Some of you may have read how nervous making salads at salad bars makes me – it’s just so much pressure and there are so many ingredients. I ended up making a cheat sheet that I could take along with me for reference. It lists all the basic types of salad and what’s in them. Even just making the list helped, I now have a better idea of which ingredients go together and which ones don’t.
My trick is to walk into the cafe thinking about one key ingredient and then build the salad around that, whether it be mozzarella cheese (think caprese salad) or ham (think chef salad). Take a look at the salad I made yesterday with spinach, strawberries, walnuts, blue cheese crumbles, tofu, and raspberry vinagarette dressing. It was pretty awesome.
Think about what a great idea this could be for a party. Just create your own salad bar and have guests go crazy. Doesn’t sound like a bad idea for a summer party, huh? You just have to figure out how to not end up with a million random leftovers…
Also, just when I finally thought I was getting the hang of this concept, I realized this concept applies to almost everything in these cafes. Like the pasta. My co-workers thought I was crazy when I asked them if I could take pictures of their pastas, but look how many options they came up with between three of them!
Beth’s pasta
Drew’s Pasta
Brian’s pasta
Which pasta option looks best to you?
