Salad bar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A salad bar is a buffet-style table or counter at a restaurant on which salad components are provided for customers to assemble their own salad plates. Most salad bars provide lettuce, chopped tomatoes, assorted raw, sliced vegetables, such as cucumbers and celery, dried bread croutons, and various types of salad dressing. Salad bars may also provide additional toppings such as bacon bits or shredded cheese. Some salad bars also have additional food items, such as cooked cold meats (e.g., chicken, ham), devilled eggs, cold pasta salads, corn chips, bread rolls, soup, or fresh, cut fruit slices.
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[edit] Types of salad bars
Salad bars have become increasingly common in restaurants, as a type of self-service dining that became popular in the 1970s. Salad bars are also available in some fast-food restaurants. The customer either pays for an “all-you-can-eat” salad bar, a single serving (as long as it fits on the dish provided), or by weight.
Many supermarkets also include a salad bar in the produce or delicatessen section, which customers pay for by weight. Some restaurants and stores have a policy that allows them to revise the price if a customer is deemed to have taken either an excessive amount of food (in the case of an “all-you-can-fit-on-the-plate” pricing), or an excessive amount of high-priced items such as cooked meat and cheese (in the case of pay-by-weight salad bars).[citation needed]
[edit] History
There is a dispute over which restaurant or restauranteur first introduced the salad bar. A Springfield restaurant called The Cliffs, advertised a salad bar in the 1950s, which is attested in a 1951 Yellow Pages listing which refers to the Cliffs’ “salad bar buffet”. The Hawaiian restaurant, Chuck’s Steak House, claims to having had the first salad bar in the 1960s. Rax Restaurants, a midwest fast food chain similar to Arby’s, claims to have pioneered the Salad Bar in the mid-1960s. The New York Times claims that salad bars first began appearing in the late 1960s “..in midprice restaurants like Steak and Brew, featuring bona fide salad fixings to keep customers busy and happy until the real food came." The Steak and Brew restaurant chain offered a salad bar along with its steaks.
In the 1970s, Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises was based around salad bar-style food. Rich Melman’s Chicago restaurant and singles bar, R. J. Grunts, had an all-you-can-eat salad bar with over 40 items in the early 1970s.[1] The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 10th edition, claims that the term originated in about 1973. [2] Fitness expert Richard Simmons began a restaurant devoted exclusively to salads, Ruffage, as a complement to his exercise business, but it eventually closed.
[edit] References
- ^ "Spiced-up salad bars, at $5.95 a pound," Florence Fabricant, New York Times, September 21, 1994, p. C1
- ^ "Birth of the salad bar; Local restaurant owners may have invented the common buffet," The State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL), December 28, 2001, Magazine section (p. 10A)
