Saladworks

My hubby took me here and it was DELISH! I am SO SO glad there is a place to get a decent salad in Athens! I tried the Nuevo Nicoise — it was great! I asked for only a little dressing and the whole salad was Yummy. :) I think I’m going back tomorrow!

Yuck! So, my negative experience here, and the current lack of reviews, probably from people who are too nice to say anything, finally inspired me to create a Unilocal account. To be fair, normally I would not have tried a downtown chain at all, I mean, Athens has so many great local choices… but I was in a hurry and had a buy-​1-​get-​1 coupon so I thought I would give Saladworks a try.
What can I say, I’m pretty sure I could have gotten a better, fresher, tastier salad out of the vending machine at work. Saladworks has a selection of signature salads as well as a «build your own» option. None of the ingredients looked that appealing so I decided to go with one of their set-​ups. I got the «Greek Salad,» mainly because the meat looked suspiciously processed and this seemed to be the most appealing vegetarian option. The vegetables had that over-​refrigerated, flavorless quality. Even the pepperoncinis were bland. You would think that a restaurant that specializes in salads would have some interesting homemade dressings, but the «bistro balsamic» I chose for my salad at the recommendation of the employee who made my salad sure did taste like a pre-​prepared, bottled dressing to me… and of course my salad was SWIMMING in the stuff. My boyfriend got the «Buffalo Chicken Salad» which was again swimming in dressing and had the puzzling inclusion of the aforementioned bland pepperoncinis and whole multicolored (and of course, stale) tortilla chips.
It’s annoying enough that the place has the slogan «Fanatic’ly Fresh» when everything is hyper-​preserved and flavorless, but what really got me was NO TAP WATER? Okay? This seems pretty sketchy to me because, while all of the sodas are bottled, the place still has sweet tea, so clearly they do have water, they just don’t want you to drink it. I mean really, go ahead and charge me for the cup of ice, that’s fine, I know restaurants pay for that stuff and that they make profits off of soft drinks and all, but don’t make me drink a nasty bottled water and create totally unnecessary litter than I am going to feel guilty about just because you are cheap.

Salads come with your choice of a white or wheat roll. Mercifully the wheat roll was edible, the salad sure wasn’t. The atmosphere was pretty sterile and corporate looking but I’m not really sure you can blame Saladworks for that entirely, everything on that side of that strip of Clayton kind of has that look. So… normally salads at Saladworks are $ 7.99. If you are looking for a nice tasty salad downtown for lunch I would suggest Last Resort or Transmet or DiPalmas, it will certainly be better and it might even be cheaper. My salad was so gross I was actually offended.
— I neglected to add previously that, at least on my visit, there was no tip jar. I’m not really a huge fan of having to leave a tip at chain restaurants, but as so many of the other downtown chains in Athens (Subway, Doc Chey’s, etc) have them, the exclusion made me wonder. «Salad Don’t Work!»