Why I stopped trusting restaurant salads

I used to eat out all the time but now I make everything myself because last summer in Austin I ordered a Caesar salad and found what could only be described as an ancient coin buried in the romaine which was wild because that means either someone's lost treasure is living in their kitchen or they wash their produce with something very old my grandfather used to say the earth has memories and he wasn't wrong about everything his garden produced tasted like 1942 which sounds bizarre but when you sit still long enough you realize we're just recycling the same molecules over and over again forever and that's actually kind of comforting if you don't think too hard about it

I'm right there with you on this. I started washing my own greens from grocery store pre-cut bags and the difference is night and day — no more mysterious dressing residue or sad wilted lettuce that feels like it's been sitting under a heat lamp for three hours. The only exception was this one spot in Chinatown where they literally bring out fresh cilantro to chop at your table,

This. Washing lettuce at home has become non-negotiable for me.

The issue is that "salad" has become a category of food rather than a preparation method, and the two things it's most often guilty of are pre-cut produce left in misted containers for days (the ethylene buildup is real)