Salad bars are a crime against humanity

I love salad, but there have to be rules. Salad should never be mixed with hot food (e.g. in burgers); it should never be dressed with anything from a bottle; and salad should never be served buffet style. Oh, and if it's hot, it's just not salad.

That's why I'm speaking out against the salad bar horror story today. When I landed in Melbourne after a very long flight from London, I was looking forward to dinner with my hosts who promised me “a real treat in a beautiful restaurant you'll love.” Yet their email also informed me that we were going to a raw vegan restaurant where avocados are plentiful and where there is a section with no onions or garlic for those following the plant-based Jain diet, which excludes roots and underground vegetables. A note on the menu informed diners that no dressings would be served at this hellhole because “we prefer our precious organic ingredients to remain naked and untainted.” Nope.

In this respect, food is like the human body: what makes it attractive is the sauce. Vinaigrette on a salad and clothes on a human: same principle. There was a lot of controversy surrounding the Paris Summer Olympics, and one of them was that the food did not live up to expectations. Well, that's at least my guess when swimmer Adam Peaty claimed there were worms in some of the food on offer. But for me, one of the most grotesque details of 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. Buffets are terrible in general, but the worst offenders are those cold, bland salads that sit there, collecting germs and bugs, while people slowly stroll by, half-heartedly reaching into the corn flakes that accidentally have green pepper bits floating on them, and the corn that has beetroot spots on it after someone picked at it with the wrong tongs. Anyone involved in this nightmare should be arrested.

Chef Yotam Ottolenghi is one of those who has tried to revive the concept of salad selection in his restaurants and delicatessens, but the difference is that his salads are, I imagine, kept hygienically wrapped and not dragged out day after day until someone finally takes a bite, unlike the little cafe on the corner of the high street that people avoid and where the salads look flat.

There's also a modern version of the salad bar at places like the Tossed chain (on a side note, why would a grocery store take on a name that sounds like a porn channel?). These places simply cram a bunch of different things, mostly chunks of broccoli and beets, into a plastic bowl next to bland chicken and bottled tahini and try to fool customers into thinking they're having a nutritious lunch.

Yet the salad bar is actually threatening to make a comeback in restaurants, largely because profit margins are so high. Salad bar staples include huge chunks of tasteless tomatoes, giant cauliflower florets, croutons and big chunks of pepper. These may be the things you take out of food at cheap Chinese restaurants in Soho, but in restaurants they take up a lot of space on the plate and are therefore a real money-maker for the number crunchers. Many of these ingredients are also bought pre-made from factories, such as ready-made crispy onions and big chunks of tasteless squash and zucchini, a practice that belies the claim that the average salad bar is full of fresh and healthy food.

A few years ago, I got talking to a man who was a high-ranking executive at Pizza Hut. He told me how profitable their salad bar was and that grated raw carrot was one of his customers' favorites. He told me he was considering adding bacon bits and tortilla chips to the mix because he was worried they would sell. My goodness.

In the bad old days, before decent restaurants were everywhere in the country, my friends and I would play a game where we had to guess the worst ingredient on the salad bar. For me, it was always iceberg lettuce, which is never welcome on my plate. My friends, on the other hand, chose dishes ranging from pitted black olives that taste like old car tire bits to pasta strudel in an industrial dressing of tomatoes and vegetable oil. A strong competitor was the cold rice salad, which always consisted of chunks of canned corn, chopped bell peppers, raw scallions and, shudder, tiny bits of watery tomatoes.

There was not much good to say about the Covid pandemic, but it did cause salad bars to remain closed for a while. Eventually, it was recognized that this type of food service was not only inherently unhygienic, but there were also fears (wrongly, as it turns out) that they could become a breeding ground for the virus. While the newcomers to the neighborhood are dominated by quinoa, seasoned with za'atar and protected by enough plastic to prevent germs from entering, nothing can convince me that the salad bar should live another day.