My favorite kind of food is fresh and made from scratch. The food here offers you lots of these choices. They also happen to be pretty healthy choices which I should point out for those of you that like your grease and carbs of plenty. They have about a dozen different types of salads which you choose how many scoops of each you want. Then you can add protein to it in the form of grilled chicken, ahi tuna and so on. Everything looks very fresh and as though it was just made. It looks that way when I have been there I should say.
They also offer three flavors of lemonade. I always get blueberry mint. It comes with fresh mint leaves and is always very cold which I love. I have favorites when it comes to the salads. The edamame and tuna salad and the squash and kale are my favorites. I've tried three other kinds of salads and they weren't bad they just weren't my thing. The salads tend to be a little bland; I think they either under season them or don't put any sea salt in them.
Now you might be confused with how often I've been here and how I really enjoy the drink and salads I always get as to why I would give them only three stars. There is one specific employee or manager there that I find really rude every time he's there. The rest of the employees are very friendly and nice to talk too. They all have a really, really hard time with the scoop system that they use. You have to choose how many scoops of each salad you want and they have different scoop sized dishes. Every time I go it's different. I'll tell them I would like two scoop of each salad. It should be up to them to ask if the salads should all be in the same container or separate containers. Half the time they get out a huge container and start putting my salads in the same container without asking. Then I feel horrible but I have to have them separate because it usually takes me a few days to eat it and I don't like my flavors mixed. This seems to cause a huge confusion and they somehow can't add two and two anymore and I'll end up with one scoop of the first salad and three of the other or four of each and because of the way I am I just take it. I know two plus two is not difficult and at the beginning I say I would like two scoops of each salad so I know it's not my fault. It wouldn't be that big of a deal if it didn't happen every single time and if I didn't see it happen with other people. Plus this place is very expensive. Each scoop will cost you $3.50 and that adds up fast as the scoops are small.
The biggest and I believe extremely important complaint I have that in the end may cause me to stop going is the lack of work hygiene. Even subway puts on gloves just to scoop out soup into the soup cups. At dirtbelly I have never seen an employee wash their hands or put on gloves. They don't wear hairnets or at least hats with ponytails. I'm guessing they would argue it's because they don't touch any food but that's wrong. I've seen them touch the inside of the salad containers when they pick them up with their hands, touch the part of the lids that touch the food, they make your lemonade with their hands and the last time I went the man at the till stuck his entire bare hand inside the little bag he used tongs to put my coconut balls into. He handled money, credit cards, touched his face, the counter and God know what else and the stuck his hands inside the bag my food touched bare. I have been sick for almost ten years now with kidney and immune problems so stuff like that can be really dangerous to me. I was afraid to say anything because of the rude employee I mentioned from before so I paid for and took something that could kill me. I'm not exaggerating by the way. A regular persons hands can carry MERSA which can kill anyone on top of other things that would make me very ill. The answer to this complaint should not be for me to stop eating there because these things don't meet food and safety regulations for everyone. It should be them that changes. If they made a person ill or killed a person it could end their business let alone how horrible it would be for that to happen.
I would love to have written a long review on how amazing the food is here and hopefully one day I can. The health issues and inability to work their own scoop system has to be dealt with though.