Monday, October 3, 2011

Strauss's Lettuce Based "Salads in a Bowl"

Strauss has two new lettuce based "salads in a bowl" on the market. The One they are calling a Caesar Salad is made up of romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce, flavored croutons and a "classic" Caesar salad dressing. The second salad Strauss named a Garden Vegetable Salad. That has romaine lettuce, iceberg lettuce, shredded carrots, shredded red cabbage, sliced radishes, whole cherry tomatoes and an herb flavored dressing. These "individual portion salads" also come with a disposable fork, knife and napkin that are wrapped in a little plastic bag.
 
שטראוס לקטי סלט טריים באריזות אישיות

I was out and about the other day running from appointment to appointment when one meeting lasted much longer than anticipated. I realized I wouldn't have time to stop off at home to eat lunch. I was in the mood for a salad but didn’t want to pay "café prices" for a quick bite. Then I remembered reading a press release about Strauss's new "Salads in a Bowl". I wasn’t going to review this product because aside from the fact that the concept isn't new and Strauss has ready-made salads in a bag on the market for a really long time, if and when I buy pre-washed lettuce salads it's cheaper to buy the bag and not the ones that come in a bowl with dressing and "extras". So when I read the press-release I though anyone who's interested in pre-made salads must've tasted Strauss "bagged" versions by now. But at that moment standing in the supermarket trying to decide what to grab and eat and not be late to my next meeting the Strauss "Salad in a Bowl" seemed like the perfect solution.

I thought the Caesar salad looked really boring and decided to get the garden salad instead.
As with almost any Strauss lettuce based salads I have ever tasted, the vegetables in this Garden Salad were fresh and crispy.

Most of the lettuce was cut fairly roughly, leaving a lot of big pieces. At times I found it a bit challenging to get them onto the somewhat flimsy fork you get in the bowl, but in the end I somehow did manage to eat them too.

I actually really liked the big chunky sliced radishes. I always forget to add radishes to my salads so I was glad to have them in the mix.

To me the dressing seemed to taste like a honey mustard vinaigrette with added herbs. As I mentioned in my review of Osem's Silan (DateSyrup) Vinaigrette, I'm not a huge fan of honey mustard vinaigrettes. That having been said, I don’t think there was anything wrong with the dressing, but if I had an option I would've preferred something else.

Seeing as it wasn’t my dressing of choice I didn’t actually pour all the dressing into the bowl. Still it seemed to be a fairly generous amount of dressing for the 265 gram salad I had.
I was happy that I was able to reclose the bowl and the top stayed on securely. It made it very easy to take the left over salad home to be enjoyed later that day.
 
Bottom Line: I was glad to have the option to buy a fresh salad that was convenient to eat "on the go" at a fraction of the price it would cost to get the same thing at a café. According to the press release Strauss plans to add more salads to this Salad in a Bowl "line". I wouldn’t mind if they added a packet of seeds or nuts to the bowl, like they have in some of their salad bags. It would also be nice if eventually they would have a dressing option that's actually my dressing of choice.

265 grams salad in a bowl – 10.99 – 13.50

Kosher Rabbinate Eshkol Region



Disclaimer: All items were purchased by me. No one is paying me for this review. All opinions are my own.

Is now up on Esser Agaroth's Blog

  

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