From next generation ingredients to chef-driven new flavors, the entrée salad is updating its evergreens
This past January at the height of the pandemic shutdown that kept workers in their homes and out of restaurants, Datassential reported that more than two-thirds of operators serving lunch offered salads, making it the number one item on lunch menus. Entrée salads even outranked sandwiches and affirmed the continuing appeal of salads as a main course.
Our decades-long love affair with the entrée salad reflects the impact of California cuisine, which introduced and legitimized the concept of salad on the center of the plate, and the contemporaneous runaway success of the Caesar salad, a Mexican import that took the country by storm with its bracing acidity. Equally important to its longevity is the unstinting innovation of chain chefs, whose creative composed salads successfully capture the zeitgeist of changing consumer tastes and emerging ingredient trends.
Chopt, Tender Greens, Lemonade reinvent the timeless entrée salad nrn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nrn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.