Creative Food Towers That Destroyed Salad Bars in China

Hey there! What's happening out there in cyberspace? Anyway...it's great to see you. Thanks for clicking by. Fill your mug and grab hold of a virtual treat. Maybe stack two or three on your plate. Since we're talking about stacking, here's some Chinese ingenuity for you...

If you could only make one trip to the salad bar, how would you go about carrying as much food as possible in one go? To deal with this predicament, some ambitious Chinese foodies invented “salad stacking” – the art of stacking vegetables, fruits and croutons on a single plate in order to create extremely tall and elaborate salad towers.

This fad began when Pizza Hut restaurants in China introduced salad bars serving veggies and fruits to promote healthy eating. When the buffets opened, customers were given a one trip opportunity to fill their plates with as much food as they could. Seeing as they couldn’t go back for seconds, hungry patrons decided to utilize the small plates they were given to their full potential and started piling up their food with so much care and precision that complex structured meals were born.

The fad became very popular on the internet where enthusiastic “salad engineers” posted pictures of their monster creations and even exchanged techniques for making the tallest towers. According to most of them, the trick is to build a stable and straight base and cover it with carrot sticks glued together with salad dressing so that it can hold the actual salad “structure”. All kinds of goodies can go on top – melon slices, peaches, cucumbers, croutons, oranges etc., depending on preference. These must be placed in such a way that the pieces interlock and create a mesh. The entire thing can be topped with a bit of salad dressing and smaller foods for decorative purposes.

Now I have to tell you that I coined the phrase 'Salad Engineering' about 10 years ago in Thailand where the same thing happens in Pizza Hut and Pizza Company salad bars. There though, it is college girls who will go into a restaurant in groups, say four girls, and with one small side plate, feed all four girls. I suggested that that had learned to do it in a course offered in Thai universities - and that course was 'Salad Engineering'. So there! Eat your heart out you Chinese pizza places you. Though I have to admit they've taken it to skyscraper proportions.

See ya, eh!

Bob