Larry David Had His Real-Life Big Salad Moment During The Filming Of Seinfeld

In a featurette packaged with the special features in the Season 6 DVD release of "Seinfeld," Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld explained the true story of the big salad incident. Apparently, David asked editor Janet Ashikaga if she wanted him to get her anything while he was going out to get something to eat. Seinfeld's assistant, Carol, ended up handing the salad to Ashikaga, and thus Carol got credit for it. "And I thought, you know, I bought the damn salad," David said in the interview, dripping with bitterness.

FoundationINTERVIEWS caught up with Ashikaga in 2014, and she gave her side of the now infamous story. According to her, it was Carol Leifer, one of the show's writers and story editors, who took credit for the salad. This slightly contradicts Seinfeld's version of the story, as IMDb seems to suggest it was his assistant, Carol Brown. It's unclear which person got their Carols mixed up. 

According to Ashikaga, David never directly addressed her about the salad, but as soon as she saw the dailies for the episode she got up and walked to David's office and said "Thank you for the salad, Larry." Ashikaga went on to talk about how this was proof to her that "Larry was always thinking story," and that anything that happened could potentially become an episode. Thankfully, the real-life version of the story ended pretty tamely, and doesn't seem to have ended in any breakups.