Contrary to common sense, the house salad, generally a small pile of greens and shaved carrots, is not the best choice if you’re looking for some bang for your buck. The mark-up on those inexpensive vegetables is exponential.
If the menu price is around $10, you can bet the restaurant paid no more than $2 to make it. So, go ahead and order one with some nutritional value like nuts, cheese, avocado, or other yummies. The house salad may be the least expensive salad option, but you’re getting the least as well.
Sprouting Bacteria
Even though sprouts seem like one of the healthiest crunchies to add to a salad, here are a few things you might want to know. Since 1996, sprouts caused at least 30 outbreaks of food poisoning which resulted in new regulation protocols for bean sprouts. These new recommendations were instated in 1999.
Sprouts are cultivated in a warm, damp environment which is an ideal condition for harmful bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella to propagate. Listeria is also a concern. Ordering cooked sprouts is one way to avoid the pathogens found on raw sprouts.
The Buffet . . .
The perfect place to swap germs. Food Safety News calls it the “Bacterial Buffet: All-You-Can-Eat Illness.” The reasons are different than you might think. Of course, we wonder if food safety regulations regarding food temperatures are upheld, but what, for instance, happens when a serving spoon gets dropped into the heap of food?
The entire platter must be discarded. Do you imagine that happens each time? Another issue involves the actual serving spoons. How many hands have touched that utensil before yours? Luckily, restaurants are required to change them every four hours, but still. Four hours is a long time for germs to spread.
The Second-Worst Salad Value
Besides the house salad, the next-least value on the salad menu is the wedge salad. This plate consists of a wedge-shaped slice of iceberg—the lettuce with zero nutritional qualities—drizzled in fattening bleu cheese, sprinkled with some chopped tomatoes, and, if you’re lucky, maybe topped with a spray of diced red onion.
Bacon bits, which may or may not be actual bacon, are a required topping. These inexpensive ingredients make the salad profitable for the eatery. But the markup is just as high as the house salad, so, go ahead, and choose something else.
Seafood’s Little Secret
Most people do not know that fish markets are closed on weekends. So, if you order a seafood entrée on Monday, that little fillet may have been chilling on the ice for three days. Never order seafood on Mondays.
But don’t take my word. New York Times bestselling book, Kitchen Confidential by chef Anthony Bourdain said that he never ordered fish on Monday unless he was at a four-star restaurant.