Salad Wars – Quest for the Best

I love a good salad, but I have discovered, not all salads are created equal. Whether it’s a fast food salad, or a sit down restaurant salad, the choices are endless, and some are not quite up to par.

I decided to put various salads from various restaurants to the test in searching for the very best. I would like to say my criteria is the health/low calorie value, but that isn’t quite true. I am judging purely on taste/quality/price value. I try to choose salads over burgers and pizza for the most part, but I realize when cheese, bacon, and ranch dressing is added, the healthy advantages suffer a bit. But, I use minimal amounts of dressing, and I still believe that a salad must be a better choice than a bacon cheeseburger and fries, right?

So…each week I am featuring three different salads and giving them a rating based on my own personal criteria. Feel free to share your opinions about these salads or others, whether you loved or loathed them.

This is the rating scale I am using (because these are the elements that are important to me 🙂

(25 points possible)

1) Freshness: You can tell when a salad was made way earlier and just pulled from the cooler rather than prepared freshly. [1 through 3]
2) Type of Lettuce: I don’t care for iceberg lettuce, I love the really green stuff, and if a salad has brownish yellow lettuce, it’s a HUGE fail. [0 through 3]
3) Overall taste. [1 through 5]
4) Crispies. These are things like croutons, sunflower seeds, etc. Very important to me in a salad. Some salads have great ones, some have none, and some have sub par ones. [1 through 3]
5) Value for the $ – [1 through 4]
6) Variety of vegetables/ingredients: Some salads have lettuce and nothing else. I like a few other things thrown in like carrots, cucumbers, olives, etc. [1 through 4]
7) Cheese. A salad can have too little cheese or so so cheese, but it cannot have too much cheese, in my opinion. [1 through 3]

Wendy’s Barbecue Bacon Ranch

1)      Freshness: 2 out of 3

2)      Type of Lettuce: 2 out of 3

3)      Overall taste. 3 out of 5 – Blending of flavors wasn’t that great.

4)      Crispies. 1 out of 3 – None.

5)      Value for the $ – 2.5 out of 4 – It’s a decent size but the flavor is a little lacking, so that makes it less of a value. and has plenty of taste and variety to make it worth the going price.

6)      Variety of vegetables/ingredients: 3.5 out of 4 – With tomatoes, eggs, cabbage, carrots, and roasted corn kernels, it’s almost perfect, but not quite.

7)      Cheese. 1 out of 3 – The cheese is good, but there’s so little of it.

TOTAL: 13

Panera Thai Salad

 

1)      Freshness: 3 out of 3

 

2)      Type of Lettuce: 2.5 out of 3 – A little mixed in not so green.

 

3)      Overall taste. 3 out of 5

 

4)      Crispies. 3 out of 3 – .

 

5)      Value for the $ – 2.5 out of 4 almost 9.00

 

6)      Variety of vegetables/ingredients: 3.0 out of 4 –. More variety, but not the best tasting ingredients.

 

7)      Cheese. 2 out of 3 – None,although that type of salad shouldn’t. But I still can’t give it a 3.

 

TOTAL: 19

Whataburger Garden Salad with Grilled Chicken

 

1)      Freshness: 3 out of 3

 

2)      Type of Lettuce: 3 out of 3 – Nice and fresh and green.

 

3)      Overall taste: 4.5 out of 5 – It has a great flavor, I LOVE their grilled chicken, but the flavor would have been improved with a few extra veggies or something added in.

 

4)      Crispies: 1 out of 3 – Zero.

 

5)      Value for the $: 4 out of 4 – Nice size, reasonably priced.

 

6)      Variety of vegetables/ingredients: 2.5 out of 4 – Tomatoes and shredded carrots.

 

7)      Cheese: 2 out of 3 – The cheese is good, but there’s not enough of it.

 

TOTAL: 20

 

So…what do you think? Have you tried any of these salads? Do you agree? Disagree? What are your most and least favorite salads.

As always…feel free to call me out on my math if I got it wrong…it’s not my strong suit 🙂