When dining out professionally, there are several reasons why I will rarely order a salad.

One reason is that I am not there for my health.

We all need more green vegetables, but I take care of my body by eating responsibly at home.

Whatever else you might find in my fridge, at all times there are greens – rapini, broccoli, kale, green beans or snap peas – blanched, shocked and ready to be sautéed with garlic.

The presence of these ready-to-eat vegetables means that they find their way into early morning meals, at an hour where my groggy brain yearns for bacon, eggs, toasted rye or challah. They are there as one might keep soap by the sink, or screwdrivers in a toolbox, ensuring that one does not wash one's hands with shaving cream or fix a shelf with bacon.

Another mainstay of the fridge is a head of lettuce. I buy a head of romaine or red leaf lettuce every few days. That's why I live in Kensington Market, so I can have fresh produce, fish and meat. But not all of us can live near our food.

If I were a condo dweller, at the mercy of the local mini-mart, I might have to make do with shrink-wrapped food and jacked-up prices. When I was a teenager, we lived in the suburbs, where we made a weekly drive to a stadium-sized supermarket. There are lots of vegetables at the supermarket. But you can't go there every day. That relationship demanded that we load up our cart/car/home for the week, checking for expiry dates rather than fresh, ready-to-eat produce.

Of course, back then I didn't know how to prepare vegetables.

These days, late in the afternoon, I take my lettuce and toss it with olive oil, lemon and salt.In this way, I manage a steady supply of vitamins A and K, as well as the daily recommended dose of snobbery, somehow missing from Health Canada's website.

The second reason not to order salad is professional.

A review is supposed to communicate to the reader the experience of dining at a particular restaurant. Yes, it is important to inform the reader about the variety of food on the menu, not just my favourites. And perhaps some diners would like to know what the salad tastes like.

But nearly every Western restaurant in this city serves a salad of baby spinach, roast beets and goat cheese. The additions vary. Sometimes there are walnuts or fancy, coloured beets – yellow or striped – other times a splash of truffle oil enters the story. Rarely does it change much. And more than once I have written of this salad, only to edit out the 50 or so words to make space for descriptions of more interesting food.

If there is an interesting salad, like the raw kale with tahini dressing at Live organic food bar, or the niçoise at downtown's Forte restaurant, you will hear of it. The all-iceberg lettuce salad on the opening menu at Grace restaurant on College St. was worth writing about.

Until I began this job, I had never been able to afford eating out on a regular basis. These days I am lucky. I am not too busy to make a salad. And I spent enough years cooking for a living, so that I never consider the production of single meal to be a big thing. When I eat out, it is a financial and dietary luxury.

But the most important reason to avoid salad is that eating out is supposed to be fun.

We all have our own relationship with restaurants. They are a place to celebrate a special occasion. Or they represent adventure, an opportunity to try new foods.

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To a lot of urbanites, they are a prime source of sustenance. There are Torontonians who eat out every day. For them, salad is a healthy break. Some believe that restaurants should not just feed us, but watch our calories, too. There are often low-cal/low-carb options to appeal to this group. There is even a Bay St. restaurant, Four, where all the dishes have fewer than 650 calories.

For me, restaurants are my job, but also my entertainment.

I find bars too crowded. I love movies, but I am miserable in movie theatres. Eating out is the one social act I participate in, and I would like it to be fun, not medicinal. I no more want to put on my pants and leave home in order to eat a salad, than I would to eat bran pills or drink cough syrup.