Balance in a Salad Bar

Tonight was just my father, who is staying with us right now, and me for dinner, so we went out to our old stand by: Souplantation.  For those who have not been there, it is one of those all you can eat salad, soup, pasta, bakery, and ice cream places.  The food is decent, not so expensive, and all you can eat leaves you with a nice full feeling in your belly afterward.

Best of all, Souplantation marks very clearly which items are vegetarian, vegan, and even gluten free, something many fine dining establishments could certainly learn from, as I am quite sick of having to ask whether things are made with chicken stock or beef gelatin or things like that.  (As an aside, the cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory is made with beef gelatin.  Why?  It just makes me sigh at something that could so easy be vegetarian not be made that way.)

So there I was in the salad bar, and it occurred to me that most places don't really offer balance in their salad bars.

A good salad needs a variety of things.  You need differences in color, texture, heat (both temperature and spice), along with some things that make what can be a weird combination of ingredients on any given plate sing well together.  Now most of the vegetables at such a place sit out for a while, so crunchy really needs to be had in the form of other things, but all we had were croutons and chow mein noodles.  Where are the roasted walnuts or almonds?  Easy things that would add much to a salad.  Colors are pretty good, but a few additional fruits (there really aren't any other than tomato on the bar) would help.  Everything is served cold, so that does it with temperature, and other than the occasional banana pepper, the spiciest thing is a sliced green bell.  How hard would it be to pickle a few jalapenos and put that out?  Or serve warm roasted peaches for some temperature difference?  Finally, there is really no good acid or herbage to add to make things go together.  Drowning a salad in dressing is not the right solution when you need to make olives, carrots, and beets go well together.  Maybe some lemon segments?  Fresh cilantro?

Any of these things would add to my experience.  I suppose I can't expect too much for the $10 or so my dinner cost, but I think the salad bar is something that is in dire need of a societal makeover.  Anyone with me?