Salata — Restaurant in Austin

I have been looking for a good salad restaurant for awhile now. I am so glad Salata is right there. It has everything you could want. Every time I have been there the food choices have been very fresh. Lunch rush seems to start about 11:30 and end about 12:45. You can get your food very quickly during this time through their set up, but it can be difficult to find a table. I have not been for dinner.

When you walk into the building, you are given the option of a regular salad, small salad or wrap.

Next you pick your salad base - Salata mix (romaine, spring and spinach), Romaine, Spring mix, Spinach, and Kale. You can mix as many bases as you want together.

Then you get to pick your veggies (as many as you want). They have tons of choices from raw tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes, red onion, cabbage, mushrooms, carrots, broccoli, bean sprouts, alfalfa sprouts, radishes, snow peas, bell peppers, jalapenos, peas, chickpeas, kidney beans, black beans, beets and more.

After that you pick your cheese, fruits and a couple of seeds/nuts. They are fairly limited on cheese. I think the choices are blue, feta, parmesan and a mix. Fruits often include grapes, apples, berries, strawberries and pineapple. Seeds/nuts include walnuts, sunflower seeds and I think pecans.

I know that they offer a variety of dressings, but I always get the herb vinaigrette and ginger lime vinaigrette mixed together. They offer a balsamic and ranch too. I don't think that they offer choices like 1000 Island or French.

Followed after dressings is the meat section. I am vegetarian and don't eat anything from this section. They do have veggie proteins like quinoa, tofu and falafel - these cost extra.

You have the option of 2 different types of bread that are served with the salad. I only got one once. I thought it was very dry and not very good. The regular salad is more than filling. You can add a soup. The broccoli soup was okay at best, but still edible. It needed either a spice or a stronger cheese base. I have never had the tomato soup, but it looked good.

In the last section, you can add add-ons like avocado, chips, and artichoke hearts. They mix the salads up here or make the wraps.

Even when the place is super busy, it doesn't take very long to get through the line. Prices are about the same as most restaurants. For instance a regular veggie salad with no protein costs $8 bucks. This is cheaper than grabbing a salad at something like Applebee's or California Pizza Kitchen and way healthier too. With extra add-ons, though, the price can get a little high.

To Salata - I would love it if you offered cauliflower, goat cheese and straight up cheddar. Maybe a few other...

The love I had for this place was short lived, unfortunately. I used to LOVE THIS PLACE. Recently the whole staff was replaced basically. I only recognize one girl in there now (My family and I were very close to the old employees), which is fine, but the new staff you brought on are cruddy! All of the new employees are very rude and stingy. It went from me going in and buying a big salad for the large amount of money I pay (really? $17 for one salad??) to still paying an outrageous amount and leaving with less salad than before! Not only that, but the quality of your produce has gone down. Let me be clear, I’ve never had issue like this till recently when all of these new staff members were brought on and now it’s every time I go in there. Tonight I went in after work to pick up dinner for my mom and I. The woman at the counter was very rude to me to start off with. I asked why the salad was so brown and she said she “didn’t know”. She pulled out another tub of romaine that was droopy, wet and even more brown. When I asked for more romaine on my moms salad the woman LITERALLY FOUGHT WITH ME! It was a battle to get any ingredients on my salad. When we got down to the avocado and such, I wanted 3 pieces and my mother wanted 1. They only had 2 small sections and they told me since they were about to close (IT WAS ONLY 8:10 - THEY DONT CLOSE TILL 9???) they didn’t want to cut a whole other avocado. Avocados at HEB are $1, for 1/4 of an avocado at salata they want $1. If I’m going to be paying 4x the price for my produce at your restaurant, then cut it for me when I ask!!! This is ridiculous. Not only would they not cut fresh avocado, but the ones they ended up giving us were EXTREMELY oxidized and brown. At the end of the line my moms small salad fit pretty snuggly in her Togo box and my LARGE salad fit just right in a small Togo box also. It’s salad! Not gold! You people make it very hard to want to eat healthily at your restaurant. It’s disappointing. I’ve been a loyal Salata customer for months now, and it’s finally coming to an end. I...

Salad chains. Unless it's sweetgreens on the East Coast, I typically want nothing to do with it. Usually boring, calorie-laden dressings, with ingredients of questionable freshness and provenance.

Salata is getting me back on the bandwagon. Not because it's anything like sweetgreens (if you're ever in DC, Boston, or NYC .... go), but because you're getting fresh, healthy, and reasonably priced food that comes in relatively large portions and will leave you feeling good about yourself. A few things that set Salata apart:

Like Subway, you go down the line and choose everything you want in your salad -- and they have something like 200 choices -- and you can have as many/as much as you want. Want two more scoops of snow peas? Go for it. Want triple cheese? Your wish is their command. Still the same price. They have the calories of every single item listed to help you make better choices (and this is most relevant when it comes to the dressing - you'll think again about ordering two scoops of ranch). Their protein options consist of multiple types of chicken, seafood and tofu. No red meat in sight. I love love love my red meat, but don't mind that it's not available (it's not great for my body and a disaster for the environment). You can also make your salad a wrap, and they always have two types of soups Their large portion is huge, and will be enough for two meals for most people

While the ingredients aren't listed as organic, the price is right and everything is always totally fresh without that sleazy feeling you get when things are coated in MSG.

They also have a great selection...