salads unlimited

These are, indeed, the "salad days"—not in the Shakespearian sense of youth and inexperience (from Anthony and Cleopatra), but in the McDonald's sense of bigger, better, anything goes-in-the-way-of-ingredients. From school cafeterias to executive boardrooms, customers are choosing salads as a side dish before, along with, or following the main course. It's fun, it's healthy, and the limitless variety of ingredients, toppings and dressings all but eliminate the boredom factor.

Exec. chef Kathryn Wayler serves an average of 40 lunches daily in the executive dining room at New York City–based U.S. Trust Co. She also provides room service meals as well as cold buffets that include salads. From her perspective, salad sales are solid and on the rise.

Gado Gado grabs sales: "The newest and very popular buffet addition is mesclun which is available daily, tossed with tofu and baby vegetables—the customers simply add their choice of dressing. Equally popular is watercress, endive and orange salad with sesame honey dressing. In addition to standards such as chef salad, Cobb salad and Caesar—with or without grilled chicken—we also do a lot of international recipes such as Gado Gado, an Indonesian cabbage salad with spicy peanut dressing. Ingredients include green cabbage, carrots, chilies, lime and peanut dressing," she explains.

By adding Prosciutto de Parma—heated to crisp—Wayler enlivens a simple tri-color salad of radicchio, arugula, endive and frize. Fresh Florida tomatoes as well as Israeli vine-ripe tomatoes often dress the plate. Fruit salads generally include blueberries (year round) from Ecuador, Chile, Maine, Michigan and California, and have become a Wayler signature.

No promo necessary: "There's no need for displays or promos on salads—they don't need a push. People are just eating lots of them including Israeli couscous salad with chick peas, eggplant, roasted red peppers and cumin vinaigrette," she points out. "Vegetable salads are more popular as composed salads or sides and fruit salads as dessert. Here, fruit salads are often served with homemade fruit sorbet, yogurt or cottage cheese."

In preparing daily selections for the all-you-can-eat salad bar at Claremont (CA) McKenna College, a Bon Appetit Mgmt. Co. account serving approx. 675 co-ed students on meal plan, exec. chef Frank Liddi and his staff take no shortcuts.

"Bon Appetit has a program called 'Circle of Responsibility,' which focuses on three major areas: our environment, our community and our well-being. We do everything from-scratch, every day. Our crew all help each other out, so we have no increase in labor costs with our salad program," he explains. "Kids today are much more aware of food trends and more healthful eating and they know what each of the different salads are, such as hearts of Romaine, mesclun, endive, arugula, etc.," he adds.

Liddi reports that today's students are balancing a lot more salad consumption with their burgers, pizzas and french fries. In fact, "seconds" may be a salad after the pizza or vice versa. Roasted vegetables—especially organics—are an in-vogue ingredient today and organic mesclun greens are a salad bar staple as well. In addition, dried cranberries, sunflower seeds, shaved Parmesan, fresh green beans, squash, zucchini, mushrooms, organic carrots, fresh multi-colored peppers, etc., fill out the bulk of one side of the bar, with diced and whole fruit on the other. Selections typically include kiwi, blood oranges, organic clementines, tangerines, pineapple, melons, cherries, blackberries, etc.

Balanced choices: "Students often take a little fruit and a little of the vegetables plus there are three mixes daily: fresh mesclun salad, baby spinach and a Romaine/iceberg mix. They choose whatever toppings they want—fresh bacon, blue cheese, mushrooms, radishes, red onion, etc. In addition, we have dolphin-free tuna salad ready-to-go and, occasionally, chicken or egg salad."

Providing still more choices, there are four "special" salads of the day. These may include a low-fat option such as couscous plus vegetables; vegan Italian-style potato salad; one with a protein component such as mango chicken salad; and a vegetarian selection such as wheatberries with feta cheese, Liddi points out.

Three junior high schools and one senior high in the Clovis (NM) Municipal School District offer a daily salad bar where approx. 90 students out of the 400 lunchtime customers generally come to "graze," according to fsd Judy Abernathy. Traditional selections include lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, celery, broccoli, cucumbers, olives and pickles plus a variety of fruit and toppings.

It's part of lunch: "Salads are offered in conjunction with the main entree: one day they might have a baked potato plus the salad bar, or an egg roll, rice and a vegetable medley plus the salad bar. It's offered as a selection as part of lunch," Abernathy reports.

Three prepared (i.e., purchased) salads—potato, ham and macaroni salad—are always on the bar. The schools also prepare broccoli and cauliflower salad with plain salad dressing, as well as pea salad, a combo of American cheese cubes, celery and frozen (defrosted) fresh peas with dressing. Of course, a fruit salad of strawberries, grapes and watermelon is a kid favorite.

"On occasion, to speed prep, we'll buy carrot and celery sticks, but our labor costs are outweighed by student participation. Kids today are more in tune to eating healthful foods, therefore our salads go over well," Abernathy contends.