Does everyone remember the Charlie Brown Christmas special? You know it… Charlie Brown was in charge of purchasing the Christmas tree, and he came home with this pathetic, piddly little thing.

Well, like the sad little Christmas tree that Charlie Brown brought back to the Peanuts gang, Blimpie salads are beyond disappointing. The grilled chicken salad was a sad little creation consisting of CONDIMENTS, a few very tiny and quite bland pieces of chicken and nothing else. NOTHING. I kid you not.

The description of the grilled chicken salad on the website reads:

Grilled and flavorful chicken pattie sliced into strips then served on a bed of fresh crisp lettuce.

Yeah… okay.

Here’s what we received:

Now what does that look like to you? Does it look like a salad, or does it look like condiments?… and ridiculously unappetizing looking condiments, for that matter. There was nothing “fresh” about it.

The salad is supposed to look like an actual salad and contain actual salad greens and not just shredded condiment lettuce, as per the Blimpie’s website and even the signage located within the store.

I don’t know if this was an error on the lone clerk’s part, if it’s just that particular location (in which case I would revoke their franchise license because of the disgusting interpretation of Blimpie recipes), or if there is such a discrepancy between the advertised salad and the actual recipe and guidelines provided by Kahala. Still, you would expect that you might not get something exactly as glorious and appetizing as what you see in an advertisement, you’d still expect a salad to be a SALAD and not a jumble of just whatever happens to be lying around.

Oh, and when I asked the clerk if I could have cucumbers in the salad, she said “No, we don’t have cucumbers.” Mmk.. kinda strange, but I guess that’s just not on the ingredients list. Whatever.

See, I was ordering this for my dad, and when I saw how gross the salad was, I didn’t think anything of it (well, I questioned his judgement regarding foodstuffs), because I assumed that he’d gotten it before. Apparently, the only reason why he ordered it at all was because he’d seen signs advertising the salad, so he decided to try it for the first time. Silly me, I figured he’d eaten this unappetizing concoction of not-so-fresh condiments before (because if he’d known the salad was so gross, why would he request it?), so I just went ahead and paid. You can be sure that he was beyond pissed to find that his order was damn near inedible. The only thing that cheered him up that day was that the Giants beat Green Bay for the chance at Super Bowl XLII. (Go Giants! WOOO!)

Alll of this leads me to believe that quite possibly it was just the clerk’s error, or that this particular location’s franchisee is a cheap [bleep] who doesn’t quite “get” the whole customer relationship thing. Kahala, if you’d like to know which location is degrading your reputation with these abominations that are intended to pass as salads, please don’t hesitate to contact me, and based on the feedback you provide, I’ll update my blog to note that this was an individual clerk/individual franchisee issue and not something that should reflect on the franchise as a whole. Otherwise, please provide an explanation, not to me, but to ALL your customers and potential customers, as to WHY the salad was served up that way.

So, in conclusion, I highly suggest that before ordering a salad at Blimpie, ask to see a sample salad, or visually confirm WHICH lettuce will be used.. then make your decision.

Technorati Tags: salad, gross food, Blimpie, subs, Kahala Corp