I’m not going to lie, I love fast food! But the older I get the more I need to eat better and healthier. It can be really hard to find fast food that is actually good for you and tastes good too. Luckily, Chick-fil-a, one of my favorite fast food restaurants, is coming out with healthy options that taste great. To show just what goes into their food and new options, they invited myself and some of my friends to a Chick-fil-a salad tasting party.
The party took place at the Stonecrest location in Charlotte, NC. You know you have “made it” in blogging when you get the VIP treatment, and that we did! They had a beautiful table set up in the back (white table cloth and everything) to showcase their new salad options. Boy, did they look delicious! There are 3 new salad options: Grilled Market Salad, Asian Salad, and Cobb Salad. Every salad is under 430 calories and offers 1 serving of fruit or 2 servings of vegetables. They are all made fresh daily.
Just to show how fresh their food is, we were given a backstage pass to take a tour of the kitchen. I’ve never worked in a fast food restaurant so it was neat to see how everything runs. I was really impressed with how neat and clean everything was and the ingredients were all fresh. I would have thought that the salads were pre-made, but they are made right when you order them! You can see the salad making area below.
We also learned some pretty neat facts about the restaurant. I never knew that all of their chicken is hand-breaded right there in the kitchen. I assumed they would be frozen but not here! They also squeeze their own lemons to go into their famous lemonade. Chick-fil-a is the number one user of lemons in the country! I guess that is why I love Chick-fil-a’s food. You can really taste the difference in fresh, quality ingredients.
Now that we had worked up an appetite with the kitchen tour, they were nice enough to let us make our own ice cream cones! Let me tell you, I would be fired. I don’t have the talent to make a pretty soft serve ice cream cone. My turned out lopsided, it is harder then it looks! It was fun to try though and see how messy everyone else’s cones turned out.
Now it was time to taste the salads! We each got individual sizes of each salad with all the toppings and dressings that come with them. You can actually customize your salad anyway you want. You can switch out the dressings, the type of chicken on the salads, and much more. They aim to please. I wanted to try them exactly like they were meant to be made. These are no skimpy salads!
They were all very tasty but we each had different favorites. My favorite was the Grilled Market Salad. I just loved all of the fresh fruit and the crunch of the granola. My least favorite was the Asian Salad. The salad itself was good but I think I just didn’t like the dressing. Maybe next time I will just get another type to go on it. But two people at the table said that the Asian was their favorite. My boyfriend said his favorite was the Cobb Salad. He loved the Avocado-Lime dressing. I think he ate all of it!
And to finish off our healthy lunch, the Chick-fil-a crew offered us more dessert :). I was too full by now but I think all of the guys got an ice cream sundae. We had a blast trying out the new salads and seeing what goes on behind the scenes. A couple people were even talking about it the next day. We even got to take home a goodie bag with some coupons for free salads and much more.
I want to give a huge THANK YOU to Chick-fil-a and everyone that was so nice and friendly at the Stonecrest location. I couldn’t have asked for better customer service. If you haven’t tried the new salad options yet, you won’t be disappointed. And if they didn’t pull out all the stops already, we even got to hang out with the Chick-fil-a Cow! Check out our pictures below :).
Thank you Chick-fil-a!!
chelsea @ married filing jointly says
Glad you enjoyed your backstage tour!