New York City's best salads 🥗

Caesars, wedges, dinner salads, desk salads.

A lot of you have a problem with sweetgreen because they use seed oils in their dressings. I have a problem with sweetgreen because their establishment is unreliable and the salads suck. Anyone who says they only eat there because it’s “fast” and “near my office” is lying about the former — I’ve never had an order be ready when it was supposed to be. Regarding the latter, there’s probably also a Subway nearby, where you can almost certainly get a more delicious lunch than the bowl of rough, bland kale, bits of overcooked broccoli and inconsistently cooked tofu you’re used to. Or grow up and bring your own lunch. It’s not hard but I can’t really help you with that one. You could also seek out a salad that actually tastes good. This one I can help you with.

I love salads. If I’m alone I make myself a weird, crunchy, bitter one with radicchio and lots of mustard and rotisserie chicken to eat with hunks of bread and when I’m dining out I always add an interesting, delicious-sounding one onto the table’s order. Today’s list of excellent salads include the best ones I’ve had at restaurants around the city, broken down into Caesars, endive and fennel, bright and green, and wedges. Like an Italian wedge (sort of) in the West Village I recommend to everyone who eats there, or the crunchy-creamy beet, apple and chicken salad on the Upper East Side that I go out of my way to get anytime I’m remotely close to the area. And because I want you to better yourself and your lunch routine, this extensive list also contains a smaller list of what I’m calling casual salads, as in, salads to bring back to your desk or have delivered to your couch.

Let’s start there. My absolute favorite casual salad in this city is less than $10 technically titled “chicken platter.”