I've always wondered; is low-fat thousand island dressing five-hundred island dressing?
Written: Jul 16 '01
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Pros: good value for the price; you can tailor your plate to eat healthy
Cons: heavy hand with the salt; apparently indifferent to vegetarians
The Bottom Line: Sited somewhere between the fast food salad bars and a Fresh Choice, a Souper Salad was a welcome respite for these weary travelers.
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| scmrak's Full Review: Souper Salad |
More than anything, our journey reminded me of the opening scene of some old black and white movie, where The Quest! is chronicled by a figure gliding slowly across a parchment map, brown with age. You know the image -- that precise scene appears in the Tom Selleck adventure flick, "High Road to China." Except in our case, the background map wasn't the pregnant underbelly of Asia; it was the parched, angular profile of Nevada. Late of a Saturday evening, the tiny blue Dodge Intrepid representing our progress reached that point where US 6 and US 95, having united for a few brief miles in that arid land, once again diverge and 95 begins its plunge toward the state's tip and the glittering oasis that is Las Vegas. Welcome to Tonopah; celebrated (albeit briefly) in song...*
The buildings of this sun-blasted outpost hover above the horizon, visible from over fifteen miles away; they are wrapped about a peak in one of the narrow ranges that turn the state into a mammoth jigsaw puzzle. There are perhaps four motels; a handful each of churches and bars, the inevitable assay office, and four restaurants to fill the bellies of weary travelers. Pickings are slim -- Tonopah's proudest claim is that they actually have a McDonald's! -- and inhospitable to both non-smokers and those who prefer their victuals with a healthy bent. We chose the Mexican restaurant at the west end of town, but ate carry-out in our (non-smoking) motel room.
Eleven A.M. on Sunday found us in Las Vegas with three hours to kill before our flight for home was scheduled to depart. It was hot. Not the strength-sapping, humid heat of the Gulf Coast, which drapes itself over your shoulders like a wet wool blanket; it was the dry heat of a desert that one can escape by stepping onto the shade. There was a lot of that dry heat, though -- by noon the thermometer had already topped 100 degrees F (38 degrees C). And our dinner of the night before had not settled well. It was my opinion that the meal had been concocted out of the abundant tailings from gold mines around Tonopah; for it appeared to have congealed in our lower abdomens like some dense intrusive igneous rock. Ms scmrak, ever the biologist, pointed out that the elements of our meal must have been organic, for nothing inorganic could produce such prodigious quantities of methane.
Nonetheless, we were both starved for food with at least some semblance of healthiness. So rather than killing our three hours gawking at the (in)famous Strip or poking quarters into clanging, bonging, buzzing machines with myriad flashing lights; we went looking for a salad bar. Buried in a strip mall facing the east side of the UNLV campus, we found a likely candidate -- a Souper Salad (you wondered when I'd get here, didn't you!)
Now regardless of Epinions claim that Souper Salad is a "California Chain," there are stores in other states. Both Ms scmrak and I have eaten at locations in Houston and Austin, TX, and I've seen them in Dallas as well. So we knew what to expect when we got inside...
The Layout
Souper Salad's concept is dominated by its salad bar, which is accessible from both sides. The bar begins near the door and runs along one wall of the restaurant. At the end of the salad bar, a one-sided counter contains the restaurant's baked potato bar, soup bar, and a few trays of breads. There is no drink station; restaurant staff take your drink order after you're seated and bring you the drinks and refills as needed. Seating consists of booths along the walls and scattered tables in the open area. Patrons pay for their meals upon leaving; the chain accepts both cash and major credit cards. You should, by the way, leave a nominal tip for your server in this chain.
The Las Vegas store was entirely non-smoking, as is Austin's (by law), but the Houston stores have a smoking section at the rear of the dining room. The eating areas and salad bar are always clean, in my experience, though at some times vacant tables are not bused immediately.
A warning to customers -- if you see Ms scmrak and me headed for the salad bar, follow me down my side -- in salad bars, she's slower than molasses on a January day!
The Selection
Like all salad bars, Souper Salad starts off its bar with a vast tub of iceberg lettuce tossed with cabbage and some other greens. The rest of the salad end has typical fare: sliced, diced, or julienned veggies, a bit of cheese, some diced ham. At the center of the bar, there are pasta and potato salads and usually some sort of rice pilaf or a cous-cous dish or two, and other common salad-bar entries like cottage cheese, tuna salad, and macaroni salad. They often have a tasty Asian (Thai?) chicken-pasta salad and a mediocre potato salad; there's always a fettucine dish that resembles a cold Alfredo. For dessert, the restaurant puts out sliced melons and seasonal fruit (cherries, strawberries, kiwi), and usually pudding in one or two flavors.
The potato bar has all the artery-clogging greasy goodies you've come to expect: two kinds of cheese, sour cream, margarine and butter; bacon bits and diced ham; chili sauces; and a few finely chopped veggies (chives, green onions, and the like). Only we Americans would take a nice, healthy baked potato and turn it into an all-out assault on the cardiovascular system!
The soup bar offers four types of serve-yourself soup. There is invariably a chicken noodle and a cream soup of some sort (cream of broccoli, cream of potato, clam chowder). On this particular Sunday morning, the soups were chicken noodle, "macaroni and cheese," vegetable beef, and Santa Fe chicken tortilla (this last was good, though its main "spice" was salt).
The bread selection is apparently invariable: cornbread, gingerbread, and a blueberry bread of some sort, there is often sliced white and "wheat" bread as well. Drinks include the usual suspects: sodas, coffee, iced and hot tea, and lemonade. I don't know whether they serve beer and wine, but doubt it.
The Upside
# It's all you can eat, and for a small price. We got out with two salad/soup bars and two drinks for about fifteen dollars (including tax and tip). The potato bar costs extra, but it's still quite reasonable considering the amount of food you can consume. For Sunday dinner, kids 6-12 eat at the salad bar for ninety-nine cents (according to the sign on the door).
# I've had generally good luck in eating there; kitchen staff keep the bowls and tubs of the various bars filled; the vegetables are consistently fresh. The wait staff are friendly and efficient; usually bringing refills for drinks without needing prompting.
# The food is filling and tasty; most is relatively flavorful if a bit bland. A few years ago they experimented with fat-free cooking, but swung that pendulum a little too far (and oddly, didn't cut back on the salt content).
# There's little in the way of dessert (no ice cream, yogurt, or cookies), which is a good way to force you to eat another healthy serving of fruit to assuage your sweet tooth.
The Downside
# Unlike other chains (e.g., Fresh Choice), they do not clearly mark low-fat offerings among the prepared salads -- if indeed they have any. As well, of eight salad dressings on this particular day, only one was fat free and no other was marked "low fat."
# The chain is not particularly vegetarian friendly, nor is it particularly "heart-healthy." The only soup without meat available during our visit was "macaroni and cheese," which certainly wasn't low fat and wasn't acceptable to many vegetarians.
# The cooked foods -- especially the soups -- are often heavily salted. So what else is new? Fruits are commonly under-ripe -- on this visit, our watermelon was tasty, but the cantaloupe was about four days short of ready to eat.
# The bread selection is, in a word, uninspired. It's edible, but bland and unimpressive. It in no way compares to the muffins at a Fresh Choice store.
# They don't have real "goldfish." Bad move, guys.
The Recommendation
Well, Souper Salad beat the heck out of that nasty "Mexican food" we'd had the night before; and no one seated near us on the plane ride home started whimpering and begging for a clothespin from the cabin attendants. On the other hand, the chain still has a way to go before it's the be-all and end-all of salad bar joints. It's less expensive (and probably fresher) than eating out of the salad bars at (most) grocery stores or fast-food restaurants, and you can at least make an educated guess as to what's healthy for you. It's a darned sight easier to get a healthy meal in a Souper Salad than a fast food emporium or most chain restaurants.
I just wish they'd label things better and cut back on the salt.
*"...I've been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah..." Willin', by Lowell George
Recommended:
Yes
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