When chef Roy Choi set out to make the perfect salad for people who hate salad, he knew exactly the feeling he was chasing: that moment when you’re 13 or 14 — when everything about you feels scrutinized: your body, your choices, your appetite — and suddenly, you’re set loose at a TGI Friday’s or Sizzler, or even the fake-plant-covered solarium of a Wendy’s. No rules. No adults hovering. Just you and the salad bar, with its chilled metal bins and endless possibilities. It felt like freedom.
“This salad is for people who never really liked to eat salads,” he told me in a recent Zoom conversation. “But the one salad we did like to eat? The salad bar salad.”
