Salad Days, Part II

Well, it’s been a couple of months since I started work at the Café, and, truly told, I’m ready for my tenure there to be done. It is a nice enough place to work—it’s just these 50-60 hour work weeks don’t agree with me. I am one tired blogger, that’s for sure. It is a stressful work environment, and sometimes entitled students at the end of the day is just too much for one girl. I have, in the meantime, made some friends and learned a little more about a different facet of the service industry. And I’ve certainly seen enough salad to last a lifetime.

I remain rather fascinated by the seemingly infinite combinations that people will come up with for their salads. My favorites are the ones that clearly show that a lot of thought was put into them. Some people go the sweet route: some combination of grapes, raisins, cranberries, dried pineapple, mango, mandarin oranges, dried figs, sometimes corn, beets, and carrots. These people often get the thai sesame lime dressing or the raspberry vinaigrette. Others go the crunchy road and ask for soy nuts, sunflower seeds, cashews, walnuts, croutons, tortilla strips, or sesame sticks to adorn their salad. Some of my favorite types are the ones who actually don’t get any vegetables on their salads at all—they order cheese (we have 5 different types), croutons, chicken, tuna, or tofu and never stop to consider the broccoli, beets, and other tasty veggies that we carry.

The salads that are unmistakable are the ones for the body-conscious girls (though, to be honest, very few overweight women come in to the Café…possibly because there are very few overweight women on the university campus. The environment at that school is not very conducive to any type of “big is beautiful” mindset, the more’s the pity). For the most part these salads are pretty well balanced: a healthy combination of vegetables and protein with one of the lighter dressings, accompanied by one of our addicting seeded rolls. But some of these salads are just simply a mess. These people will just get whatever catches their fancy, ignoring tastes and textures in the composition of their salad. One might get mango and garlic marinated mushrooms, along with capers, beets, dried figs, roasted red peppers, and, oh what the hell, tuna and pepperocinis with creamy smoked tomato dressing. A more typical occurrence is this: someone gets lentils, chickpeas, an egg (often just the whites—waste, waste, waste), chicken or tofu, cucumbers, tomatoes, and one of the grated cheeses (cheddar or pecorino romano), balsamic vinegar, and ask for it extra chopped. Or, as one young lady wrote on a slip last night, extra especially chopped. Which means the lettuce pieces and ingredients should be teeny tiny—unrecognizable as food, preferably. The more mushy parts of the salad—the chick peas, lentils, tomatoes, egg, and grated cheese—combine to become this mass of strange consistency. On one of my first shifts, I asked one of the other workers “Why extra chopped?” Her response was a shrug and “well, I don’t think many of them actually like salad…”

Which, of course, begs the question, why eat salad in the first place? Especially ones as expensive as ours (that chicken and hand-pulled mozzarella, not to mention the natural and organic veggies, are quite pricey).

And my favorite salad? Well, I prefer “no-base” salads—salads without lettuce. Because, honestly, I’ve always thought that lettuce is a usurper worthy of Napoleon. I invoke Israeli type salads and get lots of tomatoes and cucumbers, raw onions, and sometimes chick peas. Then I take a more Mediterranean twist as I put on the fresh mozzarella and black olives. Usually I finish it off with balsamic chicken, rosemary balsamic dressing, tortilla strips and toss to combine. The result? Always tasty.

Salad days are here again

It has been a busy time, here in Philadelphia. Amidst sautéing peppers and onions, boiling Brussels sprouts, and braising kale (so good!), I started a new job. I should say, an additional job. In addition to my boring office job, I have embarked on a part-time job in the Café, near the university I work at.

This isn’t just any café, like Starbucks or even Bucks County Coffee (a local chain here in PA). There are, at the moment, only 2 locations, both located in the University City area of West Philly or in Center City (a third is slated to open in June). It centers around Italian-style sandwiches and made-to-order salads. There’s also an espresso bar, to fuel the caffeine addiction of the student body. The owner is a local man, and he’s super nice and committed to producing a good product for his customers. And get this: the Café uses all natural and organic products, including free range chicken, organic dressings, and locally produced cheeses. Even the chips and snack foods they sell are natural. This Café is pretty serious about patronizing independent businesses. Be still, my beating heart.

I’ve only worked a couple of shifts—but the other employees are friendly, the restaurant busy, and the tasks generally pretty easy. I have years of food service experience behind me and it actually feels good to get back to it. Tying my hair up in a bandana, throwing on an apron, dashing to and fro with precariously balanced containers in my hands. You’ll most likely find me behind the counter throwing sandwiches on to the grill to heat them up (and burning my fingers as well) or making salads as huge waves of people roll in from the semi-Arctic January air.

Here’s how we make salads: people pick up a container of either romaine or spring mix from the shelves and a little slip of paper. They then circle the ingredients they want, the type of dressing, and whether they want it tossed or chopped and for here or to go. We have your normal salad fixings—carrots, tomatoes, sunflower seeds, cheddar cheese. And we also have really exciting ingredients: ricotta salata, Portobello mushrooms, balsamic chicken, chick peas, lentils, capers, mango, dried pineapple, soy nuts, beets, radishes, and pepperocinis. That’s not all. The salad dressings are absolutely divine—a universal favorite is the rosemary balsamic vinaigrette, but the thai sesame lime and the soy ginger are quite popular as well. I can’t help but critique people’s choices in salad fixings—it really is great fun. There’s the guys who want both kinds of chicken and cheddar cheese with romaine, and the girls who want spring mix, chick peas, and lentils with no dressing at all. Then there’s everything in the middle. The combinations that people come up with! Whew—it is almost exhausting to think about.

The thing I just cannot wrap my around is chopped salads. A light chop, sure, I get that. But some of these people (girls—mostly young, college aged women, to be honest) want these things chopped within an inch of their salad-y lives. Suddenly, what was looking like a very pleasant salad with fresh mozzarella and chicken has been turned into a strange looking mass of tiny pieces of unidentifiable food. My coworkers said it’s a pretty major fad in the salad world. I don’t think I understand it. Any insights, my loyal readers?