If your guests are losing interest in your salad menu, it might be time for you to shake things up. Luckily, adding a selection of lettuce-free salad options to your menu can help spark creativity, improve your seasonality, and give diners a reason to return to your establishment. Here are some salad and ingredient ideas to jump-start your own creative process.

Add Roasted or Grilled Vegetables

The vegetables in your salad don't need to be raw. Grilling or roasting them brings out a range of subtly sweet, nutty, and savory flavors that just aren't there when they're raw. Most vegetables roast well, but a few are more salad-friendly than others. Notable examples include:

  • Cauliflower: Cauliflower is unexpectedly hot and trendy now. As one English newspaper joked, "Expect to see it smoked, deep-fried, en croute, and stuffed, possibly all at once." Once it's blanched and roasted, cauliflower combines beautifully with nuts, seeds, fruit, other vegetables, and almost any combination of spices you can imagine.
  • Asparagus: Roasting asparagus at a high temperature—just until it's tender, crisp, and has the faintest hint of char—brings out a brilliant green color and unexpected sweetness in this iconic springtime vegetable. Dress it with a light and lemony vinaigrette, or scent it with earthy and floral spices such as cumin and coriander.
  • Green beans: When green beans are in season, roast them and stack them to make a visually striking salad offering. Pairing them with bacon is a traditional and tasty option, but roasted peppers and crisped onions also complement green beans beautifully.
  • Beets: Beets bring a bold splash of color to your salad menu, whether you opt for the golden, striped, or traditional deep red variety. Their low-key sweetness and earthiness plays well with acidic vinaigrettes, nuts, bitter greens, and sharp, pungent cheeses.
  • Other root and winter vegetables: Squash, parsnips, turnips, and rutabagas probably aren't the first ingredients you'd think of for salads. However, roasting them until they're tender and lightly caramelized lets you combine them with other ingredients in unexpected ways. Incorporate complex North African spice mixtures into a dressing, for example, or add diced turkey and dried cranberries to make a salad with familiar holiday flavors.

Sweeten the Deal with Fruit

Fruit can bring a range of bright flavors and interesting textures to your salads. Thinly sliced citrus, vivid pomegranate arils, and thin-sliced, dried tree fruits are all excellent building blocks for unconventional salads. Try grilling or roasting pears, peaches, apples, or quinces, and incorporate them into salads with grains, bitter greens, or roasted vegetables.

Go with Uncommon Platings and Preparations

Another way to bring novelty to your lettuce-free salad is through uncommon platings or preparations. For example, blood-red beets can be thinly sliced and layered over carpaccio for an appealing, unique presentation. In fact, many vegetables that may otherwise not be suitable for salads can be transformed through creative preparation. Asparagus and dense roots, such as carrots, rutabagas, and celeriac, can all be shaved thinly with a peeler and added to a salad. The wafer-thin slices are appealing to the eye, easy to chew, hold dressing beautifully, and put the flavors of the vegetables at the front and center. A mandoline, which is used to thinly cut vegetables, is worth investing in if you're looking to revolutionize your salad menu. They're mostly associated with pasta-style vegetable "noodles," but those same fine vegetable curlicues—anything from kohlrabi and beets to carrots and daikon—make excellent salads as well.

Don't Forget the Dressing

Once you've reinvented your salad menu, the same old handful of dressings probably won't cut it. Instead, conjure up a new dressing or vinaigrette that specifically complements each salad. With the sturdier ingredients that are featured in many lettuce-free salads, you also have the option of using thicker dressings that would crush delicate leaves. You might want to try whipping up a custom-flavored version of aioli, for example, or use tahini for a bold sesame-flavored dressing. Your options are wide open, so get creative.

When it's done right, this approach to salads is a "win" on multiple levels. For your guests, it means fresh and interesting options on the menu. For you, it's an opportunity to incorporate more fresh, seasonal, and local ingredients without committing to major quantities. You can also look at this as an opportunity to cut down on food costs. Many vegetables are least expensive when they're in season and plentiful, and transforming dowdy vegetables—typically, the low-cost option all year round—into fresh salads is a creative way to generate increased revenue.