Why are salad bars so splendidly attractive? Who would have ever thought there would be fast-food chains dedicated to the salad bar? Restaurants happily set aside real estate where they could have placed tables and more guests, but no, they install a salad bar instead.
A salad is no longer boring
The answer lies in how interesting salads have become. Gone are the days of two sad lettuce leaves, a tomato which tastes of water and a dollop of a creamy looking sauce that frankly could be anything.
Now the refrigerated salad bar has opened up a cornucopia of delight. Even the lettuce comes in a variety of flavors and types. Tomatoes now come in various shapes and sizes and manage to taste like a real tomato not a cardboard slice of something red. And as for the dressings, there are more of those than your grandma imagined.
A salad is both filling and easy
Here’s one of the reasons restaurants like a salad bar. People fill up on them and they are full of lovely items which are relatively inexpensive compared with the proteins of main meal dishes. When a restaurant is trying to increase the value of each plate, having a side plate which fills people up allows them to balance the cost to them vs. the value to us.
Does it matter?
Probably not! We love salad. When you say I am having salad for lunch, you can almost guarantee the picture in your head is different from the picture in mine since there is such choice available.
Long live salad! Agreed. If you want a way to get vitamins and minerals it is probably about the best way possible and you can always add chicken and pile it high with cheese too. There’s nothing more attractive than well-dressed salad.
