What I don’t get about croutons
You can’t spear them with a fork.
If you try, they break. You have to pile them on your fork with the rest of the salad, which already is too hard to eat. The lettuce leaves are almost always too big. You have to fold them, sometimes twice, to get a bite small enough for a human mouth.
But in high school I worked at a place called The Greenbriar Restaurant of Ottumwa, Iowa, where they pre-made the house salad at the beginning of each night. All the ingredients — chopped lettuce, carrot peel, cheese, ham, egg, olives, croutons, bacon (sad) and ranch sauce — were mixed together in a giant bowl, where it awaited reliable demand.
Yes, yes. Horrifying, I know. The Greenbriar house salad wasn’t pretty. But it was an Iowa hit. I liked it for a lot of reasons, even though the bacon was mixed in and I couldn’t do anything about it.
First, you didn’t have to mix a heap of ingredients together yourself. Why do most restaurants insist on giving me a tiny little plate with a stack of vegetables approaching Himalayan altitudes? I can’t fold the giant lettuce without toppling the pile into my lap. And forget about mixing it up with the dressing.
Second, I was proud that the house salad — like all salads at the Greenbriar — came in bowls, not plates. That meant you had a fighting chance to stir your own salad if you wanted extra fixins or something fancy, like Thousand Island.
But the best part about the Greenbriar salad was that the croutons, having been added in advance of serving, had time to soak up the ranch sauce and become more cake-like, which made them spearable. No more chasing the petrified chunkies around the plate! No more scarring the roof of my mouth!
Just a magical part of a manageable bite.
Suddenly, I understood the role of the humble crouton in the glorious explosion of sodium and fat that is An American Salad.
Why do they gotta make it such a Manhattan Project everywhere else?
Related posts
Iowa, food | Erin Alberty | 
March 10, 2009 8:00 am
By Rassles, March 10, 2009 @ 8:53 am
Um, PS: I like this header. Specifically, since I considered adding a header of my own of a list I made, in blue ink, on yellow lined paper.
Funny.
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By Sra, March 10, 2009 @ 9:26 am
Yeah, the header is sehr apropos.
I loved croutons as a kid, but just scoot them off to the side now, unless they are homemade. I agree with you that salads belong in bowls.
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By Churlita, March 10, 2009 @ 9:58 am
I found this blog through DMarks. I went to high school in Ottumwa (my sister still lives there)and remember the Green Briar.
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By Garrett, March 10, 2009 @ 10:22 am
Trap a crouton on a piece of lettuce, fold the lettuce over with your fork, then spear it. Although I’m not crazy about them, for the mouth-scraping reason I avoided Captain Crunch.
And I agree with everyone on the header.
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By Soul-Fusion, March 10, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
HA! I had this crouton issue at a fancy client lunch today and chose to ignore them. What I love though is a newish thing here in NYC is chopped salads. You add everything in and then they mix it and chop the entire salad into smaller than bite-size pieces. All flavors get integrated and no larger than mouth-size chunks of lettuce!
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By citizen of the world, March 10, 2009 @ 6:06 pm
I’m not a fan of croutons for ths same reasons, but soggy ones would gag me, I think. I have a low tolerance for soggy bread. Not that it would matte rsince the whole salad would be inedible if it had bacon mixed in!
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By Erin Alberty, March 10, 2009 @ 8:45 pm
Rassles – Do it, but also superimpose a small Foriegner cut-out photo from the Ian McDonald days.
Sra – I can’t believe anyone thought a plate would work.
Churlita – O-TOWN?!?! You don’t know how happy that makes me!! I graduated in 1997.
Garrett – It might work if the salad has a stable construction. But those vegetable-stack salads don’t give you enough room to fold the lettuce onto itself, much less envelop the crouton. And again, how do you get the crouton to the proper location on the lettuce leave if you can’t stab it?
Soul-Fusion – So, does it take like a year for what’s hot in NYC to reach SLC? Or more like 18 months? I may have to move to New York.
Citizen – But what of bread dipped in soup? That is a wonder. Especially if it’s bread with Munster cheese, which, if partly melted, stretches across a whole room!
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By Anonymous, March 11, 2009 @ 5:38 am
As a former employee, I can add a few comments ! The croutons were small and probably deep fried, so only the outside soaked up the ranch and they still had a crunch. They stuck to the lettuce leaves so if you could stab the lettuce, you got the croutons for free!
Several customers would ask to take the leftovers home (the salad was HUGE), though I never really understood why. It would be a soggy mess by the time they would get around to eating it. But as a prelude to a 16oz steak… I suppose anything goes. Ahh, Iowa :)
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By Garrett, March 11, 2009 @ 7:50 am
Erin – lot of croutons, lot of lettuce. Law of averages.
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By Deutlich, March 11, 2009 @ 10:50 am
bah! croutons bug me. haha
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By catherine s, March 11, 2009 @ 10:56 am
move to new york!!!! i have a reasonably comfortable couch to offer.
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By Mickey, March 11, 2009 @ 2:29 pm
I thought Ottumwa sounded familiar- I’ve been there! Just driving through, really. Chances are, I’ll never go back. Nothing against the place, it was just chance (and the highway) that took me there the first time, so the odds of a repeat are pretty slim.
And croutons are dumb.
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