Make Your Own Damned Salad

Earlier this week, we had lunch at Cafe Nola. I had a boring but edible chicken breast sandwich. Debbie had the Surf and Turf Salad, which is composed of heart of romaine, steak, shrimp, and shoestring potatoes. The problem is that they're into this post-salad-making riff on salad, i.e. "make your own damned salad." I'm sorry I don't have a picture. You get a large plate with a whole heart of romaine (i.e. a head of romaine with the outer leaves ripped off) in the middle. There's a bit of dressing sprinkled over it. Then you get some slices of steak, and a few grilled shrimp (which smelled to me like they could have been a bit fresher) on a skewer stuck into the heart of romaine at a 45 degree angle. Then you get a couple of puddles of what I guess was pesto in the corner. Then the whole mess is covered with shoestring potatoes. Oh so clever, these people, mocking our bourgeois salad sensibilities. So you have to first, push aside the shoestring potatoes strewn all over, then try to cut the head of lettuce sitting on your plate (stem-end pointed toward the customer, just to make the point) with a dinner knife, trying not to get it to fly apart and get dressing all over. Of course, the inside of the head of lettuce has no dressing, so you have to smear the lettuce around on the plate. I think it was $14.

Cafe Nola has sometimes been pretty good for dinner, but this was crap, and I'm not going back for lunch until they get some sense.