ottawa foodies

The Sardegna Superfood ($14) is my current go-to salad here. I hesitated to try it for a long time because I was afraid that its use of sweet potato, mint, and fruit would make for a too-sweet overall effect. Not so! It was delicious.

As listed on the menu, it contains: baby kale, roasted broccoli, sweet potato, pumpkin seeds, quinoa, avocado, cabbage, cucumber, mint, beets, parsley, local fruit, and tahini dressing. Loved it all!!

In the winter, the local fruit was frozen cherries. These worked really well! Another time the fruit was crisp fresh apple.

They officially open this coming Monday!

I had the pleasure of trying an Italian Cobb salad during their menu testing last week. Unsurprisingly, the quality of ingredients—most notably the pancetta—was very high. I found the portion size to be a little small for the $15 ticket price but I gave feedback on that and was assured that they're still tweaking things. A nice touch is that they offered a slice of excellent rustic bread with a dip of olive oil.

Lollo's La Bottega Nicastro heritage of high quality and business acumen pretty much guarantees it'll be a huge success. This small airy space offers the following products:

* A selection of preset salads.
* Build-your-own custom salads.
* Refrigerated fruit cups, yoghurt, chia puddings, and gourmet bottled beverages.
* Italian espresso beverages.
* Doughbaby doughnuts.
* Pastries and sweet breads (from True Loaf if I remember correctly).

I work practically next door so I'll certainly be following up with more details!

First time trying one of the salads here and I was really impressed! The Francesca ($12) involved a massive pile of arugula, tuna, white beans, and grape tomatoes, all tossed with a nice olive oil and some lemon.

It tasted great and made for a super healthy light lunch. 😍

I'm in love with #20 on the menu: BBQ lemongrass pork on spicy salad. #25 (just the salad) is equally enjoyable. Spicy with lots of peanuts, crunchy sprouts, cukes, shredded lettuce and carrots, and spiced up with chilis. Very yummy!

The salads are what I come here for. For $3 you can get a decent sized salad, what they call "side" but most restaurants would call "small". Their small, for $5 is much larger. You can mix the different types, usually there is a green salad, a vegetable salad, and a couple of grain/starch based ones. The guy makes a serious fattoush.

After seeing Captain Caper's picture, we expected the Warm Beet Salad to be a miniscule thing; it was not! Very generous, with mild and tasty beets. The goat cheese was rich and creamy, and the whole thing came together well.

For sheer flavour, I preferred my Charcuterie Plate, but this is a nice menu option.

Warm Beet Salad.

'C’est Bon' tarragon goat cheese, apple vinaigrette, pickled fennel, purple and golden beets.

Very nice. The flavors made some chamber music in my mouth.

Had an amazing salad here the other night for a light supper. There are many places that serve an upscale salad, several of which fall short. This one is stellar.

Referred to as “Lettuces” on the new spring menu, the large bowl was brimming with bibb lettuce with cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes but the flavours came from the mixture of cranberries, candied quinoa and carrot‐lemon puree and then lightly covered with a mint‐lemon dressing. To top it off it was beautifully presented with a smear of cranberry puree which looked like it had been painted onto the bowl.

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Was planning on going low-carb and getting a salad but was seduced by the house made sambuzas they have.

I find chicken (in this case mixed) salads are a good way to guage the quality of a shawarma place. Chicken was above average and beef was tender and tasty. I find beef at most shawarma places is gristly, overcooked and practically inedible and was impressed. Garlic sauce was good and hummus was fairly average. I'd definitely get it again. This one is a small, I asked for a larger plate as it was way too much food to eat in a civilized fashion from the small plate.

I don't think I'd order the sambuza again- i found it bland and a little greasier than I would have liked. Not nearly as tasty as the ones that are sold at the Damas Supermarket.

Enjoyed this Chicken Shawarma Salad (Large $8.99) from the Kanata location today. This is kind of an Atkins/South Beach diet version of a shawarma platter -- salad with dressing and meat but no rice, potatoes, pita, garlic sauce, or hummus. The meat is about half what you'd get on a platter, so the value isn't as good. However, if you really just want a salad this is an excellent alternative to fast food options.

Oh, and they have pickled turnips now! When they first opened they only had strips of pickled red cabbage.

Ordered the side roasted beet salad with the black bean soup to takeout for $7.

Arugula with roasted beets, orange segments, goat cheese and a citrus beet dressing. Very tasty and good counter to the beef cheeks.

With my breakfast, I ordered the house salad. It was a great size, and I have a love of Von's house dressing. I enjoyed the addition of less common veggies in the salad, mainly the radish and the olives. Delicious!

"Mushroom salad" consists of grilled and slightly marinated or flavoured red peppers, mushrooms, artichokes and feta cheese on a bed of roquettes. An excellent, light yet tasty side to a pizza.

They also have a Greek and a Caesar salad. I have tried the Greek and it is equally good. It's nice to have other good items on the menu of a pizza joint to meet everyone's cravings in one order.

When ordering a classic dinner, you get a choice of a salad as appetizer: the Caesar salad or the iceberg wedge. While both are good, I just love the wedge. There is a choice of ranch or blue cheese dressing and again I always have the blue cheese option because it's do good. It is also covered with real chunks of bacon that is made in house (I asked).

The Whole Earth Salad ($12) has gone up in price but it's still reasonable for what you get compared to other salad offerings in the area.

Wifey and I shared a salad and a poutine for lunch one day. The Whole Earth Salad ($9.99) was really top notch with an eclectic assortment of greens, legumes, seeds, berries, veggies, and feta, with a nice cilantro lime dressing.

The Quebec Poutine was good enough but I think the daily-special Loaded Fries might be a better choice here.

Two thumbs up for the Chicken Caesar with Light dressing.
I've had it many times throughout 2011-2012 at the Albert St. location.
Lately I've taken to customizing it: hold the bacon and croutons; add avocado and carrots. Yummy and low-cholesterol ...

By the way, I agree about the Asian (or is it Thai?) salad - I didn't enjoy it either.

I have no idea why I always try “thai flavoured” things at non-thai restaurants because in my experience they are always horrible. These faux-thai dishes are either made with peanut butter or are way to sweet. (Freshii was my last horrible thai-flavoured sandwich-shop offering).

I picked up a 10 dollar, horribly sweet, uninspired thai salad at Green Rebel this afternoon. It was composed of baby spinach, crispy Chinese noodles, red pepper, cilantro, mint, mandarin oranages, tasteless tofu and it was tossed in a sickly sweet lime dressing. This was hard to eat, but since it cost 10 bucks and spinach is good for me, I managed to eat the whole thing.

I’m not going to be critical of the entire establishment; mainly because there was a huge line (so they must be doing something right) and some of the other salads I saw being prepared looked great.

The Thai-salad was also skimpy compared to the other salads I saw being prepared. It seems the tiny sprigs of cilantro and mint counted as two toppings, whereas if I ordered a cobb salad, I would get big helpings of bacon and such...

They do have a signed picture of Gordon Ramsey – that’s pretty cool!

I partially blame myself for ordering thai flavoured stuff, but at the end of the day, it was a horrible salad.

Well I on the other hand had an awesome experience. Went here for lunch yesterday & had the most amazing tuna nicoise salad. Canned tuna, but whatever - the salad was HUGE and all the toppings were super fresh. My companion had the wine & cheese salad, which was greens, onions, strawberries, brie, goat cheese & walnuts. Both salads were awesome.

My only complaint is that they close at five. I live, not work, in the area, so the only time I can go to Green Rebel is if I'm working from home. I'd love if they would just stay open until 6 or 6:30 so I could pick up a salad for dinner sometime!

Went for lunch here today and what a disappointment! They ran out of dressing for the salad I ordered, but still served it to me anyways. When I got back to my office -- I was famished! -- it was so dry and bland, I wound up throwing it out. $9 for lettuce and onions?! If you're gonna do something, do it right.

For those seeking good options for coleslaw, the take-away counter at Loblaws has a "creamy crunchy coleslaw" with dill. But the dressing isn't really creamy. And there really isn't much there. Oh well. It was also on sale, so it's not as though I lost much by buying some.

I'm working out near College Square again this summer *sigh* and finding myself more often goign to Loblaws for a quick bite. Their salads are pretty decent and the bean salads and such can sometimes be found for half off (I had an edamame and tomato salad yesterday). I might replicate a few of these in the future, but for now it seems like a cheap and tasty lunch option.

Ok...I finally figured out how to get my pics of our New Year's Eve dinner from La Roma off the new camera and onto the computer!
This is my starter salad which was the Insalata La Roma...romaine, onions, green peppers, artichokes, tomatoes and fried scallops with a really nice light vinagrette. I've never had scallops fried like that before so I was expecting them to be chewy but they definitely weren't!

Had a very nice side tossed-salad with my burger today, instead of fries. The veggies were all fresh. They had a choice of maybe 5 different dressings, I chose the blue cheese which was delicious.

I'll order it again.

I know you are only supposed to confirm links to exceptionally good items - but this is my favourite salad in town. The greens are always fresh and the dressing is subtle but amazing. It's best paired with the complimentary rosemary bread.

This was the Grilled Chicken Salad ($14.50) my friend ordered. Mixed green salad with marinated eggplant and balsamic dressing.

My friend didn't say anything. So, I guess it was acceptable.

This is the warm chicken breast salad with a creamy coconut sauce ($7.50). The coconut sauce was a bit spicy and was very tasty. The chicken was tender and not dry. I enjoyed this salad more than the food at L'Orée du Bois.

Thai "Yum" salad is very deceptive - it looks like a nice, palate-cooling salad but in actual fact can be extremely spicy! The Neua Nam Tok (#15) has thinly sliced BBQ beef, fresh mint, chillies, shallots and lime. Extraordinary!

Their Salad Fougères ($9.75) my husband ordered was also excellent! Crunchy sautéed lardon bacon tossed with mixed greens, Papineauville chèvre and their homemade vinaigrette.

Me and another girl friend ordered their roasted garlic caesar (dinner portion) with additional grilled chicken breast. Their so-called signature Caesar dressing was okay. (I gave 2.8 stars out of 5). Again, good portion and I had hard time to finish it as well.

P.S. The two crostinis included in the salad (put on the side) were not fresh at all. We only had one bite.

Two girl friends ordered their grilled chicken salad (chicken breast, red corn tortilla strips, cilantro, tossed with honey-lime peanut vinaigrette and peanut sauce). The portion was huge and one girl friend can't finish it.

This was the Endive Beet Salad ($14) my friend ordered.

Because we got a window seat, the picture turned out pretty nice with natural lighting. I think this is the best food photo I have taken.

If I'm in the Kanata/Bell's Corners area I usually order take out from Zolas and I'm always sure to have their cesar salad.

The dressing isn't the typical creamy dressing. You can taste the anchovies and garlic, lots of parmesan cheese, and they give you a slice of lemon too. It's just... perfect.

Artichoke Sesame Seed Salad
A Zola's Signature Item

I love artichokes, and this creamy salad is one of the best ways I've ever had them prepared. Totally ADDICTIVE! And the good news is you can also buy it as take-out from Zola's Pasta Shop.

This was Medley of baby greens, honey and cider vinaigrette that my friend ordered (Note: From their 3-course Table d'hôte menu, you can order salad, soup of the day or Chef's inspiration to start.)

I forgot to ask my friend how her salad was. But from the photo, the salad looked good.