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Tijuana, Mexico, is the unlikely birthplace of the Caesar salad. And the search for salad may be about the least-common reason to cross the border from San Diego and stroll down Avenida Revolución, the brash, crowded thoroughfare that isn't just tacky, but rundown, and, in daylight, quite simply ugly.

Caesar's Sports Bar & Grill Family Restaurant is a dim, narrow place to the side of the aging Hotel Caesar. Six half-moon booths run along a mirrored wall and face a long wooden bar, above which hovers a bank of TV screens airing Latin music videos. It was here, back in 1924, that Alex Cardini first prepared the famed dish.

A version of that original recipe was prepared for me from a table-side cart. The waiter's technique was meticulous, his precision mesmerizing. He had clearly done it many times before.

He started by placing anchovies, lemon juice, and diced garlic into an oversized wooden bowl and mashing them with a fork into a smooth paste. Oil and red-wine vinegar were mixed in next.

I immediately began asking him about the salad's invention. When was it? What were the original ingredients? Did it include anchovies? What was the occasion? I had heard wildly different answers to all of these.

Shaking out a coddled egg into a bowl, he looked up, exasperated with my queries, and referred me to the manager.

Meanwhile, he added a dab of mustard no bigger than a pearl, a healthy amount of Worcestershire sauce, and grated Parmesan cheese, and then mixed them thoroughly before ladling freshly baked croutons into the bowl.

Last he added whole leaves of trimmed romaine lettuce, patiently turning them over and over in the mixture, and then carefully laid them on the plate, overlapping the leaves.

The salad was good, the diverse flavors smoothed into an even, potent dressing.

Once I finished eating, the manager and guardian of the historic flame, Jorge Chávez, sat down with me and patiently explained in Spanish the straight story of the salad and the history of its creation.

Alex Cardini was an Italian Air Force pilot living in exile in Tijuana. He ran a small restaurant next to an equally small hostel. One day he was visited by some Italian Air Force friends who wanted something to snack on. "In those days, provisions were hard to get," Mr. Chávez told me. "Mexico City was a long ways away."

So Mr. Cardini tossed together a salad with what he had? Well, not quite. In Cardini's kitchen worked an old aunt of his. "Really, she is the one who invented it!" Chávez says, laughing.

Perhaps the most common misconception about salad's lore is the role of anchovies. "In those days, Cardini smoothed the anchovies into a paste and spread it on the croutons," Chávez said. Cardini's grandson confirmed this to him in 1998.

The salad became popular, and in the early days, it didn't have a name. People simply said, "I'll have that salad." It was eventually named after the hotel.

Those were Tijuana's glory years. Many crossed the border to gamble and drink, illegal activities in California. They sat at the world's longest bar, 550 feet long and open 24 hours a day, and bet on horses at the Hipodromo de Agua Caliente.

The hotel was remodeled. The original 16 rooms then became the luxurious Hotel Caesar.