11 Fresh Salads That Pair Greens with Fresh Fruit
There's a particular pleasure in eating a salad with fresh strawberries on it, or with apple slices, mandarin oranges, or pineapple. The fruit makes the bowl taste alive, and after a stretch of meals where everything started to taste the same, the body wants that brightness on the fork.
A lot of our customers tell us they go through phases where they just stop wanting salad. Then they try one of the fruit-paired salads on our menu, and start loving them again.
In this blog, I have put together 11 of our salads that pair greens with fresh fruit, grouped by which fruit leads the bowl. I've put apples first because apple-paired salads are the family our customers reorder most, followed by strawberries and berries, mandarin oranges, and pineapples and tropical fruit.
Every salad on this list comes from our kitchen in Lisle, fully prepared, and our drivers deliver across 120+ zip codes in suburban Chicagoland. If you want to see what's on today's menu, the link is right here.
1. Flippin' Apple Cranberry Salad with Smoky Bacon & Feta
This is the salad our customers come back to most often when they want something with fruit on it. We build it on a bed of mixed lettuce, scatter crisp apple chunks and dried cranberries across the top, and finish it with feta cheese and smoky bacon. The dressing is a cranberry balsamic vinaigrette that ties the apples to the bacon in a way you wouldn't expect on paper.
If you've never tried fruit on a salad before, this is the one I'd start you on. The apple and the bacon both keep their character, and the bowl doesn't tip too far in either direction.
2. Grilled Chicken Salad with Apples, Walnuts and Cranberry Vinaigrette
If you grew up with Waldorf salad on the table at family lunches, you'll recognize the bones of this one. We start with a bed of mixed greens, lay grilled chicken breast on top, and finish it with crisp apple slices, walnuts, and cranberry vinaigrette.
The apple-walnut pairing doesn't go out of fashion, and the cranberry vinaigrette adds just enough tartness to keep the bowl from feeling sweet. If you've been making chicken salad sandwiches at home for fifty years, the flavors will land familiar from the first bite, because we didn't try to reinvent any of them.
3. Flippin Apple Cranberry Salad with Goat Cheese & Bacon
This is the goat-cheese cousin of the feta version up top. The apple-cranberry-bacon core stays the same crunchy apples, zesty cranberries, and smoky bacon bits but the cheese swaps from sharp feta to mellower goat.
The cheese is what sets this one apart from its sibling. Goat cheese reads gentler and more savory than feta against the sweetness of the apple and the cranberry, and the bowl ends up tasting a touch richer without giving up the fruit on the plate. If you tend toward goat cheese over feta on a cheese plate, this is the version of our apple-cranberry-bacon family I'd send to you first.
4. Flippin Autumn Harvest Salad with Apples, Beets & Goat Cheese
Autumn shows up in this one and stays. We layer crisp apple chunks, chilled beets, goat cheese, and dried cranberries on mixed lettuce, then dress it with the same cranberry balsamic vinaigrette that runs through our other apple-cranberry salads. Pumpkin seeds finish the bowl.
The beets set this one apart from the rest of the apple family. They add earthiness and a deeper sweetness, and they pair with the goat cheese to make the whole bowl feel more substantial than its ingredients sound on paper. It eats like a salad for the season when the leaves are turning, even if you're ordering it in March.
5. Apple Cranberry Side Salad with Sunflower Seeds
On the days you want fruit on a salad without making the salad your whole meal, this is the smaller side version. We build it on a freshly made lettuce salad with apple slices, dried cranberries, and sunflower seeds, dressed with the same cranberry balsamic vinaigrette we use on our full-size apple-cranberry salads.
Portion-wise it serves one to two, which makes it the right size to sit next to a soup or a small entree on a day you want something fresh on the table but not a full bowl of greens.
A quick note: every salad on this list comes fully prepared and ready to eat. None of them need to be heated. You take the container out of the bag, lift the lid, and you eat.
6. Grilled Chicken on Strawberry Spinach Salad
Strawberry Spinach Salad is one of those combinations that has been on American luncheon tables for a long time, and for a good reason. We lay grilled chicken breast on a bed of fresh spinach, then scatter strawberries, blueberries, and orange slices across the top with cucumbers and toasted sunflower seeds.
The poppy seed vinaigrette ties it all together. It's sweet enough to make the fruit feel like a small treat and sharp enough to balance the spinach, and you end up with a plate that doesn't feel like diet food even though there's almost nothing heavy on it. A lot of our customers tell us this is the salad that made them remember they liked salad in the first place.
7. Grilled Chicken on Berry Spinach Salad with Raspberry Poppyseed Vinaigrette
Berries replace the strawberries here, and the dressing shifts from plain poppy seed to raspberry poppyseed. We marinate the chicken breast in citrus before grilling it, lay it on spinach with the berry-and-fruit mix, and finish the bowl with toasted pepitas.
The pepitas are the surprise. They give the salad a different kind of crunch than sunflower seeds or almonds usually do, with an earthier note, and the raspberry in the dressing doubles down on the berry on the plate. If the strawberry version above feels like the classic lunch, this one feels like the slightly newer cousin who learned a few tricks.
8. Grilled Salmon on Berry Spinach Salad
Same berry-spinach base as the chicken version above, but we swap in a grilled salmon fillet for the protein and use toasted almonds in place of pepitas. The almonds pair better with salmon than pepitas would, and the dressing goes back to plain poppyseed instead of the raspberry version on the previous bowl.
If your cardiologist or your daughter has been telling you to eat more fish but you don't want another dinner of grilled salmon over rice, this one is for you. The fish is rich enough to hold its own against the tart berries, and the spinach keeps everything in balance.
9. Grilled Mandarin Orange Chicken Salad
This flavor lands in the same place as the Chinese-American chicken salads that used to anchor every suburban main street a generation ago.
We marinate the chicken breast Asian-style, lay it on a bed of mixed lettuces, and top it with mandarin oranges, scallions, red cabbage, and crispy noodles. The dressing is a sesame ginger vinaigrette. You don't see crispy noodles coming on a salad menu, and you'll remember them after the bowl is empty.
10. Tropical Grilled Chicken Salad with Fruit
Three kinds of fruit plus cool cucumber on a single salad sounds like a lot until you take a bite. We lay grilled chicken breast on mixed lettuces and top it with pineapple, grapes, oranges, and cucumbers, then dress it with poppyseed dressing.
Pineapple leads on flavor. The grapes give the bowl a pop the other fruits don't, oranges add brightness in small bursts, and the cucumbers keep the whole plate from tipping into dessert territory. If the apple-and-strawberry combinations are starting to feel familiar and you want something with more fruit per forkful, this is the one I'd point you toward.
11. Far East Chicken Salad with Pineapple, Rice & Honey Lime Vinaigrette
The boldest pick on the list, and the one I'd order if I wanted a salad that ate like a full meal. We layer grilled chicken breast over a base that has shredded carrots, bell pepper, pineapple, rice, edamame beans, and romaine, then add mint and black sesame seeds and finish it with a honey lime sesame dressing.
The rice makes this one different from every other salad on this page. It grounds the pineapple so the sweetness doesn't run away with the bowl, and the mint and the black sesame seeds give the finish a Thai or Vietnamese feel rather than a typical American salad finish. If you want a salad that eats like a full lunch and not a side, this is the one.
One thing to know before you order
Our menu rotates every day, so a few of the salads on this list may not be on the menu the day you place your order. The live menu is the place to check what we're putting out today, and if a salad from this list isn't there, you can see the other salads available that day. Simply head to the menu and pick what catches your eye.
