by Vivian Chen
I’ve never been a big fan of the salad. But with the rise of salad focused joints like SweetGreen, I’ve begun to respect the dish more, recognizing that a salad can be an intricate composition of flavors instead of a generic lump of vegetables doused in ranch.
Chop’t Creative Salad Company offers a new interpretation of salad craftsmanship that challenges typical salad conventions. A New York-based chain that added a location on Connecticut Avenue just off Dupont Circle this past spring, as well as one in Rosslyn, Chop’t finely chops all of their salads with a mezzaluna knife. While the experience of watching your food being hacked into bits by an employee wielding a large curved blade adds entertainment to the dining experience, I’m not entirely sold on the technique.
These salads are so mind-blowing they don’t show up on film. (Vivian Chen)
The menu claims that chopping will make the salad taste better, allowing for more thoroughly mixed flavors, and the elimination of unwieldy big leaves of lettuce. With big chunks of greenery gone, however, a lot of satisfying crunch is lost, while the dressing soaks the ingredients relatively quickly. Although the process guarantees that you don’t have to go hunting to get all of the ingredients in each bite, salads that contain artichokes or eggs threaten to turn into mush.
A Chop’t Creation worth trying, however, is their salad sandwich. On the outside, it looks exactly like a Chipotle burrito, yet upon eating it tastes exactly like a full salad. And as a bonus, the chopping technique helps ensure that dressing doesn’t leak from all sides, making it a healthy fast food that can be eaten entirely on the go.
For those with an indecisive streak, creating your own salad may take ages, with 66 different ingredients and 28 dressings to choose from. Although you can easily rack up an expensive salad by adding additional ingredients, custom salads are a better bet than the chef-designed salads (ranging from $6 to $9), which seem uninspired.
Most of the combinations are fairly banal and don’t take advantage of the more exotic and rare ingredients offered. The Grilled Asian Salad was refreshing, thanks to perfectly sweet mandarin oranges, but the crispness of the almonds and Chinese noodles were diminished by the chopping process. Moreover, the General Tso’s Chipotle dressing, despite its intriguing name, proved to be a confusing amalgamation of flavors: some light sourness reminiscent of a vinaigrette, a zesty aftertaste more peppery than spicy, and the savory-sweet of Americanized Chinese food to round it all out. The weakest link of the dining experience, however, was the piece of cold, hard, flavorless flatbread that came on the side.
A Chop’t salad is so guilt-free that I encourage indulging in the establishement’s blondies (only 99 cents each). So soft you feel like you’re eating cookie dough, blondies have the richness of warm dark chocolate chips, balanced by the crunch of walnuts, that keep a delectable treat from being too heavy or overpowering.
While Chop’t does not measure up to SweetGreen in the quality of its chef-designed salads, it matches the level of freshness and offers even more variety in ingredients. With ample seating and a rapid fire assembly line, Chop’t has no doubt already been added to the list of favorite Dupont lunch joints, for professionals and interns alike.
