Review: El Pollo Loco - Chicken Tostada Salad

El Pollo Loco Chicken Tostada Salad comes in a large fried tortilla "bowl." The salad itself consists of a bed of Romaine lettuce blend (mostly iceberg lettuce), cheese, chunks of white meat flame-grilled chicken, pico de gallo, cilantro, and sour cream with a creamy cilantro dressing on the side.

The salad goes for $5.29.

As far as salads go, this one is rather plain, but comes in a good size. Enough to share for the light eater (i.e. me).

The tostada part (i.e. the tortilla) was pretty stale, oily, and not worth the calories, unless you get a freshly fried one (and maybe not even then).

The chicken comes in fairly-sizeable chunks, but was a bit dry and I wouldn't say plentiful.

A lot of the dish's flavor comes from the pico de gallo as most of the ingredients were rather muted.

I like the creamy cilantro dressing, it had an astringency from the cilantro and was cool and refreshing. Like the rest of the salad though, it didn't impart any strong flavors.

As it's served, El Pollo Loco's Chicken Tostada Salad is a bit on the bland and uninteresting side. If you get it, I'd recommend raiding their salsa bar to add some much needed flavors to the salad.

If you're trying to eat healthier, you'll probably want to go without the shell (430 calories and 29 grams of fat) and with limited or no dressing.

Nutritional Info - El Pollo Loco Chicken Tostada Salad - no dressing (17.3 oz)
Calories - 860 (from Fat - 300)
Fat - 42g (Saturated Fat - 11g)
Sodium - 143mg
Carbs - 77g (Sugar - 5g)
Protein - 41g

Nutritional Info - El Pollo Loco Creamy Cilantro Dressing (1.3 oz)
Calories - 190 (from Fat - 180)
Fat - 20g (Saturated Fat - 3g)
Sodium - 260mg
Carbs - 1g (Sugar - 1g)
Protein - 1g