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Salad Buffets - Too much 'choice' gives only a false freedom
When is a full salad buffet a means to chain you not to give you freedom of choice? When it makes you give up and head for the nearest set menu...
by Ashley 'Danger' Meeks
So there you are at the salad bar, holding a gigantic pink plastic plate stacked with a wilting pile of romaine and spinach which you've weighed down with bacon bits, olives, pimentos, scallion strips, croutons, marinated artichoke hearts, cucumbers, green bell peppers and sliced pepporonis, but you're still trying to balance a dozen cherry tomatoes and six hardboiled eggs on the plate's rim.
You may think you've just flubbed up one meal. But really, some zitty middle manager is crouching behind his faux-wood register dias and rubbing his hands together, dreaming of the next time you come in to ignore the false freedom of the salad buffet and just order a simple 'number six' from the menu instead.
The build-your-own food experience is bookended by two easy decisions, cleverly lulling you into thinking, Hey, it's a salad - what could go wrong? It's iceberg or romaine. Easy. From there, it's just a hop, skip and a sprig of parsley to the dressings, and who could possibly get tripped up on blue cheese versus Russian (I mean, only pederasts and Lutherans eat Russian, right?)
Somewhere (probably in Canada) there are people who can go to a salad bar and just grab some lettuce, sprinkle on a prudent amount of sunflower seeds, a few tomato slices and a tablespoonful of dressing. And even if they pick French dressing, (that truly sacreligious American smegma of ketchup and guano) their salad won't taste like a condiment enema. Of course, they probably send their kids off to school in the morning with a belly full of homemade crepes, the twisted freaks.
But for the rest of us, the buffet salad experience only serves to reinforce the deep-down fear - and probable truth - that we are utter incompetents when it comes to feeding ourselves. Not only do we need to be shown to a proper seat, provided with napkin-wrapped utensils, given a menu where we can choose from a few simple drawings of carb/fat combinations, reminded to drink something liquid and have something sweet at the end to keep us happy, we need to be picked up afterwards and checked on throughout the meal. We probably need people coming over and wiping our paws down with moist towlettes afterwards and personal flossers and tongue-scrapers too, but the certification for that in the hospitality industry is a meddlesome bitch (so far - lobbying continues...)
Look, if I knew how to make a salad I'd stay home and make one. Same goes for burgers, sandwiches, baked potatoes and pizzas.
To give the clueless consumer, who has already admitted the depths of their cooking ineptitude by the very act of coming to a restaurant, the responsibilty to make our own food? You might as well let us drive into a service station and allow us free rein with the pneumatic tools and engine lift.
The only possible explanation for the buffet is that it was created to thwart our last-minute rebellion ('Hey, I may be a clueless customer but I think I can tackle that baked potato bar!') by giving us so many options that we're doomed to end up with a plate of rubbery carrot rounds and fried won ton noodles slowly going oozy in an olive-flecked swamp of garlic Ranch dressing, corn niblets and chicken strips stamped with black ink 'grill' lines as punishment.
Accept your servitude. Take those shackles gladly. Just order the number six the first time - and every time after.
About the author
Ptiza Odelay was created in a factory by Nazi scientists during World
War II. She was to be the ultimate weapon against the Allies, but
before she grew into maturity in her birthing tank, the war ended and
the project was scrapped. Years later, she was found still in her tank
in a hidden sub-basement of a warehouse in Berlin and inadvertently
shipped to the United States. During transit the casing of the tank
was ruptured and she was born seemingly in her early twenties with all
of the knowledge of mankind programmed into her brain. She speaks
eighty languages and has been known to crush diamonds with her bare
hands. She is wanted in twenty countries and was last seen diving into
an active volcano somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. In her spare time,
she writes popular children's fiction, erotica and groundbreaking
journalism under the name Ashley "Danger" Meeks.Read her 'Confessions of a Recovering Teenager' column
