All I Want for the Holidays Is a Darn Salad
Kit Kat Lounge & Supper Club. A swank joint featuring a line-up of delicious divas may not seem like the place to go looking for a good salad, but it is – and it’s also a super fun and stylish place to celebrate the holidays. For a well-composed bowl of greenery, we recommend Coconut Shrimp Salad (the white-flecked crustacean on a bed of greens with cabbage, carrots and cherry tomatoes in a mango-cilantro vinaigrette) or Strawberry Fields Salad (the berry, mixed greens, candied pecans and feta along with Moroccan spiced chicken). With that kind of healthy fare in front of you, you can enjoy the floor show – and with a foundation of all that healthy food, you can afford to have a cocktail or two.
Greek Islands. Long recognized as a place for excellent renditions of all the traditional Greek standards (egg-lemon soup, fried calamari, saganaki), Greek Islands is also the place for outstanding salads like the Beets in Olive Oil and the Sweet Peppers. There are also some items that don’t seem like salads but are, including Taramosalata, the pink paste of caviar (way better than it sounds) and Melitzanosalata, roasted eggplant with garlic, potatoes and (you guessed it) olive oil. With shouts of “Opaa!” ringing through the air, a Greek restaurant always seems like a good place for a party, and during holiday season, you can count on having a good time.
Long Room. Long Room is a fantastic bar with a few outstanding food offerings – not a huge menu, but enough interesting stuff to keep you happy as you indulge in craft beer and cocktails made by some of the most experienced mixologists in Chicago. Daily Grain Bowl is a mix of wheat berries and red wine vinaigrette, and the Veggie Rice Bowl is sweet potatoes and cauliflower. If those aren’t “salads” to you, consider the Big AF Salad and fill your pie hole with greenery. Happy now?
Steakbar. Steakbar is another one of those places that doesn’t sound like it’d serve any good salads, but Steakbar does. There’s a Brussels Sprouts Caesar Salad that is a lot easier (and probably healthier) to eat than the traditional Romaine lettuce version, and a Spinach Cobb Salad, with all the usual Cobb Salad ingredients (you know the drill: chopped egg, bacon, etc.) but with the (compared to iceberg lettuce) healthier and more attractive green leaves of spinach. There’s also an Avocado Salad and a Sweet Potato Bowl, if you’re not into the whole crunchy green thing.
Blackberry Market. Okay, let’s say you’re really into salads, and you order one all the time, even when you’re not necessarily trying to recover from holiday over-indulgence. If you’re that person – that kind of health-conscious person – Blackberry Market is your restaurant. Not to get all Forrest Gump on you, but they have chicken salad, tuna salad, fresh fruit salad, Dilly Egg Salad, Farm Veggie Salad, Harvest Chopped Salad, Blackberry Market Salad, Southwest Salad, Kale Caesar Salad and…lots more. Happy holidays!
