Saladay: Premium Salads and Vegetarian Food Near Taipei Arena

New safety measures for COVID-19: Customers must have their temperatures checked and hands sanitised before entering. Staff wear masks at all times, and surfaces are disinfected immediately after a table leaves.

Delivery information: No delivery, but you can take your food to go.

It’s getting easier and easier to find a great salad in Taipei, but it’s still worth celebrating when you find a truly excellent one. We first visited Saladay, a vegetarian restaurant specializing in — you guessed it — salads back in 2018, and were really impressed by their gorgeous, leafy interior and decadent salads. We revisited it recently and are happy to report that the salads are as good as they ever were, and it’s even nicer inside than we remember.

Saladay’s most striking feature is the fact that it has two whole walls lined with real, living plants that get misted with water throughout the day. Not only does this make for a fantastic photo opportunity, but the coolness of the mist provides a very welcome respite from the blazing heat outside. It also makes for a very tranquil dining atmosphere. There are a number of tables next to the wall of plants, but note that they can only seat two people. If you have a larger group, there are still plenty of tables away from the greenery.

One of the first things we saw someone order was the Pizzalad, a salad on top of a flatbread that you could fold and eat like a pizza. It sounds a little weird on the menu, but as soon as we saw it in person we knew we had to have it. It was hard to choose between the four options they had, but in the end, we decided on the large Caprese Pizzalad ($340). This consisted of a thin, crispy pizza base topped with cherry tomatoes, arugula, basil, mixed greens, and chunks of mozzarella cheese, drizzled with mizuna mustard and balsamic vinegar. This definitely wasn’t a pizza — there was no cheese or sauce, and nothing about it tasted remotely unhealthy — but it was still a tasty, innovative way to consume fresh vegetables. It was sliced into six pieces, which made it very easy to share, and there was more than enough to go around. We’d absolutely get the Pizzalad again and are excited to try some of the others on their menu.

Next, we ordered one of the cold vegetable salads. We went for No. 3 ($219), with mixed greens, kale, roasted pineapple, avocado, jalapenos, salsa, and homemade hash brown. It came with two slices of grain bread and a spicy tomato dressing and was massive in size. Unfortunately, they were out of avocado on the day that we visited, so they substituted it with extra roasted pineapple. We were really disappointed by this news at first, but this salad turned out to be great all the same. The sauce was deliciously creamy and flavourful and paired particularly nicely with the roasted pineapple. It was also thick enough to spread on the bread, which gave the salad a bit of substance.

Saladay also has some interesting juice options on their menu. We ordered the No.1 ($160, bottom left) first, made with lettuce, celery, mint, spinach, apple, banana, lemon juice, chia seeds and aloe. This was a nice green smoothie with alleged anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, slightly sweet from the aloe and fruit, and with a little bit of thickness from the chia seeds. We also got the No. 3 ($140, bottom right), with pineapple, coconut water, and date palm. This was a lovely light, tropical-tasting smoothie that was definitely on the sweeter side. Both smoothies were nice, though to be honest, we preferred the green smoothies and massive smoothie menu at To Be Smoothie. Still, these were a nice way to round off our meal.

Check out their menu down below — note that it does change seasonally:

Overall, we really enjoyed Saladay, even more than we thought it would. The salads were huge and creative, and we loved the way everything was healthy but still felt like a treat. Sure it wasn’t cheap, but we did feel like we got a lot of food for what we paid. If we were sticking to a budget we’d probably order something a little less expensive and skip the juices. There were tons of really cool options on the menu and it was genuinely hard to choose what to get, so we know we’ll be back soon to try out some of their other dishes.

What’s the vibe?

Calm, casual dining with a natural leafy decor. Customers were mostly Taiwanese, and they were normal people enjoying a healthy meal, not Instagrammers posing with their juice for 30 minutes.

Worth it?

The salads aren’t cheap, but portion sizes are huge and they’re packed with interesting ingredients. The dressings are delicious. If you’re willing to spend a little extra money on a high-quality salad, we absolutely recommend checking it out.

Would you go back?

We would. We loved the calming atmosphere and the fact that we felt like we’d treated ourselves without consuming a million calories.

Last updated May 2020

Saladay

Hours: 11:30am - 9pm Closed Mondays and Tuesdays

Phone: 02 2578 3286

English Address: No. 168, Section 4, Nanjing East Road, Songshan District, Taipei City, 105

Chinese Address: 台北市松山區南京東路四段168號