By Glenn Lozuke, Weaver Street Market Food House Executive Chef
Our salad bar has been the mainstay for quality, freshness, and variety for decades. Our culinary team has been working to bring even more vitality to our salad bar with more contemporary offerings, now in our stores. The vision for the bar is to continue to offer an elevated and curated eating experience.
Our Vision for Healthy Eating
Many months ago, we began a passionate discussion around health and well-being. We decided to reduce the amount of refined carbohydrates on our salad bar, and to offer more whole grains, to improve the healthfulness of the offerings. As we planned our upcoming Raleigh store, our focus on health inspired us. This past September at the Co-op Fair, we put the new offerings to the test and let our owners be the judge. Voila, success! Fair visitors were enthusiastic about the new offerings.
In the midst of bringing some new and exciting offerings to our salad bar, we wanted to be intentional and offer only our best products. The addition of a mezze section highlights amazing and healthful Mediterranean ingredients. This mezze bar continues to add layers of complexity and nuance to our salad bar.
Our Offerings
The recipes we selected include some of our classic items but also new creations. We added some new greens like arugula and even a signature tamari-dressed kale salad (created at the Hillsborough store) with sunflower seeds and dried cranberries. Tri-colored quinoa and buckwheat soba noodles with sesame seeds have been added as whole grains bases. We added a delicious array of raw and roasted vegetable offerings like smoky cauliflower, thyme roasted baby carrots, and crispy sliced watermelon radishes.
We kept our popular classics like the baked miso ginger tofu and garden farfalle salad. Our chicken is now house smoked. A Thai-style seafood salad made with coconut-based vinaigrette accented with lime and cilantro is an additional protein and sure to be a family or crowd pleaser. Tender baby mozzarella pearls are a new cheese addition and will be a kid favorite.
We added two new dressings, citrus saffron vinaigrette and curry yogurt with mint, as additions to our delicious lemon tahini and creamy cilantro dressings. Our new mezze bar offers a savory chickpea salad, tzatziki sauce, and the most amazing marinated feta. Our popular dolmas, gigante beans, and hummus are still mainstays of the bar.
Discover Our New Salad Bar!
Come in soon to try our new salad bar. Build your healthy creation, with vibrant greens as the base, topped with whole grain quinoa or noodles, a healthy dose of fresh or roasted vegetables, delicious protein, a drizzle of dressing or just some avocado oil, and a final shake of nutrient-packed hemp and flax seeds. You can’t go wrong!