How Sweet It Could Be

When Sweetgreen opened this summer, the media drooled all over the health-conscious joint without once wondering why its founders, four recent Georgetown grads, had become so obsessed with frilly little salads and low-fat yogurts. I mean, dudes, you’re all in your early 20s. Act your age, for chrissakes. Go wolf down some mini-burgers and milkshakes. Do it now before the doc forces you to. I guaranteed that on your deathbed you won’t be begging for a nice mesclun salad with balsamic vinaigrette.

I have some other unsolicited advice, too, based on my first visit this past weekend:

• Recycle. If you’re going to go all eco-friendly with the décor and the organic ingredients, you need to start a more conscientious recycling program for your plastic salad containers. Now, I know you offer the option of purchasing reusable Tupperware-like bowls at $6 a pop, but no one bought one the day I was there. Frankly, I didn’t even know you had them until I read about it later. So make it easy on everyone: Post a sign telling customers to drop their used plastic containers in a bin that you will personally take to the nearest recycling center.
• Switch salad containers. You want flatter, wider containers, not the bucket-shaped ones you have now. Why? Because the dressing collects in a pool at the bottom of your containers, turning the greens and things into mush.
• Stop overdressing your salads. The first rule of salad-making is to toss your greens with only the lightest coating of dressing.
• Rethink the Bondi salad. It’s a mishmash of cultures and flavors---mushy grilled chicken, mushy avocado, mushy sweet corn, mushy mixed greens, mushy hearts of palm, and rock-hard wasabi peas---with no particular focus.
• Train your staff better. If you’re going to boast about “chef crafted” salads, make sure your employees know the name of the chef. The dude making my curried chicken salad--which was not bad at all but needs more of the almond-crunch counterpoint---had no idea.