pickled red onions, and creamy dressing. Other salad ingredients are visible in the background.

Important ingredients

There are a few ingredients that make this salad next level. Let’s go over them!

Fennel, the whole fresh bulb! Fresh fennel is not something I have EVER bought and sliced myself. It was so easy, and so good! Fennel has such a unique flavor. It’s light and almost licorice-like (anise-licorice, not like the candy). It’s got a crunch similar to celery. And I can keep describing it to you, but the best thing to do is to just try it and DO NOT skip it. It totally makes the whole salad!
Navel Orange Slices burst with citrus-y goodness and make your heart want to sing a summer song. And the flavor is a match made in heaven with the fennel, trust me. In the summer, Mendocino’s offers this salad with fresh peaches in place of the orange segments. This should only be done if your peaches are fresh and ripe. When the peaches are perfect, it’s an incredible swap, but I don’t recommend it if you have underripe peaches.
When you want cheese to really pack a punch, Herb Crusted Goat Cheese is the crown jewel of this salad. We are softening it and thinning it with a little cream or milk, so that it melts into the salad and becomes part of the dressing. Sometimes when I am counting calories, I don’t even add the balsamic vinaigrette on my salad, because the goat cheese does such an amazing job.
Mint leaves! Hear me out! Mint is bright, aromatic, and adds great contrast to everything else going on in this salad. I promise, you’ll love it.

How to make it

Here is everything you need to make this salad! I know it looks like a lot but it’s really not too hard, especially if you have help.

A variety of fresh ingredients including kale, romaine, fennel, oranges, mint, blue cheese, rotisserie chicken, pickled onions, hot honey, and almonds, arranged on a white surface.

This salad serves 4. You might look at this amount of goat cheese and think, no way are 4 people going to eat all that. JUST YOU WAIT

Two images: Top—hand holding a bowl with two rolls of herb-coated goat cheese. Bottom—herb-coated goat cheese being mixed with a spatula in the same bowl on a wooden surface.

You have to let the goat cheese sit out to soften a bit, so that it melts into the salad. Add in a couple tablespoons of milk or half and half to make it even creamier. This is the BEST part of the salad, don’t skip it! The cheese is not meant to be chunky or chalky. It should be soft and creamy.

Two images: The first shows cream being poured into a bowl of herbed mixture with a spatula. The second shows the mixture after being blended, now smooth and creamy, with the same spatula resting in the bowl.

There is some chopping to do! I prefer to chop my own kale, because the pre-chopped stuff doesn’t have stems removed, and those stems are thiccc. I slice out the stems and then chop up the kale.

Two photos: the top shows kale being sliced on a wooden cutting board; the bottom shows a hand holding a pile of freshly chopped kale next to a large knife.

Then chop up the romaine. If you want to buy a bag of chopped romaine, that makes it even easier!

Two images of chopped romaine lettuce on a wooden cutting board. The top image shows larger pieces, while the bottom image shows lettuce chopped into smaller pieces. A knife is partially visible on the right.

And then the mint. We are going for TORN mint pieces here. I actually forgot to take a picture, so sorry. But don’t bother with chopping it. Just tear off the leaves and maybe tear or chop each leaf in half, and call it good.

A bunch of fresh mint leaves tied with a rubber band is placed on a wooden cutting board, with a bowl of leafy greens in the background on a marble countertop.

This was my first time working with fennel! (Do you believe me when I say Food Charlatan??) I was so delighted with this process. The aroma of fennel is SO strong and downright enticing. If you are dubious, try it at least once!

A hand holds a sliced fennel bulb above a cutting board with a knife nearby. Below, thin fennel slices are shown next to more unsliced fennel.

The thinner you can slice fennel, the better. It can be overwhelming in large chunks, so thin slices are best.

A close-up of a knife slicing a fennel bulb on a wooden cutting board, with thin fennel slices scattered below.

I like to use my food processor to chop the almonds, but a knife works fine too. I really love the “almond dust” that the food processor creates: there are some big chunks of nut, but there is also a whole lot that gets completely pulverized, and this goodness gets tossed all throughout the salad.

A food processor with whole almonds and sugar in the top image, and the almonds chopped into coarse pieces in the bottom image.

You can use any cooked chicken you like for this salad. I like to use a rotisserie chicken. Skin the breasts and slice them thin against the grain, like this.

Sliced roasted turkey breast on a wooden cutting board with a knife, showing juicy white meat and crispy brown skin.

Now slice up the oranges! Here is how I do it:

A knife slices the peel off an orange on a wooden cutting board; the orange is being peeled in sections, with slices of peel set aside.

They are so pretty, right??

Two images show an orange being sliced on a wooden cutting board. In the first, a knife cuts off the peel. In the second, the peeled orange is being sliced into segments.

I just posted this recipe for balsamic vinaigrette a couple weeks ago, and I made it specifically to match perfectly with this salad. I’ve been putting it on EVERYTHING lately.

A close-up of a ceramic pitcher filled with brown vinaigrette dressing, with a wooden spoon resting inside. Fresh green leafy vegetables are blurred in the background.

Add a sample of all the greens and fennel to a serving plate:

Two images of a green salad in a white bowl: the first with sliced onions and mint leaves on top, the second with brown salad dressing being poured over the greens.

And toss with the vinaigrette.

Top: A bowl of mixed green salad. Bottom: A salad bowl with greens, sliced grilled chicken, orange segments, pickled onions, and herbs, arranged on a woven placemat.

Add all the goods on top of the dressed salad.

Then, the kicker: Use an ice cream scoop to add a huge dollop of softened herbed goat cheese.

A hand scoops herbed cheese in the top image. The bottom image shows a salad with greens, orange slices, chicken, pickled onions, and a scoop of herbed cheese in a white bowl.

Just look at this beauty! We’re not done! Add on the crushed almonds. A full 1/4 cup per serving! I’m showing it in the measuring cup so that you know I mean business. The crunchy almonds add SO much, don’t just add on a tiny amount. We need that magical almond dust!

Two bowls of salad with greens, sliced chicken, orange chunks, pickled onions, and a scoop of cheese; chopped nuts are being sprinkled on top in the first image. The colorful ingredients are neatly arranged.

And finally, top the whole thing with hot spicy honey.

A honey dipper drizzles honey from a glass bowl onto a fresh salad topped with cheese, greens, nuts, and pickled onions.

Then, add even MORE balsamic vinaigrette on top, toss it all together, and devour!! Summer at it’s finest!

A colorful salad bowl with sliced chicken, orange segments, pickled onions, mixed greens, sliced fennel, nuts, and a dollop of creamy dressing, garnished with fresh herbs.

How to store leftovers

If you don’t think the whole salad will be eaten in one sitting, it’s best to keep the items separate and add them per plate, that way you can store them separately as well. Put the salad mix, orange slices, goat cheese, chicken, pickled onions, and dressing in their own containers and store in the refrigerator for about 3-4 days. After that the ingredients may get a little limp and sad. Any unused almonds can be stored in a ziplock bag or small tupperware on the counter for a few weeks. To eat leftovers, start with the salad base, add all the toppings you want, and devour!

The only part of this salad that will work well for freezing is the chicken!

A vibrant salad bowl with orange slices, grilled chicken, pickled onions, nuts, greens, goat cheese, and dark dressing, surrounded by extra pickled onions and citrus in small bowls.

More salads that are a meal

As a kid I never fully appreciated salad as a meal. Now I love it! A good salad meal is light, fresh, and has enough going on (and enough protein) to keep you fully satisfied. Here are some that my family and I eat regularly!