Salad Perfection

You know it is harder to make a perfect salad than you think. Getting the right ratio of flavors, contrasting textures and crunch is not that easy. Now a soup, that’s a cinch, you could throw practically anything in a pot and meld it into a happy place. I have almost never made a bad soup and I have put some very weird combinations together, but once I figure out a good salad I just repeat it because changing just one little things can bring harmonic imbalance.
Today, my friend Christy and I discovered perhaps the perfect salad. We went over to visit Nancy at the new Chapel Hill Needlepoint location. She was forced to move, but we are liking the new location because she is in a place that is mostly restaurants. Our plan was to do a little needlepoint and then sample the first of the lunch spots in a long line of choices.
Because both Christy and I are orderly types we started with the restaurant on the end and were planning on working our way down the line. I’m not sure we are going to stick to our plan. Lucia Tigre, the Asian Latin fusion spot we started at might have us so addicted we may never eat any place else. I am officially craving the salad we both got today and I just had it nine hours ago.  
It sounded ordinary enough, the “avocado citrus”, mixed greens, mandarin oranges, avocado, tomato, bacon and cheese– add chicken if you want, and we did. There was no mention of this ridiculously perfect cilantro dressing, which I ordered on the side as is my custom. Innocent as the description was, it in no way represented its perfection.  
The mandarin oranges were not canned, but perfect small supremes cut from fresh flesh. Just the right number of thin buttery slivers of bright green soft avocado. A small amount of both perfectly crunchy tiny chopped bacon to add just a hint of smoke and a touch of cheese, to not induce guilt, but just tease the palette. Then the chicken, moist and warm with some spice I never lingered over long enough to identify because when the whole thing was put together it was sublime. Oh yeah, and the lime green dressing that Christy announced she could drink, did I tell you about that?
Having that fabulous lunch makes me realize how inferior most other salads are. You can’t just throw a bunch of vegetables on a plate, cut any ole’ way and expect them to make my mouth sing. If Christy and I had not both felt the same way about this superior meal I would not wax on so long. Our only issue now is we are never going to get to try all the restaurants by needlepoint because, at least for me, my mouth is going to water for that one salad. I’m saying that wrong, my mouth is watering now for that salad.