Pickle Chicken Salad Just Took Over the Lunch Menu, and Molly Baz Is Behind It
Chicken salad has had plenty of lunchtime identities: sandwich filling, cracker companion, lettuce-cup staple. Now it has a dill-pickle era, complete with a national restaurant rollout. Sweetgreen has teamed up with cookbook author and recipe developer Molly Baz on three limited-time orders built around her pickle-forward chicken salad. The menu arrived September 29 and is scheduled to stay through November 9 at Sweetgreen restaurants.
This is not a brand-new idea dreamed up for a marketing campaign. Home cooks have made versions of dill pickle chicken salad for years, drawn to the mix of creamy dressing, tender chicken, and crunchy, tangy pickles. What makes this launch noteworthy is that Sweetgreen has put chicken salad on its menu for the first time, and made it the centerpiece of three different lunches.
A Pickle-Packed Lunch Has Arrived
Baz is Sweetgreen’s first Chef in Residence, and the collaboration leans into her enthusiasm for bold, deli-inspired flavors. Each new order features her “dilly dill pickle chicken salad,” made with Dill Pickle Mayo from Ayoh, the mayonnaise brand she founded. Sweetgreen calls its accompanying campaign “Lunch Means Business,” a playful pitch for giving the midday meal more attention. The chicken salad, however, is doing the practical work: it is the ingredient shared by all three orders.
“I’m on a mission to put an end to boring sandwiches and sad lunches, and that includes wraps!” Baz said in Sweetgreen’s announcement. She described the menu as three takes on Caesar salad, each with “a big scoop of dilly chicken salad” featuring her pickle mayonnaise. The line makes her position clear: a workday lunch can be convenient without tasting like an afterthought.
Sweetgreen chief commercial officer Zipporah Allen said they chose Baz for her distinct approach to flavor. “Molly approaches food with curiosity, conviction and a very clear point of view on what makes something delicious,” Allen said. She described the resulting menu as “thoughtfully made and anything but basic.” According to Allen, Baz is the first of several voices Sweetgreen plans to feature through its new Chef Residency.
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Three Ways to Order It
The most loaded choice is Molly’s Big Dill Caesar Wrap. It combines Baz’s chicken salad with romaine, fresh dill, Parmesan, pickled red onion, spicy broccoli, garlic breadcrumbs, lemon, Caesar dressing, Ayoh Dill Pickle Mayo, and a pickle spear, all inside Sweetgreen’s olive oil tortilla. This wrap makes no attempt to hide its pickle allegiance. If you want the chicken salad alongside plenty of greens and crunch, this is the most portable of the three options.
Molly’s Pickle Caesar Salad takes the idea out of the tortilla and presents it as a salad. It features the chicken salad, fresh dill, Parmesan, pickled red onion, spicy broccoli, garlic breadcrumbs, lemon, Caesar dressing, and a pickle spear. The shared ingredients mean the choice between the wrap and salad largely comes down to how you want to eat lunch. Both pair creamy chicken salad with crisp, acidic additions rather than serving it alone.
Then there is Molly’s Double Chick Scoop, the straightforward option: two scoops of the dill-forward chicken salad with a pickle spear on the side. Sweetgreen has not released a full recipe for the chicken salad, so no verified ingredient list exists beyond what the company has shared. It has confirmed the use of Ayoh Dill Pickle Mayo, but a homemade version found online should not be presented as Baz’s restaurant formula.
Customers can order the limited-time items in a restaurant, through Sweetgreen’s app or on its website. The company says the menu will be available at all its restaurants through November 9. That gives pickle fans several weeks to settle the important lunch question: wrap, salad or double scoop?
Why the Idea Works at Home
The appeal of pickle chicken salad is easy to understand even if Sweetgreen is nowhere near your lunch plans. Pickles bring acidity and crunch to a dish usually known for its creamy texture, while dill adds a fresh, savory note. In recipe developer Jessica Merchant’s 2022 version for How Sweet Eats, cooked shredded chicken and chopped dill pickles meet red onion, Greek yogurt, mayonnaise, sweet relish, Dijon mustard, and herbs. Merchant suggests serving it on sandwiches, with crackers, in lettuce cups, or over a salad.
Merchant also explains why she chops the dill pickles instead of relying only on relish: the larger pieces provide more texture. That small detail gets to the heart of the dish. Pickle chicken salad is not merely chicken salad with a hint of brine stirred in; the pickles are meant to show up in the bite. Her recipe is one established way to make it at home, not a recreation of Sweetgreen’s unreleased version.
Baz’s launch gives that familiar home-lunch idea a louder, restaurant-sized stage. Whether served in a Caesar wrap, piled onto a salad or scooped beside a pickle spear, the attraction is the same: creamy chicken salad with enough tang and crunch to keep lunch interesting. For once, the pickle is not an optional garnish that gets pushed aside. It has the starring role.
