Starbucks Asian Salad

Margaret: Well, yay for the asian salad from Starbucks huh? It looked good going in, but John and I are too smart for that now, we know looks can be deceiving. But this looked delicious...the chicken, like yesterday, was very good (um hello? McDonalds?) and the rest of it was yummy, all kinds of little gifts in there with a tangy Asian taste, and you know, that's sort of what it felt like too, like getting a little present. The container is deceiving too, it looks like a small salad but its really packed and the bowl is deep. I liked this salad and glad that Starbucks showed us they could do it right from yesterday. I'm going to give it a B and not an A, and here's why...although I thought the salad was quite good, it was so tangy that I couldn't really see myself eating the whole thing. A few bites were enough for me, so...B.

John: Don't let the beige on beige on beige of this photo fool you! This was great. Edamame and black sesame seeds at a coffee shop! YUM! Its as good as the California Pizza Kitchen Thai Salad - and thats saying a lot! Everything was crunchy - everything was tangy. I like this salad as much as I hated yesterday's. If you are "on the go" and want to grab some food at Starbucks - grab this - it eats like a meal. A+. Really. Yes A+. I will eat this again and again until it gets cancelled by the bucks.

Starbucks Fiesta Salad

John: It may not have lettuce - but its labeled "salad" so away we go. Really tasty chicken strips top a mix of fire roasted corn, black beans and salsa. The chicken is awesome. Thats where the yummy ends. The bulk of the salad is composed of cold roasted corn. Cold corn. Who eats cold corn? If you took a room temp can of Green Giant Nibletts and dumped cold salsa on it - you'd have an exact duplicate of this junk. Really. There is no way anyone can eat this for lunch and feel good about what they just had. NO WAY. Too many calories in corn (320!) combined with a mushy mushy mouth feel make this an easy D. If the chicken had sucked it would SO be an F.

Margaret: It was the best of salad times, it was the worst of salad times. Pardon my waxing, but this salad so accurately fits the bill. So yeah, first bite of the salad was of the chicken on top. Grilled chicken, and to my surprise, it tasted like actual chicken! It was good, it wasn't chewy and gross, and I thought, "Yip!", finally someone got the chicken right. And if Starbucks can get a couple of pieces of frozen/grilled/whatevered chicken right, why can't everyone else? (I'm looking at you McDonalds). And then I dug into the mish-mosh that was the rest of the salad. And it just tasted like mushy mexican food. The taste was okay, I kinda liked that, this one had a texture problem. So even though I liked the taste okay, and the chicken okay, there was something about the rest of the salad that made it hard to swallow, like peas...you have to push them to the back of your mouth and wash 'em down with water/beer/vodka, whatever. This was the same, just something that made it really gross to finish, and I sucked down a lot of Diet Coke getting the corn mosh down my throat. So..it was okay, but almost inedible...C.

Au Bon Pain Garden Salad

Margaret: Okay. Fine. This was a perfectly good salad. Which is really annoying. Why? Becuase that means that Au Bon Shit knows how to make a perfectly decent salad. Granted, there was way too much dressing on it, but that's just become ABP's signature now. It's like how my signature is to do everything perfectly. Right? Right. To my surprise, the salad had sprouts on it! SPROUTS! I love sprouts! We've had almost every single salad at ABP and they put sprouts on ONE salad? If you have sprouts people, use the sprouts. Don't sit on the sprouts. Use them. People like them. Sheesh. I don't know, it was a fine salad, one of the better ones there. But it wasn't fabulous either. I'll give it a B-, the minus is for the fact that just walking into Au Bon Pain puts me in a bad mood. Crowded, unorganized and expensive. But hey. I love a good sprout.

John: Unremarkable. Yet I must remark. Lettuce sprouts tomato and cucs for just over $5. For that price I expect at least one fun ingredient. Here we go. The cucs made the dressing wet. The sprouts soaked it up and made it dry. So this salad was somehow wet and dry at the same time. So I give it an A and an F. I can't wait to not have to eat at Au Bon Pain ever again. C.

Potbelly's Veggie Salad

Margaret: Well, my head is as jumbled as my salad today. The Potbelly's vegetarian salad is just...too much. In the words of Mr. Mies Van der Rohe, "less is more." And this is very true in this case. Yes, there are lots of yummy things on this salad, artichoke hearts and chick peas and red peppers and they're all very good, very good. But I just think its too much. It doesn't all go together, it all gets too messy and ends up tasting like nothing all mixed up like that. I mean, its still miles ahead of most salads, but honestly, I could have done without maybe two of the ingredients. Granted, she asked us if we wanted "everything" on it, and of course we said yes (its like how Morgan Spurlock always had to supersize if they asked), but ... meh. I'll give it a B-, its still good, its just not great.

John: I was ready for this. Like some sort of "last hurrah" that we were saving for the end (we are so close) as a treat. Well I'm nothing but disappointed in this one. It took me a bit to figure out why I wasn't enjoying every bite like the other Potbelly offerings. Here's the trick with this salad - too many "preserved" ingredients. Chick peas, artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers ALL OUT OF JARS. There was just too much of a wet brine flavor to enjoy this. My dressing went runny right away. Potbelly I'm going to use a tone I normally save for speaking to McDonald's so be ready. YOU NEED TO THINK THESE SALADS OUT A LITTLE. Where was the carrot? Absent. Why? Because Potbelly doesn't put carrots on sandwiches. And if it doesn't go on a sandwich then there isn't any place for it at a sandwich shop. Thats why this salad fails. The other three (lovely, lovely and lovely) all mimick a sandwich on the menu. This is just handy toppings on lettuce. Thanks for trying. C+.

Pazzini Make Your Own Salad

Margaret: Wow, what a relief. Seriously, to sit down, and eat a salad and FINISH the salad because it was delicious. Well...I feel...satiated. We had the "choose your own" today and I appreciate the choices I had. I had the field greens, mozzarella, cucumbers and onions and oddly enough in this salad world of ours, everything tasted like what it was! The lettuce tasted like lettuce, the onions tasted like onions and the little crumbles of mozzarella were delicious, especially when it came down to the bottom of the bowl and it was this ranchy, cheesy goodness. The service at Pazzini's is unbelievably ridiculous, they take forever, but at least this one was worth waiting for. I almost licked the bowl. A. Yup, you heard me, A.

John: Romaine OR Field Greens with 3 toppings of your choice for $4.99. Now thats a deal. Tons of thing to choose from. Mostly Italian ingredients but still - thanks for the choice. I pretty much got my classic "salad bar" salad. It was awesome. Everything was fresh. The only snag in the day was the service. Everything went into the computer like 3 times even though the lady making it was standing right there. Also they kept giving away our ham and cheese pannini so we'd have to wait for a new one and then they'd give it away and we'd have to wait for a new one. So here is my review. Get this if there is a short line. Skip it if its chaos. I'm also going A on this one. Good work Pazzini - you snuck in to the top five!

McDonalds Southwest Chicken Salad (Crispy)

Margaret: Well, I liked the grilled chicken southwest salad pretty well, which is rare for a Mickey D's salad, so I was okay getting this one with the grilled chicken. There's some kind of "pre-sauce" that comes on it and I started to dig in. Blech, I thought, this salad tastes like poo. Then John pointed out the actual salad dressing and that I hadn't put it on yet. So when I did put it on, the salad tasted much better! It's an okay salad I guess, I really like the little tortilla chips and corn and beans, and am impressed that Mickey D's has the inclination to put all that extra stuff in there. But I'm telling you, make sure you put the dressing on (at least some) because without it, it tastes like a big bowl of plastic lettuce. I dunno, I guess a C+

John: Oh McDonalds. This was your big break. I liked you grilled version of this salad alot. Today's was kinda limp by comparison. I thought it was still pretty good actually (once the dressing and lime go on to cover the taste of the lettuce) but not as good as last time. I finished it and that earns a solid B. Farewell Mcdonalds. Now that we have eaten all 8 of your salads I no longer have a good reason to go there. Well Monopoly........

Au Bon Pain Riviera Salad

Margaret: I'm no dummy. This time, we only ordered one salad from Au Bon Pain. Even though I was tempted by the "ranch dressing" which I love, I knew better than to order myself a whole salad, why you ask? Because, this one has GRAPES and CRANBERRIES. Blech. With ranch dressing? Blech. So I had my requisite few bites of the salad and it just...doesn't taste right. The ranch tasted funky, the salad tasted funky, there is just something so off about the Au Bon Pain salads, I mean, you can't even get ranch and lettuce right? WHY? WHY OH WHY? It is a mystery that this salad blogger may never get to the end of. So...I'll give this a C, because I didn't think much about it at all. Totally, completely in every way a mediocre salad.

John: A tragedy! The Grapes of Ranch. Too sweet. Too hard to eat (grapes are slippery devils) without shoveling. Must be a ton of sugar (2 fruits) in it. Every bite tastes the same. Like the Puggle - why does this even exist? At least is was fresh lettuce. C+