Dunnes Stores Salad Bar

Lawnkiller

Hi all,

I'm not a regular to the Food and Drink Forum (more a programmer, me) but I figure if I'm going to do something, I might as well do it right.

Dunnes Stores in my local City Square in Waterford is my usual choice for getting my lunch. I've decided to visit the salad bar recently after it seems that they have re-vamped some of the salads there.

I was fairly disappointed with some of the offerings and the problems were kinda obvious. I figured, I might as well flog an e-mail their way detailing some of these things and see if there's a chance I'll have a nice lunch some day. For example, the new potato and garlic sauce thing would be great if they'd remembered to boil the spuds first. The mixed bean salad probably be nice if it wasn't for the flavourless dishwater called vinegarette dressing on it...etc.

I was wondering if the nice folks of this forum had any other commentary that I could add to my e-mail before sending it off.

What do you think people?

xzanti

Id have to agree with you... Everything always looks so tasty but when you get it home and eat it all tastes the same... And yes the spuds are always like pebbles... Very very fatty food as well.. They seem to put oil into everything

TerrorFirmer

I ate from the Salad bar once in Dunnes (Westside, Galway). It looked nice just lying there, all salady and healthy.

When I ate it, it was so bland, everything tasted the same, like a mixture between oil and weak margarine.....was really disappointed, never tried it again.

Shabadu

I heard horrible stories from a young lad who worked on the hot food counter in the Dunnes on Georges St in Dublin. Not sure how much of it was true, but it was the stuff of nightmares. Lukewarm salads and chicken bits sitting out for 9 hrs a day, temperaures faked because they were never within safe perameters, all sorts of nasty stuff. Not sure if it's all true, but if even some of it was, yeuch.

Degsy

MobileInfantry wrote:

I ate from the Salad bar once in Dunnes (Westside, Galway). It looked nice just lying there, all salady and healthy.

When I ate it, it was so bland, everything tasted the same, like a mixture between oil and weak margarine.....was really disappointed, never tried it again.

I used to work in dunnes and i would never eat anything out of the salad bar!The units are chilled from underneath but the salads are contained in a big metal bain marie half an inch thick that is warmed far more byt the sorrounding air than chilled from within.The salad could be at least two days old(which is why muchof it is in oil/sauce/liquid) and often quite a bit older.But.The main reason not to eat any of that stuff is that its exposed to the sneezing and drooling and coughing of everybody who walks by in the shop,the amount of germs an unchilled salad is carrying is frightening and as you dont usually heat it up,you've no way of killing the germs.Likewise sandwiches from deli's,absolutely disgusting.

Freelancer

Shabadu wrote:

I heard horrible stories from a young lad who worked on the hot food counter in the Dunnes on Georges St in Dublin. Not sure how much of it was true, but it was the stuff of nightmares. Lukewarm salads and chicken bits sitting out for 9 hrs a day, temperaures faked because they were never within safe perameters, all sorts of nasty stuff. Not sure if it's all true, but if even some of it was, yeuch.

True story. (unrelated but true)

About a decade ago my sister finished her first shift in eddie rockets, came home and grabbed me by the shirt collar and said;

"NEVER. EAT. THE. CHILLI."

Look its a salad bar in a dodgy supermarket you expect them to remake the tubs of potato salad every four hours..... C'mon.

Anyone who's worked in a restaurant can warn you of this, salad bars are like the (insert dubious metaphor for breeding ground) of bacteria.

tirl

My daughter worked both in Dunnes and O briens sandwich bars, hence the reason I would NEVER eat anything from their deli counters. O briens treat their staff so badly that they sabotage the food and that is after it comes in prepacked and sits there for days before it's put away, sitting there among bags of rubbish

Attol

Also unrelated but...

Any sandwich bar should be avoided. I worked at one and it was revolting. There was one big huge tub of mayo that was kept refrigerated. That tub would be used to fill up a smaller squeezy thing. The squeezy thing was never fully empty or cleaned when it was refilled so the bottom mayo would have been there for days probably, not in a fridge, just sitting on the counter. There were other things too but I can't remember, just the mayo sticks in my mind...

Oh and the stuffing for the chicken and stuffing was just old bits of leftover bread from previous days blended.

What's wrong with the chilli?