Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Dear Cafeteria.

I work for a company that provides employees many benefits.  One of these benefits is the on site cafe.  Rather, it is supposed to be a benefit.  With the hours we work, often with very short lunch breaks it is all too convenient to pop in and grab a meal to eat at your desk in the few minutes before your next meetings.  And I do.  A lot.  The downside is that the food generally sucks.  
Not long ago they did a huge remodel, the niced up the old cafe, changed menus to more natural and organic foods and made the new place a showcase.  A showcase that has sucky food.  At any rate, the sucky food and convenience has forced me to resort to the salad bar on an almost daily basis.  And they even manage to screw that up.  I know, hard to believe.
Nothing major, the lettuce can be a bit wilty and even slimy at times.  They offer thousand kinds of deli salads that all need salt or just some flavor because really, from noodles to beans to potato salad, they pretty much all taste the same.  But that's not my main problem.
They have a ton of toppings, but there are really only a couple I like.  One is the crumbled blue cheese.  Yum, right?  But if you had a salad bar and offered crumbled blue cheese,  what serving utensil would you offer?  A spoon?  Wrong!  Crappy tiny tongs with little claws that lift no more than a 1/2 teaspoon of cheese at a time?  Is this some kind of game to them?  Watch me try to top my salad with more than a teaspoon of cheese, watch me struggle as the cheese gets clumped into the claws of your shitty tongs and I have to bang them on the side of the cheese container to shake it free.  Is that fun for you?  Does that make you laugh? 
And then there's the final insult.  The "house made" croutons.  They sound good, and some of them are.  But then, as you take your third or fourth bite of your mixed greens topped with beets, blue cheese and balsamic vinaigrette you bite into something that blows the tasty goodness. Something so wrong that, so help me God, I'd like to take the chef by the shoulders and shake them until they learn...cinnamon raisin bagels do not make tasty garlic croutons.  Ever.

So, what's your salad bar pet peeve?  Hell, do you even eat from a salad bar?  If not, what do you eat for lunch and will you bring me some?

6 comments:

Heather said...

You are SO right! Those little tongs never work - for any kind of cheese! And slimy lettuce could be the grossest thing ever. I'm a vegetarian, so I have to resort to the salad bar quite a bit at various cafes/restaurants. I have never seen cinnamon raisin croutons. Yikes! I've been making this spinach/black bean/sundried tomato wraps to bring to work. I'd bring you one if I still lived in Seattle. :-)

Shieldmaiden96 said...

I hate the tiny tongs. I usually grab a spoon out of something else and dig it in.

geekymummy said...

I long for any kind of cafeteria. If I forget my lunch and have no time to drive out, I must resort to "the lunch truck", whose only vegetarian offering is "Stir fried vegetables with rice". I guess veggies are in short supply, because last week I was served up stir fried lettuce. That is almost as wrong as cinnamon raisin croutons.

Beth said...

Oh, you are the funny one!

I quit eating from salad bars the day I saw a child lick the ladle from the dressing. And he wasn't a wee lad. He definitely should have known better. It is a vision I just can't seem to shake.

followthatdog said...

Thanks Beth, now I won't be able to eat salad either. There are no kids at my work, but I do work with engineers, so pretty much the same thing.

Anonymous said...

I work for a school district.
Does that tell you enough about what our cafeteria has to offer?
...mmm...school lunch...please pass the barf-a-roni! :op

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