Keough’s Corner #2: Not-So-Sweet Greens

Welcome back friends. What’s for lunch today? We are spoiled for choice in this neighborhood. Maybe you want to go grab a slice. Maybe it's a Sambo or Brine day. The possibilities are endless, but if you’re craving a salad, get ready for a heavy drizzle of annoyance to go with those moderately chopped greens. Don’t get me wrong, I have no beef with salads (though I will argue they would be better with beef). I’m not here to rant against the nutritional value or validity a shredded vegetable medley can have as a meal. I, in no way, dispute the health benefits or the culinary impact a good salad can have. Instead, I am here to shed light on the dark, shady, slightly inconvenient cabal of salad establishments that I refer to as “Big Salad.” You know the types of places: Just Salad, Sweet Green, Overgreens, Chopt, the list goes on. These places are minor annoyance royalty and I’m just the kind of court jester to try to take them down a peg.

Let’s start with the names of these purveyors of fine leaves. Chopt? What? I know I’m bad at spelling but that’s on a covfefe level of egregiousness. Is it a play on words that I’m missing? Is Chopt a combination of “CHOPped” and “disappointmenT”? At least they chop their salads in front of you so it makes sense…OH WAIT! They don’t even do that at every location anymore? You can’t stop doing the thing you are named after! That’s like Burger King deciding to stop serving burgers or Domino’s deciding to stop making their pizza crusts out of actual dominoes. And don’t even get me started on Just Salad. On my last visit, an employee asked me if I wanted to try a wrap or one of their rice bowls. No, and I’m furious you even sell those. You’re called Just Salad. JUST salad! As in salad and nothing else. How am I supposed to enjoy my rabbit food when I’m being lied to before I even open the door?

I guess there’s no honesty in advertising anymore, as proven by “Just Salad and bowls and wraps and drinks and juice and utensils….”

Maybe I’m making too big a deal of the names—though that’s my thing and it's why you’re here—but even if we look past that, the process of getting a salad at one of these places is pretty rough, too. If I wanted to make this many choices about my food, I would have made it myself, which I am far too lazy to do. “Sir, do you want light, medium, or heavy dressing?” I’m eating a bowl of uncooked lawn clippings, can we just assume I want you to put enough salad dressing on it that I’m basically having soup for lunch? “Would you like bread with your salad?” Friend, of course I would, in fact if you could give me two slices of bread, some kind of meat, and throw a small amount of salad in between there, that would be great.

If you’ve been visualizing this salad-obtaining experience with me, you must be exhausted. You overcame, at best, a ridiculous name, or, at worst, a bold-faced lie, and entered an establishment. You answered more questions about your salad than a white man has to about any mistake he’s ever made, and now you just want to pay and “enjoy” your meal. You pull out a crisp 20 dollar bill, hand it to the cashier, and hear “We don’t accept cash here.” I’m sorry, what? You don’t accept (checks bill) legal US tender? Back in my day we called obtaining cash “getting lettuce.” Now I can’t even visit a bank, withdraw lettuce, and go get actual lettuce? On my last trip to Sweet Green (and I mean last both in terms of most recent and final) I was buying my amazing wife a salad and went to pay for it in cash. They informed me they didn’t take cash so I pulled out my debit card. They informed me that their card system was down and my brain melted out of my eye sockets. I took off my shoes, left them on the counter in payment, and walked out never to return.

So how do we take down “Big Salad”? We don’t, its roots are too deep in our culture already. We should probably just get Overgreens it, realize how Sweet Greens our lives actually are, Chopt it up with some friends, throw our hands in the air, and Just Salad it here in Keough’s Corner. See you next time.