Elephant & Castle

This post has less to with this restaurant – which is a slightly-above average locals type place found in every neighborhood – but with restaurants of like this one. And it has to do with salad. Like many people, I eat a lot of salad. Sometimes because I like it, and often because I am supposed to be watching my weight. Dressing on the side, never the Caesar, yada yada yada.

So tonight I ordered the smoked chicken salad ($13.75, which is a little spendy in my book, for this kind of a place). It came in a salad bowl the size of a mixing bowl, with whole leaves of lettuce and then quarters of avocado, a few big chunks of tomato and some roasted hazel nuts. And a big lump of the smoked chicken placed on top. All the mixings were there, but here’s my gripe: how to eat a salad like this? Bowls are are not meant for cutting. And if you’re like me, you like a little bit of each ingredient on every forkful. So I sent the salad back and asked them to chop it. I really really hate salads served in mixing bowls. It makes me feel like I am eating out of a trough. I am not a farm animal. I am human. With a human sized mouth that needs small little pieces so I can fit them gracefully into that mouth.

Anyway, they brought the salad back with only the chicken chopped, so I hacked away at it and made it into something manageable. And it tasted good. But in any event, the place only gets one belly up.

Where: 68 Greenwich Ave., (212) 243-1400