I love salad but there need to be rules. Salad should never be squashed in with hot food (e.g., in burgers); must never be dressed with anything from a bottle; and salad must never be served buffet style. Oh, and if it’s warm it’s quite simply not salad.
For this reason, today I am speaking out against the horror story that is the salad bar. Landing after a very long flight from London to Melbourne, I was looking forward to dinner with my hosts who promised me ‘a real treat at a gorgeous restaurant you will love’. But their email also informed me that we would be going to a vegan, raw food place, heavy on the avocados, and with a no onion or garlic section for those adhering to the plant-based Jain diet that excludes roots and underground vegetables. A note on the menu informed diners that there would be no dressings served at this hellhole because ‘we prefer our prize, organic ingredients to remain naked and unsullied’. No.
What makes food attractive is the dressing. Vinaigrette on a salad and clothing on a human: same principle
Food is like the human body in this respect: what makes it attractive is the dressing. Vinaigrette on a salad and clothing on a human: same principle. There were many controversies around this summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, and one was that the food was not up to scratch. Well, that’s what I surmised from swimmer Adam Peaty’s claim that there were worms in some of the food on offer. But for me, one of the most grotesque details about the Olympics’ culinary offering is that there is a salad bar to choose from.
Salad bars are a crime against humanity and should have been abolished in the 1970s. Buffet food in general is terrible but the worst offenders are those cold, bland salad offerings left out for germs and insects to accumulate on while people slowly wander by, digging half-heartedly into the sweetcorn flakes that have bits of green pepper accidentally floating on top, and with the corn bearing beetroot stains after someone has poked at it with the wrong tongs. Everyone involved in this nightmare should be arrested.
Chef Yotam Ottolenghi is one of those who has tried to revive the notion of salad selections in his restaurants and delis. But the difference is that, I imagine, his salads are kept hygienically packed away, and not dragged out day after day until someone finally bites, unlike that little café on the corner of the main road that you avoid where the salads look deflated.
There’s also a modern take on the salad bar in places such as the Tossed chain (as an aside, why would a food outlet adopt a name that sounds like a porn channel?). These places just shove loads of different things, although primarily chunks of broccoli and beetroot, into a plastic bowl alongside some bland chicken and bottled tahini, and try to make customers believe they’re having a nutritious lunch.
But the salad bar is really threatening to make a comeback in restaurants, mainly because the profit margins are so big. Salad bar staples include huge chunks of tasteless tomato, massive cauliflower florets, croutons and major pieces of peppers. These might be the sort of thing which you pick out of your food from cheap Chinese restaurants in Soho, but they take up a lot of space on the plate in restaurants and therefore are a real money-spinner for the number crunchers. A lot of these ingredients are also bought pre-prepared from factories, such as ready crisped onions, and big old chunks of flavourless pumpkin and courgette, a practice that defeats the claim that the average salad bar heaves with fresh and healthy food.
A few years ago I got chatting to a man who was very high up in Pizza Hut. He was telling me about how profitable their salad bar was, and that one of his customers’ favourite items was the grated raw carrot. He told me he was thinking of adding bacon bits and tortilla chips to the mix because he reckoned they would fly. Good grief.
Back in the bad old days before decent restaurants were rolled out across the country, my friends and I would play a game in which we would guess the worst ingredient on the salad bar. For me it was always iceberg lettuce, which is never welcome on my plate. While my friends would choose items ranging from the pitted black olives that taste like bits of old car tyre, to the twirls of pasta in an industrial tomato and vegetable oil dressing. A fierce competitor was the cold rice salad, which always consisted of bits of tinned sweetcorn, chopped peppers, raw spring onion and, shiver, tiny pieces of watery tomato.
There wasn’t much good to say about the Covid pandemic but it did shut down the salad bars for a time. It was finally recognised that not only is this method of serving food inherently unhygienic, but it was also a concern (wrongly, as it turned out) that they could be receptacles for spreading the virus. The new kids on the block may well be dominated by quinoa, seasoned with za’atar, and protected by enough plastic to keep the germs from invading, but nothing will convince me the salad bar should live to see another day.
Comments