LEO's Eats with Robin Garr
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, my father came home one day and announced, “Kids, we’re going to Chicago this weekend, and we’re going to a new kind of restaurant. It has the most amazing salads on a giant buffet, and you can walk right up and take whatever you want.”
I don’t think the name “salad bar” had even been invented in those days, back in the dawn of the Baby Boom, but as soon as Dad told me that the deal included as much cucumbers and sour cream as I wanted to eat, I was so there. I might not have been crazy for salads - I was a kid, after all - but my Mom loathed sour cream and banned it from our house, so this was my entree into a forbidden pleasure. Looking back on it, I must have been one tame kid. I could have lusted for beer or worse.
Still, I got my cucumbers and sour cream, and lettuce and croutons and carrots and blue cheese and Thousand Island dressing and maybe some shrimps, and I was converted, along with just about everybody else. Salad bars were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew strong, and soon the land was filled with them. And as surely as night follows day, we got bored with them, and before you knew it salad bars were mostly relegated to places like Golden Corral and Ponderosa, and life went on.
These days, you’ll rarely see me mention a salad bar in a review, even if I happen to visit an eatery that has one. Salad bar? Who cares! Make something interesting, please, and make it just for me.
But let’s not consign salad bars entirely to the dustbin of history. “Would you like to visit the salad bar before you enjoy your steak” might sound oh, so ‘70s now, but sometimes a person wants a delicious, healthy salad. When this crave strikes, I’m inclined to head for Whole Foods or Jason’s Deli, where expansive, carefully tended salad bars offer no mere starter but an entire meal.
These spreads are similar only different, and yes, they are both corporate chains, not the locals that I generally favor. (Hit up Rainbow Blossom if you need to support a Louisville indie. Their salad bar is organic and delicious, albeit a bit more limited.)
Read the full review on LouisvilleHotBytes,
http://www.louisvillehotbytes.com/grazi ... %E2%80%99s
And in LEO Weekly:
http://leoweekly.com/dining/grazing-sal ... %E2%80%99s
Whole Foods Market
4944 Shelbyville Road
899-5545
wholefoodsmarket.com
Salad bar rating: 92
Jason’s Deli
Shelbyville Road Plaza
4600 Shelbyville Road
896-0150
jasonsdeli.com
Salad bar rating: 88