Cosi is offering a new limited-time salad called the Edamame Wasabi. Ingredients: Mixed greens, edamame, red onions, radishes, baby corn, scallions, and wasabi dressing (sort of like diluted Chinese hot mustard with a hint of sugar).
The Edamame Wasabi salad is a bold assemblage of ingredients even for an upscale fast food establishment like Cosi. While the offering may intrigue, say, a fitness junky customer who is looking to fuel his upper/downer regime of spinning and yoga classes, it holds little appeal to the average Cosi goer who may be health-minded enough to order a salad but also desires little rewards — a handful of croutons, a smattering of cheese — to see him through the rest of the working day without being tempted to eat his weight in soy nuts.
Add to this that the salad is a veritable fusion of nose-scorching flavors that make even a stout breath quiver. Bitter radishes. Piquant wasabi. Two types of raw onions. Nobody who plans on talking to anyone else for the rest of the day should dare to eat the Edamame Wasabi salad without a full tin of Altoids on hand.
The salad’s major weakness is the baby corn. While I understand the Oriental concept that Cosi is going for, and appreciate that they didn’t resort to deep-fried crispy Asian noodles to complete the motif, the flaccid baby corn does not adequately assuage the strong tastes of its salad brethren. Roasted red peppers, cucumbers, or shards of watermelon would have worked better.
Still, this is a good ensemble of salad, healthy and filling. Eating roughly 1/2 cup of sliced radishes with lunch will pretty much preclude any urge to eat again well into late evening. Except Altoids, of course. I just couldn’t get enough Altoids.
