Would you pay $36 for a salad?

$25 -- Chopped chicken salad at Fred's.

$25 — Chopped chicken salad at Fred’s. (jonathan beskin)

$31 -- Cobb salad at '21' Club.

$31 — Cobb salad at ’21’ Club. (Colin Douglas Gray)

$55 — Lobster-and-black-truffle salad at the Four Seasons (jonathan baskin)

When it comes to luxury salads, it’s hard to top the $36 Cobb at Michael’s. The leafy mix is a best-selling menu item at the media elite’s clubby cafeteria in Midtown — despite the fact that the fanciest protein it contains is chicken.

“It’s insanity!” says 28-year-old public relations consultant Erin Ward, who was recently on line at a Midtown salad bar. “You’re not paying for the food at that point. You’re paying for the name.”

Indeed, a salad with similar ingredients — diced chicken breast, bacon, blue cheese, hard-boiled egg, avocado, tomato and baby greens — from run-of-the-mill takeout joint Café Metro costs just $9.57 with tax.

And yet some New Yorkers are willing to pay even more green for their greens. Now that summer’s officially here, the city’s most exclusive restaurants are awash in exorbitantly priced rabbit food. The luxe leaves are selling so well that chefs are staffing up the garde manger cold station just to meet the warm-weather demand.

Call them “status salads” — among them the $55 lobster-and-black-truffle salad at the consummate Midtown power lunch spot Four Seasons and the $25 chopped chicken salad at Fred’s at Barneys.

All of which begs the question: How much can you get away with charging for a salad?

“It depends on what’s in it and where you’re eating it,” says guidebook CEO Tim Zagat.

C’mon, out with a number!

“$100 — if you sprinkle enough caviar on top,” he replies.

That artfully plated $55 lobster-and-black- truffle salad at the Four Seasons ­— with a sculptured village of seasonal vegetables — is certainly selling well. When it was a special last week, the titans of industry who gather in the Grill Room gobbled up 30 of them in a single day.

But the popularity of double-digit salads isn’t just about the ingredients, it’s the swank surroundings.

Unlike Michael’s, Café Metro doesn’t have art by David Hockney on its walls, Christofle silver on its tables and actor Michael Douglas lunching with the powerful, Gekko-esque Henry Kravis a couple of seats over. And let’s not forget the impressive size of the Michael’s salad.

“The more you eat it, the bigger it gets,” media guru Joe Armstrong, former publisher of such titles as Rolling Stone and Saveur, says of the designer Cobb. Densely packed into a ring, it’s deceptively big — prompting some regulars to order a half-portion for $18.

“It’s the best rabbit food I’ve ever had,” adds Armstrong, who has been known as “The Mayor of Michael’s” ever since The Post famously photographed him lunching there with Bill Clinton, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Diane Sawyer and Ann Richards, among others, back in 2002.

Also fans: Douglas and wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, Vogue publisher Susan Plagemann and actress Renée Zellweger, who, like so many devotees, has her own bespoke version (subbing in salmon and spinach, chopped very fine).

As it turns out, New Yorkers are fiercely loyal to their status salads.

“It’s my death-row salad,” says p.r. maven Diana Biederman of the famous Gotham Salad at Bergdorf Goodman. Currently served in the department store’s swanky seventh-floor restaurant BG, it combines diced chicken breast, ham, gruyère, tomatoes, bacon, beets, hard-boiled egg, lettuce and Thousand Island dressing.

Price tag: $25.

Admittedly, it was cheaper back in the ’80s, when Biederman first got hooked. At the time, she was making $6.25 an hour as a salesgirl at Laura Ashley, scrimping and saving just to indulge every few months.

“Since they’ve gone fancy, it’s a little overpriced,” she concedes.

Still, die-hard dieters maintain their salads amount to much more than mere washing and assembling.

“All that meticulous chopping — it would take me an insane amount of time to make,” says Biederman.

‘21’ executive chef John Greeley, who serves a $31 Cobb salad complete with quail eggs and artisanal bacon, agrees. “Each vegetable is cut in a certain way to enhance texture and flavor,” he says. (Note to the hoi polloi: The Cobb will appear as an appetizer on the Summer Restaurant Week menu — three lunch courses for $24.07!)

According to defenders of double-digit salads, the brawny entree-size bowls offer a fairly priced fine-dining meal — especially since they’re so sizable, they’re frequently eaten without an appetizer.

And then there is the simple matter of setting. After all, the pricey greens are often just a civilized pretext for wheeling and dealing.

“If I’m having a business lunch, obviously I’m not taking them to Dishes,” says ‘21’ regular Alexandra Lebenthal, referring to the East 45th Street assembly-line salad spot she occasionally frequents.

The CEO of financial firm Lebenthal & Co. and author of the forthcoming novel “Recessionistas,” Lebenthal is something of a salad connoisseur. In addition to regularly nibbling on the Cobb at ‘21’ (hold the blue cheese), she’s also a fan of the $25 chopped chicken salad — a mix of shredded chicken, avocado, onion, tomato, pears and bibb lettuce tossed in a Dijon mustard-balsamic vinaigrette — at fashionista-friendly Madison Avenue eatery Fred’s.

“At the end of the day, is there anything as satisfying as a salad — except maybe chocolate cake?” she muses.

Still, she’s a bit surprised when told the ‘21’ Cobb salad costs $31.

“I actually never looked at the price,” she laughs.

So, what’s the most she’d pay for a salad?

“$32.”

And what will she do if ‘21’ raises the price?

“Hopefully they’ll grandfather me in,” she says. “I’m a longtime customer.”

carla.spartos@nypost.com

— Additional reporting by David Moss