Arby'sMarket Fresh Martha's Vineyard

John: Actual chicken tasting chicken on greens with cheese. Apples AND craisins AND almonds seemed like a bit too much sweetness on the salad that already comes with Raspberry dressing. Is there such a thing as a DESSERT SALAD? Yes and I had it for lunch today. Still I felt great and light when I was done and not too many salads these days leave you feeling like that. You need to like fruit on a salad quite a bit to enjoy this one. B.

Martha:Ha, funny John! Okay, I feel like I've been complaining alot about the salads lately. I have been. And guess what? One more day of it. Because, I found this to be the most unappetizing salad yet. I literally could not get through four bites of this one. Let me reiterate that it is not the salad itself, I think it was fine. But BLECH BLECH BLECH! GROSS COME ON! Craisins? Apples? RASPBERRY DRESSING? With cheddar cheese bits? BLECH! It was too much, way too much. If I wanted to eat fruit, I would eat a banana, not raspberrycraisinapples on lettuce. All they needed to do is throw some smellyfeet cheese on it and it would officially be the worst tasting salad in the WORLD. One thing I will say, the grilled chicken on this salad was better than most grilled chickens we've had. DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD I'm giving you a D. I really couldn't even get this one down. DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

Quizno's Classic Cobb

John: At $6.00 - Quiznos has the second most expensive salad in the Mart. When you pay a little extra for a salad you expect to see it and the Classic Cobb delivers in terms of ingredients and size. What it lacks is flavor - or maybe I should say FLAVORS. Every bite tasted the same independent of what was actually on my fork. Halfway through I said to the lovely Margaret "This could use some bacon" to which she replied "There is bacon" holding up a forkfull. I'm the bacon lovinest s.o.b. you are ever going to meet. I'd eat it everyday if wasn't deadly to do so. If I missed the flavor of bacon - then it wasn't there. What I tasted was a plastic corporate mess. C-

Margaret: Well, I remember liking the Cesar salad we got from Quizno's, too bad they couldn't keep it up. Bleu Cheese Bleu Cheese Bleu Cheese, why does everyone have this very distinctive cheese that half of Americans cannot stomach? Blech. The chicken is basically slaughtered in the tin, all shredded and salad-chicken soft, and it really looks like dead animal (I know it is actually dead animal, but still, its 2007 people! This is not The Jungle) lying ripped apart on some lettuce. There was some egg, I like egg...the bacon, I like bacon, it just didn't taste good. I'm starting to get very annoyed with a lot of these salads that, here they are, purporting to be fresh alternatives, and they're actually quite gross. I would have rather had a side of beef than have this "healthy" salad. I'm in a bit of a mood today, so I'm going to feel free to take it out on Quizno's and its Cobb salad. It was gross, couldn't finish it...D+. The plus being for the pretty tasty pita that comes with it.

Au Bon PainThai Chicken

John: Another Asian salad fouled by limp ingredients! Everything about this should have been great. Loved the dressing and the ratio of everything in there. But the cucumber was RUNNY and the chicken was spongy. In my salad experience (oohhhh aaahhh) Au Bon Pain employees are willing to put obviously OLD vegetables and meats on a salad. I've thrown away more than one of their pre-mades in disgust. Also they were out of my favorite breadstick. C-.

Margaret: I was kind of excited for this salad today. It's one of the few salads at Au Bon Pain that isn't marred by smelly man-feet cheese. And we had the Asian salad yesterday at Mickey D's and that was tasty, so...I figured this would be better. It wasn't. It just wasn't. Fine...I liked the fried won-ton strips okay? Is that something? I liked the salad dressing too. It was tangy and delicious. But the CHICKEN! What is it with the CHICKEN! Why is it so hard to have decent chicken? I mean this was gross, all rubbery and icky. I'm tired of it! DO YOU HEAR ME SALAD GODS? And you know what else? Just as a little aside? Some of us choose salads so that we can get our vegetables right? Not just for a lite lunch, but to actually get something healthy into our diet. And these salads, not just Au Bon Pain, but generally...these salads don't have anything in them! One shredded piece of tiny carrot, a wishy-washy cucumber, a dried out red pepper...put some broccoli on these suckers huh? Some more peppers? Cut up a few more carrots and lets get this thing rocking for petes sakes. This salad was just as gross as one with smelly cheese on it. Boo. C- from me too.

McDonald'sCrispy Chicken Asian

Margaret: Two broken lovers, one with a bit of the heartburn, one with a bit of the uterus burn. Hungry, but leery...interested but disheartened. We turn to McDonalds to get us through a Monday afternoon. And Mickey D's did pretty well. I liked the Asian salad. Again, no reason for little oranges to be in there, but I get that's part of the "Asian" thing. Fine..easy enough to push aside. The sesame salad dressing was light and tasted delcious on our crispy chicken. The edamame was good and bright green...I find it interesting that even though this salad was a bit wilty, it was still A THOUSAND times better than the Bacon Ranch crap we had from Mickey D's before. So..right now, Mickey D's is doing really well with their "influenced" salads (the Southwest Salad we both liked, and now the Asian) and is poop when it comes to a plain old Americany salad. What up with that? I enjoyed it though, I thought it was quite tasty. I'm giving it a B- for the wilty salad.

John: I am a lover of the Asian salad - always have been. C.P.K. has the best you'll ever eat. Anyway this was one of the salads I was looking forward to. I'm a sucker for sesame dressing and naked little oranges. The clown does a good job on this one. Red Peppers and Peapods and Almonds and Edamame - awesome and thanks. Although a soy bean on a salad isn't much of stretch for McDonalds since they have been "extending" their beef with them for years.... Today though this salad gets a C instead of the solid B it deserves. Salad Daze has made a breakthrough. Don't get salads at McDonalds on a Monday. The pre-made lettuce bowl has been sitting forever at that point. Everything was that 10% wilted level that turns a salad into a bowl of crap with dressing.

Better luck next time Mayor McChinese. C.

Pazzini'sTuscan Garden Salad

John: Sun-dried tomatoes, pine nuts, salami, mozzarella cheese, pepperacini, red onions and sweet peppers on romaine for like $6.50. This one was WAY better than the last Pazzini salad. I think not using the bland house dressing helped. I choose the Bleu Cheese dressing and it was a bit much. I think with Caesar dressing this salad would be amazing. Still it was pretty darn good - who knew I liked Salami in a salad so much? I'm still not blown away by this place but this salad was "not bad" from first bite to last. I'm going B on this one.

Margaret: You know, the last salad we got from Pazzini's was foul. Really bad chicken, bad salad, bad bread. But this was definitely an improvement. At first I was really excited about the salami, but as I went on, the salami kind of lost its...vigor. It became a little more stringy and it was all bunched up together. Sometimes I wonder if I'm not really a vegetarian, because as I get older, meat tends to be a little more unattractive to me. Except for cheeseburgers, but I digress. I LOVE the red peppers, those were good and the bread was nice and soft this time around. And I got to have mine with Ranch, which changes everything. The only thing I suggest is, if you're very "lady" about your salad dressing, which I am, ask for it on the side. Although they mixed it in pretty well, it was still too much dressing. But overall, I'm happy with this salad. I'm giving it a B. I would have gone with a B- for the semi-stringy salami, but this is such an improvement from the last one, it gets a B.

Arby'sMarket Fresh Santa Fe

John: Great southwestern flavors. I just didn't like the way it felt in my mouth. The chicken and the tortilla strips were so crunchy/hard that everything else was just sort of floating around while I chewed. So it was like a salad - just not a salad. I can chalk the difficulties up to the chick strips being a little overdone so lets say C+ on this one.

Margaret: Okay, a week or so ago, John and I went to get salads. It was a Friday. We were tired and ready to be done with the week. We were up for Potbellys, but I forgot the camera and John said "Eff it, lets just go to McDonalds and get cheeseburgers". Well, me being who I am, did not need to be asked twice. So...I got a Quarter Pounder and fries. I felt awful later. I swear this is a sign of growing up. I felt disgusting. Tired, totally burnt. Couldn't run, couldn't do anything. I promised myself I would never do that again. Having this salad from Arbys is pretty close to doing that again. It's really...heavy. The chicken fingers are always good, but then add the tortilla strips, the ranch dressing, corn and beans, it all just felt like I had eaten a Big Mac. It was good, don't get me wrong, but checking the nutritional value-this "salad" is a whopping 477 calories. That's without the tortilla strips, which are 70, and without dressing, which is 112. That's almost the same amount of calories as my McDonalds meal. If I'm going to eat that many calories at lunch, and do myself in like that, I'll have the real deal and shove a Whopper in my face. This salad gets a C. Just for being annoying.

Au Bon PainTurkey Sonoma

John: I'm a big fan of somebody else tossing my salad. Ugh... I am. So I appreciate what Au Bon Pain does when they actually use a fresh bowl for every salad and then toss it by hand. This is a "California" style salad so its got a few ingredients that don't go together at first glance. You know those Californians and their fusion everything. Spinach, turkey, oranges, gorgonzola, red peppers, tomatoes, bacon and cucs with a honey mustard dressing for like five and a half bones. Not bad. I liked the way the oranges and bacon and cheese interacted. This would have been a A- or B+ salad for me had it not been for the meat. The turkey is manufactured. I did a little experiment: I actually "chewed" the turkey with just my tongue. It had that wet pumped up with salty water kinda feel that you find at McDonalds. So boo bon pain. B-

Margaret: Hee hee, sorry...but John likes it when someone tosses his salad...hee. Anyway, gross. This is a foul salad. I'm sorry. But come on! Honey mustard dressing (which I actually quite liked, tangy!) and oranges???? Honey mustard and oranges? Come on now, even in Californiyay, they can't eat oranges and honey mustard sauce. Boo. The turkey was smushy and the gorgonzola once again tastes like man-sweat. The bacon and cukes were enticing, but all the more infuriating to find beads of b.o. cheese on them. I got myself a delicious big ole breadstick, that was good..but that was about it. I didn't like this salad. Not one bit. D.

Potbelly's Italian Salad

Margaret: Why can't everyone do it like Potbelly's? This was the question I asked myself at a pretty nice restaurant we went to over the weekend. Their salad came with lettuce and one tomato....no onions, no peppers, no cukes, no nuthin'. If Potbelly's can do it, why can't everyone else? This salad has a little bit of everything in it, all yummy things and you can just gather all this deliciousness on your fork and eat it. No eating "around" things (like fruit, or gorganzola). And, I was eating this salad for what felt like 20 minutes! You just eat and eat and eat and there's still all this yummy stuff left, so you eat and eat and eat. I have no reason to give this salad anything other than an A. Delish.

John: Romaine, roasted red peppers, chick peas, cucs, grape tomatoes, 4 Italian meats, provolone cheese, artichoke hearts and two kinds of croutons all for $5.29! This was a GREAT salad. Potbelly understands the concept of fresh ingredients. While this may not be the lowest calorie salad in the world - you'll love every bite. There are so many extras that I actually got a forkfull with no lettuce. This salad loses a half point for kinda chewy stale croutons. A-