Menu Development | By Marc Halperin
Today, as Greens’s head of operations, Kenyon believes localization and creative ingredient choices are the key to livening up the garden-variety salad.
“I think regionalization is a key,” he says. “If chains can figure out what they want to do regionally and localize their salads, that would be great. In the Southwest, they might look at a grilled chicken tostada salad with chiles, whereas in the Northeast they might consider offering something based around shellfish or seafood.”
Kenyon agrees with the idea that a handful of new ingredients can make an enormous difference in a salad’s perceived novelty and freshness. “In our world, the boutique cheese industry has been a big force,” he says. “Non-cow-milk cheese exploded about three years ago, and there’s a movement afoot today with cured meats. It’s the idea of turning a traditional antipasto-type dish into a salad.
“Also, about four or five years ago, I started noticing that restaurants—including big chain restaurants—were doing a better job of taking traditional salad concepts and giving them interesting twists. You now see Caesars with slightly different vinaigrettes or salads with something off the menu that makes a more traditional entrée salad a true entrée. I saw a filet mignon salad recently that had crumbled sheep’s cheese, romaine lettuce, and a caper vinaigrette. It was very different.
“Americans get caught up in basic dressings, and I don’t know how you get them off it. When I go out, I tend to rely on things like Ranch and Italian. But it would be great to have, say, a lemon-caper-mustard vinaigrette or a roasted garlic dressing with red-wine vinegar. I think there are a lot of possibilities.”
Adrian Hoffman, group chef at the Bay Area-based Lark Creek Restaurant Group, adds that the time could be right for larger chains to explore different kinds of salads that, while slightly more exotic, wouldn’t alienate consumers one bit.
“A warm spinach and bacon salad would be a sort of comfort-food offering with a twist, and grilled romaine is a great idea,” Hoffman says. “Romaine holds up well, you get the smokiness from the grill, and it works great with a bacon vinaigrette.”
Today, if you stroll through the grocery produce aisle, you’ll have a choice of dozens of bagged salads that come complete with different dressings, toppings, and other additions. The base recipes—the actual greens and vegetables—are generally quite similar; it’s the little packages in the bag that distinguish them from one another. Perhaps quick-serve chains can look to the innovative bagged-salad category for inspiration as they search for ways to appeal to Americans whose appetite for wholesome, healthy, and tasty salads shows no signs of abating anytime soon.