If you're looking for a vegetarian-friendly lunch, Michigan's salad bars offer an impressive selection of hearty and refreshing options. From yummy greens with mushrooms and sunflower seeds to combinations with all kinds of flavorful fruits, these salad bars will bring diners only the freshest options. Here are the best in the state.
Whether in Okemos or East Lansing, Leaf Salad Bar gives you a whole new way to eat and enjoy salad: by the pound. Seriously, salad is $8.99 a pound therein, whether you go heavy on the black beans or artichoke hearts. Make a vegetable salad, fruit salad, or even chef salad—protein options are available to get the meat-eaters into the fray—and all of it available on a per-pound basis. For those who want a little more out of the deal, soups and smoothies are also on hand to make a full experience.
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Grand Rapids supermarket Forest Hills Foods has a lot of amenities, but one of these is a lot like a salad bar with extra personality. The “Fresh Divide” system has shoppers start with a bucket—an actual metal bucket—where they can pick up their choice of fresh fruits and vegetables. They then take this bucket to the Fresh Divide, where they can have said produce cut up in nearly any fashion. Chop, cube, dice or julienne, you'll have what amounts to a fresh-made bucket of salad made from produce taken right at the store itself. Throw in soups and a hot bar where items change daily and you'll have an incredible variety waiting.
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Also found in Grand Rapids, Bliss and Vinegar offers salad in so many options that you'll even have a choice of how it's presented. Whether it's served in a bowl with focaccia bread—known as “cupping it”—or “wrapping it," serving it in whole-grain flatbread, it's all still salad at the end of the day. Whether you make your own from pre-listed ingredients or select your own from a pre-built menu, your options here are second to none.
Detroit's Green Room Salads has been a popular part of Detroit for some time now, and when the place temporarily closed last April, it began a quest to find a new location. With that location now in hand and the place about to reopen, the excitement is palpable, which makes it a worthwhile entrant to our list of top salad bars. A build-your-own salad operation backed up by a wide range of soups, Green Room Salads looks to provide fresh produce complemented by tasty, hot additions to make salad a worthwhile addition any time of year.
With locations in Birmingham and Detroit, 7 Greens has sought to become the area's big name in salads. You can pick from several varieties of pre-made salad, or build your own using two greens and four Greenings—various toppings—to be finished off with a “homemade gluten-free sauce” and a slice of Dinklebrot bread. In case you've never heard of it, “Dinkle” is actually the German word for “spelt,” a grain commonly regarded as easier to digest than wheat.
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Salads Up in Ann Arbor boasts a wide range of options when it comes to salad. Whether you want one with shrimp or you want one on a flour tortilla, you'll see it right here. Like so many others, you can also build your own salad, starting with two greens, adding four different toppings, a crunchy element and a dressing. The range of options here is excellent, and there are even a range of smoothies on hand to drink with your salad.
Steak and salad tend to go well together and at Northville's Gaucho Steakhouse, they go together especially well. A Brazilian steakhouse complete with waterfall and Brazilian cherry wood for cooking, the salad bar offers 40 different items for customers served “in the round” to augment the overall experience. So if you're looking for salad wildly different from the ordinary, then head on in to Gaucho where it's a whole new concept.