As a restaurant owner or manager, you cater to customers with brunch menus that feature their favorites. You also know how a well-received refocus can increase sales.
Brunch salads are ideal for renewing interest in the traditional mid-morning service. They deliver fresh choices to brunch buffets and tables, and they do it in a variety of ways.
Let's toss around salad basics, ideas and pairings that refresh brunch service and keep the dining room full.
The Essentials of a Perfect Brunch Salad
While there are countless ways to craft a brunch salad, there are a few basics that make every recipe perfect. Impress your restaurant's mid-morning guests by incorporating these essentials into yours.
Fresh Nutritious Ingredients – Make sure each salad selection is prepared with the freshest ingredients available. This ensures a brunch service that offers selections high in nutritional value as well as visual appeal.
Balanced Flavors and Textures – A successful salad serves up a combination of guest-pleasing flavors and satisfying crunch. Fine-tune your recipes so that they balance the natural crispiness of premium produce with a range of enticing tastes.
Well-Matched Dressings – A Caesar dressing perfectly finishes salads tossed with cheese and bacon. A sparkling vinaigrette brings out the brightness of leafy greens. Salad and dressing combinations headed for the brunch buffet should always be well-matched.
A Taste of the Season – Every growing season stars vegetables and fruits that mark the season. Use that availability and freshness to market special occasion brunch salads. Offer snap pea salads for Easter brunch or poached pear and cinnamon salads for winter.
Impressive Presentation – If you build it bright and beautiful, they will come. If you make it with an impressive lineup of ingredients, they'll come back as repeat customers. A visually appealing brunch salad adds extra enticement to the buffet and extra sales to the service.
Special Seasonal Salads
1. Spring Snap Peas and Flowers
Slice sugar snap peas in half lengthwise, and toss with baby arugula. Lightly dress with a lemon, honey and Dijon mustard vinaigrette. Sprinkle with dandelions, marigolds or violets, and serve as a sensational spring brunch salad.
Culinary Inspiration: Feature this recipe as a specialty on your next Mother's Day brunch.
2. Iceberg Baby Summer Wedges
Cool down sizzling summer temperatures with baby iceberg lettuce salads. Slicing the compact heads into quarters yields a crunchy base for a colorful mix of tomatoes and radishes.
Finish each wedge with a creamy drizzle of housemade ranch dressing.
Culinary Inspiration: Sliced carrots or diced beet root are both good substitutes for the radishes.
3. Winter Brunch Wedge Salad
Baby iceberg is truly a salad ingredient for all seasons.
This recipe shows off its versatility as a wedge that works perfectly on wintertime brunch buffets. Pears poached in port give the dish its unique flavor. Toasted pine nuts give it extra crunch.
Culinary Inspiration: Try changing up the pear flavor profile with a smooth, sweet Merlot or fruity syrah.
Fresh Fruit Salads
4. Tropical Fruit Toss
Peel, slice and toss red and green kiwi, tangerines and dragon fruit with your choice of berries. Spread the colorful assortment over a crisp base of romaine lettuce and radicchio.
Present your tropical brunch salad as a beautiful buffet centerpiece with macadamia nut oil dressing on the side.
Culinary Inspiration: For table-side service, deliver the salad in edible bowls made from fresh romaine heart halves.
5. Citrusy Fruit Salad
This salad offers the bright wake-up experience that comes with a glass of fresh orange juice.
The secret ingredients are cara oranges, blood oranges and tangelos. Sliced avocado and sugar snap peas balance out the citrus flavors that make this salad a brunch menu must-have.
Culinary Inspiration: The recipe calls for napa cabbage hearts, but you can substitute whole heads of fresh napa.
Gourmet Brunch Salads
6. Avocado Salad With Bacon
Silky avocado is usually an addition to salads, but it's the delicious main ingredient in this entree-style dish.
Cubed and presented over a bed of chopped romaine, the veggie is a standout, complemented by tomato slices and a generous garnish of bacon.
Culinary Inspiration: If your avocados aren't as ripe as you like, move them out of the walk-in, and store them next to boxes of bananas.
7. Vegetable Lover's Stack
Layers of texture, colors and flavors raise this brunch entree to mouthwatering heights.
The fresh vegetable stacked salad is easy to prep, simple to assemble and destined to become a veggie lover's favorite share across the social media landscape.
Culinary Inspiration: Change up the recipe's flavor and textural profile by trading out the chickpeas for sweet English peas.
8. Greek Horiatiki Salad
Sliced cucumbers, grape tomato halves and Kalamata olives preserve the flavors of this classic Greek salad.
Shelled edamame transforms the traditional dish into a special addition to your brunch menu. The salad earns extra stars for enticing presentation.
Culinary Inspiration: A dash of Dijon and honey brightens up the red wine vinaigrette.
9. Grilled Sweet Corn Salad
Unique ingredients keep this special dish high on our list of the best gourmet brunch salads. The sweet flavor of freshly roasted white corn is balanced by peppery basil, ricotta salata and chopped hazelnuts.
Culinary Inspiration: Standing the roasted corn upright in a bundt cake pan streamlines removing and catching the kernels.
What Pairs Well with Brunch Salads?
Whether you serve guests at their tables or they help themselves to the buffet, give them a memorable experience. Side their salads with delicious options that keep them engaged.
Incorporating sides as a part of the mid-morning menu streamlines the service for front and back of house. These are excellent examples of brunch salad pairings that work for busy staff and please your dining room guests.
Fresh Fruit Charcuteries – Charcuterie boards filled with fresh fruit serve up a bounty of healthy sides for brunch. Design yours around seasonal berries, tropical fruits, specialty melons and freshly sliced citrus.
Breakfast Casseroles – Casseroles are a perfect fit on buffet tables, and they aren't ingredient-dependent. The kitchen can stay creative with everything from broccoli and hash browns to bacon, eggs and cheese.
Special Breads – Contrast the crunch of a fresh brunch salad with the soft bite of freshly baked sourdough bread. Fluffy rolls, buttermilk biscuits and whole wheat toast are classic breakfast sides that belong on the brunch buffet.
Unique Brunch Proteins – This idea works well at a designated staff-run station. Pamper guests with slices of standing prime rib, sizzling pancetta and grilled Canadian bacon.
Very Sweet Sides – Think of gooey sticky buns and housemade cinnamon rolls as brunch desserts. Offer guests a sweet ending to their mid-morning meal with butter twists, pecan rolls and orange-cranberry nut bread.
Always Serving You With Our Freshest
It's always our pleasure to share new ideas for your foodservice operations. Whether you're developing brunch menus or refining your best recipes, you can count on us for culinary inspiration.
You can also count on Hitchcock Farms for the finest premium produce available. We're proud to be members of the industry, committed to always serving you with the very best from our fields to your tables.
