Souprise, souprise: salad is terrible
January 26, 2016
There comes a point in every person’s culinary odyssey when they’re asked a very crucial question– soup or salad?
Let’s look at what happens when you sit down at a restaurant. You get drinks, and then the waiter asks the life-changing question. If you pick salad, look at option 1. If you pick soup, look a option 2.
- “Oh my god, this salad is awful. I’m awful. What am I doing with my life? I need to stuff my mouth with as many appetizers as I can find. I need to feel the void this salad has created in my soul and my stomach. Not that it matters, everything peters off to the same inevitable end– death.”
- “This soup is the best thing I’ve ever experienced. I’m naming my child after this soup. Little Minestrone will grow up to be big and strong and carry on my family name. My own wedding wasn’t as good as this soup is. I’m just full enough that I don’t want an appetizer, but not full enough that I can’t eat my entrée.”
This question is quintessential to the dining experience. It can make or break your night. Do you want a house salad? Italian or ranch?
Trick question. You want soup because no one really wants a salad.
Eating a salad is like putting a topical filter on your profile picture to support a cause– you do it because it makes you feel good about yourself, not because you want to improve something. You probably order Coke Zero instead of regular because you’re “on a diet.”
News flash: loading bacon bits and ranch onto blades of grass isn’t healthy. It’s just you lying to yourself and saying you’ll lose weight when you know you won’t. Stop slacking and go run a mile.
Salads aren’t even satisfying. Or good. A salad is barely an appetizer, let alone a full meal. It’s something to occupy your mouth with while you wait for your real food. It keeps you busy. It’s a filler meal. When you’re eating it, you don’t have to make awkward small talk with your date.
English poet and William Cowper said that “variety is the spice of life.” He was right. There are so many varieties of soup, it’s not even funny.
Soup is very serious business, after all. Like the sandwich, which is commonly and astutely paired with soup, it comes in many flavors and types. It’s the chameleon food. Salad follows a cut-and-dry formula. Some kind of lettuce, some vegetables and a dressing. Sure, it gets the job done, but there’s no fun in a cookie-cutter meal.
Going to a Japanese restaurant? You may be tempted to order a ginger salad. You know, the same ingredients as always with a different dressing on top.
Or you could get miso soup. Or Eggdrop soup. Or coconut soup. It’s like a rainbow of endless broth-based choices, and they’re all delicious.
We’re just scratching the surface here. I haven’t even mentioned the plethora of chowders and gumbo that fill dinner menus everywhere.
Humans have been eating soup and its derivatives for centuries. Poor peasants in the 1500s had trouble getting food, but they could chop some chicken up and drop it into a broth.
If you asked a commoner what they wanted to eat, they would not voluntarily say “salad.” They would cry out for soup and beg for something that would fill their shriveled stomachs and keep them warm. It was an easy-to-make food for the disenfranchised citizens of less civilized times.
Somewhere in the past, two cavemen might have had a discussion. Rog O’Connell and his compatriot, Thag Allen, might have sat down to argue over what was best — the three blades of grass Rog has been gnawing on for an hour, or the mix of water and animal bone that Thag prepared for himself. It’s a tale as old as time, but Thag was definitely right.
