SaladWorks

Critic's Review

Reports have it that this place is closed. You can't pay $50/ft at this location for a lunch restaurant.

Review 10/1/15

There used to be a Salad Creations on Las Olas, until the greedy owner of the building tried to jack up their rent so high that staying in business wasn't plausible. The space was empty for more than 2 years.

I got an early start and got to the place by 1:30pm, which is peak lunch hour. The front lot was like bumper cars; there were plenty of spots in the back. I think that most people don't realize that all of the stores have rear entrances.

Saladworks Rear Entrance

The menu has all sorts of pre-conceived salads, but it makes no sense unless you just don't know what you like. The concept here is simple; everything costs between $7.99 and $8.49. You can "make your own" for $8.49 and get any 5 items you want, including meats/proteins. Some of the salads give you 6 items, but in most cases you can just build your own and get what you want. They also have soup and sandwiches, and the obligatory soup and 1/2 salad and 1/2 sandwich combos; all at about the same price point.

Saladworks Toppings

They have a pretty compact setup; not unlike chipotle. One station for stuff and another for dressing, and then you pay.

Saladworks Front Counter

Compared to places like PDQ, the beverage station is very weak. 5 Sodas and unsweetened iced tea. No lemon for the tea. I asked an employee about lemon, and she gave me a totally lame answer. "We did put some out, but we didn't sell enough tea so we ended up throwing it out". Ok, well how about putting out less? I'm paying $2 for colored water; it should come with lemon.

Saladworks Ice Tea (No Lemon Available)

The dining room is very fast foodish, reasonably comfortable without providing any privacy.

Saladworks Seating

Their base salad is an iceberg/romaine blend; very old school. Fine with me, i hate the weeds. I got the blend, tomatoes, cucumbers, chicken, red onions and blue cheese crumbles, with blue cheese dressing on the side. Rolls with butter are included in the $8.49 price tag.

Saladworks Salad, Bread, Blue Cheese Dressing

The crowd was largely middle-aged business lunchers which is about what you get at lunch hour in this part of town. Given the crowd, you wonder why they were piping in such bad music. "Party Rock Anthem", "Cool Kids", The Fray. Businesses need to get a clue about matching business to their target audiences.

The dressing was very good; not that chunky so the extra blue cheese crumbles workout out. A good sized lunch.

Saladworks Salad

The containers double as take out; if you expect to take some home they'll give you a top that snaps onto the dish. Some complaints were that that red onions were cut too chunky (nobody wants to bite into a big chunk of raw onion), and the dishes has ridges in the bottom and I spent way too much time trying to dig little pieces of stuff out of the valleys. Salad is served in a bowl for a reason.

Saladworks Plate

Conclusion

Everything was fresh and it was a pretty good salad. Their "Build Your Own" could use some tweaking. Charging the same for cucumbers and blue cheese is stupid; and if you want 6 items on your salad it puts it at $10 which is really too much.

If I go here again and they don't have lemon out, I'm not buying iced tea. It doesn't taste good without it.