Substandard Salad

(Mister Takeout can be found on Twitter @mistertakeout and on FB as John Q Takeout)

When I first ran the idea of a takeout and delivery lunch review blog by a trusted colleague, his response was less than enthusiastic. "Takeout food is stomach fill, not fine dining. People - including you - are sitting in their cubes sweating over deadlines and shoveling food in their faces so they can keep their blood sugar up. They barely even taste it. What's to review?"

And while he had a point, I decided after about fifteen seconds of thoughtful consideration that my colleague was wrong. Being forced to eat lunch at our desks every day is bad enough - why should we have to settle for crappy food as well? And so I have made it my mission to seek out the best takeout and delivery lunches in Chicago, or, failing that, give deadline-sweating shovel-munchers everywhere a guide to where not to spend their hard-earned dollars.

Some things to know:

1) I don't just review the food. I dissect everything from the service time to the packaging.

2) I rate on a scale of 1-10, one being, "Oh my God, this is worse than Denny's," and 10 being, "For the next 15 minutes I love my job and everyone I work with." I assign a rating to each category and average them out at the end. The food quality is more heavily weighted than the other categories, however.

3) There is no three. Two things just aren't enough for a proper list.

And now, let us break the champagne bottle on the prow of Mister Takeout's inaugural review.


Today's Takeout Lunch Establishment

Corner Bakery Cafe #245
444 N. Michigan
Chicago, IL
312-596-0793


The Order

Harvest Salad With Roast Chicken
$8.13 with tax


The Wait

I walked in at noon to find a very short line. The cash registers were well staffed and I was able to order by 12:05. After paying, I was given a plastic disc with an order number and politely asked to sit on a comfortable couch while they prepared my salad. Seven minutes later I was handed a bag with my order by a smiling waitress, thanked politely and asked to come again soon. Not bad at all for a high-end fast food chain masquerading as a corner deli.
RATING: 10


The Packaging

Two words: landfill city. The salad container had its own bag, which was then placed in another bag that contained the individually vacuum-sealed, plastic-wrapped condiments, utensils and napkins. Three packets in all. Even the bread sticks, which could have easily fit inside the salad container, came wrapped in four layers of paper napkins. Of all the packaging, only the napkins were recyclable. I do accept a certain amount of responsibility here - ordering out is not the greenest way to "prepare" a meal - but the Corner Bakery Cafe Harvest Salad packaging was over the top.
RATING: 2


The Presentation

Food can smell good and taste good, but if it doesn't look good, it isn't good. After finally managing to extract the salad container from its many layers of packaging, my appetite was immediately stoked. The placement of the grilled chicken, sliced green apples, raisins, walnuts and bleu cheese crumbles atop the baby greens was an asymmetrically balanced feast for the eyes. A touch of red or orange somewhere would have made the presentation perfect, but Corner Bakery has a good thing going here.
RATING: 8


The Food Itself

The first thing I noticed as I began to dig in was that the container was too shallow to properly mix salad ingredients, forcing me to eat my meal... piecemeal. So that's how I'll review the food.

Mixed baby greens: fresh and nicely textured. Someone at store #245 is paying attention to produce.

Grilled chicken: no visual evidence of grilling here. Limp, slimy and seasoned with WAY too much pepper.

Sliced green apples: crisp, slightly tangy and beautifully colored. By far the best part of the meal.

Raisins: stuck together in one gelatinous clump. Even had the container been deep enough, I would not have been able to separate the raisins to mix them in.

Walnuts: stale, mushy and tasteless. Ruining walnuts is kind of like burning water, but Corner Bakery managed to pull it off.

Bleu cheese: crumbly and pleasantly tangy. I was glad it was there to help make the raisins and walnuts edible.

Vinaigrette dressing: more oil than anything else. I wish I had eaten the salad without it.

Bread sticks: like matzoh with cheap Italian seasoning and too much salt. Threw them away after just one bite.
RATING: 4


In Corner Bakery Store #245's defense, they made a better Harvest Salad than I could have myself. The service was great, the price wasn't too bad and the ingredients were healthy. On the other hand, my overall impression was of a salad that was prepared earlier that morning along with dozens of others and placed in a walk-in refrigerator until lunch time. I honestly believe Corner Bakery buys decent ingredients, and a freshly tossed Harvest Salad would have been delicious and satisfying. What I got instead was something that did a decent job of filling my stomach while I worked to meet that latest deadline.

OVERALL RATING: 5