Salad Times!

Workday carryout from Crisp N Green

If it’s Thursday and Lee and I are working from home, and I’m either still within the 36 hour window in which I don’t worry about money because I just got paid, or am too clutched about other things that I’ve neglected, not understood, or forgotten, to the point that I’m forced to make hurried purchases as I try to catch up--a phase that finds me whispering “fuck it” and buying $8 coughdrops at Walgreens as quickly as possible, as if speed could shield me, could prevent me from later standing in the kitchen and claiming, “We are hemorrhaging money,”--if these things align, which they always do, and Lee asks me, “Wanna go to Salad Times!?” the answer is always, “Yes.”

Salad Times! is Lee’s name for the healthy, fast casual chain Crisp N Green, a name she can never remember, a name I believe she forgets and replaces in order to render what should be an affront into brief joy. Calling Crisp N Green “Salad Times!” speaks to the unsavoriness of our desire to fork over $31 for Lee’s C’est Le Viche, a green salad with shrimp on top, and my favorite, the Seoul Bowl. The cost rises to $43 if we add a maple peanut protein smoothie, which tastes good in the sense that I imagine its graininess immediately embellishing my pecs. But, let’s say we don’t get the smoothie, which we didn’t last Thursday, when, after wedging our Yaris into half a parking spot, and not paying the meter, which we never do on our forays into Salad Times!, we still spent about $10 per 300 calories and were happy with our choices.

The counter inside the North Loop Crisp N Green reminds me of a space-aged baggage claim in The Jetsons, all white and curvilinear, so that you half expect your salad to float over to you. Crisp N Green salads don’t float, but they accumulate very fast. Behind the counter stands a salad poet, unacknowledged legislator of fiber and blood sugar, who meets you at the start of your salad’s journey, and who has somehow memorized the construction of over 20 salads while never hesitating or screwing up as your bowl advances down the line.

Also on the counter is a stand holding what is apparently the Crisp N Green magazine, Volume 22. On the cover a woman in a sports bra seems poised to toss you three large and colorful drinks that she is somehow holding. She wears a look suggesting a conspiracy between you and her. Behind her is the Crisp N Green logo, an ampersand with its tail stamped into a fork. The logo on the magazine is covered in green leaves, as if this particular Crisp N Green logo were also a Chia Pet. I tried to imagine the logo Lee might design for Salad Times! I didn’t dare reach for the magazine for fear of what I’d owe the woman on the cover if I did. There wasn’t time anyway. By then, the salad poet was waiting near the register with The Two Questions: Full dressing ok? Would we like chips on top? We each split the difference: light dressing and as many chips as the salad poet could deliver.

Leaving, we passed beneath a pair of faltering neon signs. The first read “Take Me Away;” the other, “All In Good Taste.” What is the meaning of these? I’ll tell you the meaning, lest you decide the signs are nonsense. No, the signs must be an uber-sense. They are likely magic spells, catalysts to the algorithm transforming the Sad Desk Salad of the 2010s into a Salad Event that you welcome in 2025 and eat from a bowl that has begun to compost before you finish.

For the rest of the afternoon, you’ll feel buoyed by your ascendant health. You won’t miss the $31. You are beyond sadness now, beyond fiscal concern. You have looped back around into a series of tiny, unexpected triumphs. The ampersand has dug its fork into you. This is the “away” to which you’ve been transported. You choose to believe you’ve travelled in good taste. In the aftermath, in which you feel both that you’ve eaten and not, I invite you to hi-five the air and exclaim, “Salad Times!”