Building your way to salad success

Princeton Dining Services does a good job with its salad bars. The salad stations at the different dining halls are all pretty dependable, and they’re almost interchangeable. But with salad bars, the devil is in the details. I’m here to walk you through the tiny little touches that will make or break your salad experience when dining across campus.

First up: Forbes. I could tell you that it has blueberries in the salad bar sometimes, and they’re delicious, but would you care? It’s Forbes. And no one walks to Forbes for meals — unless you're in Forbes.

Next is Rockey-Mathey — colloquially known as RoMa. The veggies are nothing special here, but the cheese selection is superb. But what really differentiates Rocky-Mathey from everywhere else are the cooked salads. They’re kind of like Wu’s infamous vegan bar, just better in every way. The cooked salads have a lot of funky vegetables and legumes — like beets, lentils, golden beets, golden lentils ... mainly beets and lentils. Also, they occasionally serve pineapple cole slaw. I know that sounds odd, but trust me: It’s really, really good.

The final kicker at RoMa is the Asian bar right next to the cooked salads. It often has cooked tofu, and cooked tofu beats raw tofu, hands down. The Asian bar often has nifty sauces, many of them spicy. You can layer this on top of salad for an unorthodox but delicious twist — and you’re probably going to have to, because RoMa’s dressing choices are pretty lackluster. Which isn’t that bad, though, because they have marinara sauce available every night. You can lather your salad in marinara and cheese. It’s a good time.

Heading down campus, we end up in Whitman. Whitman is the home of variety. Want bamboo shoots? They have that shit. Baby corn? Money in the bank. There was one time when they ran out of raisins for approximately four days — this bothers me because I really like raisins — but, other than that, they have just about everything you could want in a salad and keep the veggies well-stocked.

The main plus in Whitman is that the veggies are very predictable. There is zero uncertainty about what you're going to find, and there is no rotation. If you gotta have your baby corn, you can get it. Where Whitman really suffers is with its lack of dressings. Rocky-Mathey’s dressings are the same degree of terrible, but at least they have the Asian bar sauces and marinara every night. Whitman does not. Sometimes, Whit has really, really good soups, and you kind of use them as dressing, but you can’t bank on that.

Wucox is last on my list because it’s the best. Hands down, bar none. Don’t think it’s because of the vegan bar right next to the salad bar. The vegan bar is all right, but everything in it tends to be either too spicy, oily or stale — or some combination of the three. That said, if you mosey up to the vegan bar during a good rotation, you’re in the money. Keep your eyes peeled for the cabbage-fennel-orange dish: It's incredible.

The salad bar itself isn’t as well-stocked as Whitman's, but everything feels fresher. The vegetables rotate from day to day, which is a drag if you're the type of person who likes consistency. There are also some wafers of a radish-like vegetable that come around every once in a while, and they take an unbroken three minutes to chew fully. I have no idea what this vegetable is. If you do, please email me. This is not a joke.

Wucox really shines with its dressing. Rocky-Mathey has, like, two dressings. Same with Whitman. Wucox has at least 25 — and fresh red sauce every damn night. The only dressing you should care about, though, is CCC Fine Herb — aka “crack dressing.” CCC Fine Herb — named as such because it's a "Conscious Cuisine Choice" — is next-level. It tastes like herbs, honey, cream and black magic.

CCC Fine Herb ruins pretty much every other salad bar on campus. Salad is not the same without it. Vegetables are tasty and all, but dressing makes salad good. That’s the bottom line. After one taste of the crack dressing, you’ll never go back — but if you’re in a pinch, there’s always that Asian bar in Rocky-Mathey. And for those times when you desperately need to satisfy your baby corn fix, you know Whit has got you covered.