Recently, Sumo Salad promoted their newly opened store at Carousel with a person dressed in a sumo wrestler suit walking around the shopping centre with a woman giving out Sumo Salad brochures. I asked the sumo wrestler if I could take his/her (I couldn’t tell the gender of the person in the suit) picture, and he/she kindly stopped and posed for me. Note the sumo wrestler’s saggy man boobs.

At that time, I didn’t actually stop to eat (SHOCK! HORROR!) but I did take home the Sumo Salad brochure and I studied it closely for the next few days. They sell “Express” salads which are pre-made and ready to go (you just pick what size container you want your salad in), or you can select from one of eight rather yummy-looking salads made to order. The Caesar salad looked really good to me, and I made my mind up to try it next time. Anyhoo, yesterday Juji and I met up in the city to do some Christmas shopping. Her boyfriend joined us for the first half of the day. After a few rounds of shops we were all hungry for an early lunch (it was around 10:45AM) but had no idea what to have, so we went to the Carillon Food Hall (which can be a good thing – lots of stuff to choose from; or a bad thing – lots of stuff to choose from :)) As it turned out, there’s a Sumo Salad there too (according to the website, there will be another store opening up in Whitfords soon – see here for locations Australia-wide). We ended up ordering grilled chicken Caesars. As our salads were being made, I sneaked a couple of photos of the Express salads and other takeaway goodies they had on display. They had some yummy muffins on display too, which I didn’t get a picture of – one flavour in particular really appealed to me – banana and butterscotch. Mmmmm. Maybe next time.

I had a Small salad ($6.95); Juji and Jay shared a Regular ($7.95).

They also shared a passionfruit yoghurt (you can see Juji already digging into the yoghurt in the previous photo!).

I absolutely loved the grilled chicken Caesar. It was made with real cos lettuce, no other varieties mixed in to boof it up (Jay complained that they hadn’t cut the stemmy bits out of the leaves, but I like eating those bits). The croutons were nice and crunchy. Both Small and Regular come with a whole hard-boiled egg which is sliced into wedges only when your salad is being assembled. The chicken is seasoned with salt and pepper and grilled to order while you wait. The bacon came in lovely big strips. The salad was generously coated but not drenched in dressing; all the ingredients (cos, croutons, egg, bacon etc.) were put into a metal bowl with powdered parmesan and dressing and tossed as we waited and watched. The Small container holds a deceptively substantial amount of salad, and the Regular even more – they really pack it in there. The Small was an excellent serving size for one – one with a healthy appetite i.e. me.

We were all also impressed with the plastic forks and knives – they felt really solid, especially the knife, obviously not the cheapest plastic cutlery available. I suppose one of my least favourite aspects of takeaway food is eating it with plastic cutlery – but these were quite pleasant to eat with.

After Jay left us (he had to go to work), Juji and I got up to some serious shopping – and by around half past three we felt peckish again. We shared a snack of chicken karaage and salad from the Japanese place in the Woolworths building (I can’t remember what it’s called – you know, it’s the Japanese place near the ATMs, at the front of the building Wollies is in).

The chicken karaage came with a little container of brown sauce (tasted like teriyaki), which we poured over the chicken pieces. There was also a blob of mayo, which we dipped our chicken into. We had two and a half pieces of chicken each, as well as salad.