Salad bar

A salad bar is a buffet-style table or counter at a restaurant or food market on which salad components are provided for customers to assemble their own salad plates. Most salad bars provide lettuce, chopped tomatoes, assorted raw, sliced vegetables (such as cucumbers, carrots, celery and green or red bell peppers), dried bread croutons, bacon bits, shredded cheese, and various types of salad dressing. Some salad bars also have additional food items such as cooked cold meats (e.g., chicken, ham, or tunafish), cooked beans (e.g., chick peas or kidney beans), deviled eggs, cold pasta salads, corn chips, bread rolls, soup, and fresh cut fruit slices.

The concept has been extended to "hot food bars", which offer a selection of hot foods in a similar fashion. When sold by weight, the hot foods are often assessed at a higher charge than foods from the "cold foods bar".

There was a dispute over which restaurant first introduced the salad bar. The Freund's Sky Club Supper Club in Plover, Wisconsin is believed to be the very first salad bar. According to Russell Swanson of Swanson Equipment, In 1950 in the small town of Stevens Point, WI who had specialized in the manufacturing of bars for taverns had said "I'm most proud of designing and building that first salad bar." The Sky Club is still managed by Eric & Patrick Freund. Also, a 1951 Yellow Pages listing refers to the "salad bar buffet" at Springfield, Illinois restaurant The Cliffs. Hawaiian restaurant Chuck's Steak House claims to have had the first salad bar in the 1960s. Rax Restaurants – a Midwestern fast food chain similar to Arby's – claims to have pioneered the salad bar in the mid-1960s.

The New York Times claims that salad bars first began appearing in the late 1960s "in midprice restaurants like Steak and Ale, featuring bona fide salad fixings to keep customers busy and happy until the real food came. " Restaurant entrepreneur Norman Brinker has been credited with inventing and popularizing the salad bar. Other accounts, however, have the Salad Bar making its debut in 1964 at Andy's Mini-Diner, a South Florida Seafood restaurant. Owner, Angelo "Andy" Gangi claimed to have come up with the idea for the salad bar while observing military men in the chow lines at the officer's club of the Homestead Air Force Base, an eatery Gangi managed during the late 50's.

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