Earlham Street Salad Stall

I felt surprisingly warm on my lunchtime wander today. Maybe it's milder than it has been, maybe my internal thermometer has gone nuts. Either way, I decided to steer clear of hot food and go for something cool. After a slow stroll around the Neal Street area, passing a few sandwich and salad bars that grabbed my eye, I eventually found myself back at Seven Dials without any lunch, near a salad stall I'd been to before.

A couple of months ago, a small salad stall opened up on the corner of Earlham Street and Tower Street (map), just off Seven Dials. They set up their stall at that spot each day, and bring out a large and varied array of freshly made salad components.

There are five main components for the salads: couscous, potato salad, a mixed bean salad (chickpeas, kidney beans, sweetcorn, and cannelinni beans), tomato salad and red cabbage of some description — this one I avoided, cabbage isn't my thing. In addition to the main components, there are a few bits and bobs to brighten things up: a fairly liquid, but rather tasty, houmous; roasted red pepper; sun-dried tomatoes; vine-leaves stuffed with some sort of grain or couscous along with some pretty strong flavours; and finally, olives, the flavourings of which seem to change each time I go (chilli, coriander, garlic and basil are amongst the marinades I've seen).

They package all this up in a little plastic tub and put it in a bag with a napkin, a plastic fork and a generous piece of foccacia bread, flavoured with tomato, olive, onion or garlic (or for those less adventurous, some plain old seeded bread). And all of this for this for just £3!

Definitely worth trying, and if you can nip out of the office and grab your salad before 12, you'll avoid the queues that serve as testament to its quality and value. I'll be interested to see how far into winter they continue serving cold salads — eventually the crisp lettuce will get very crisp indeed. Who knows, maybe I can look forward to it converting into a hot soup stall.