Vital Ingredient

This was my first visit to Vital Ingredient and it was a huge disappointment.
Arriving just after 2pm most of the hot options were unavailable which is to be expected. I asked for the thai green curry with brown rice only to be told that the only thing left was quinoa as a base. Going ahead with that option I had to stop the server from dishing up the paltry amount of curry left as there was nowhere near a full portion amount left so opted for the chilli con carne.
Sadly my take on this is slightly different from Vital Ingredient’s as I normally put beef in my chilli! Theirs mostly comprised of beans and chilli with a very small amount of mince and to make matters worse the quinoa was massively overcooked leading to it starting to either break down or stick together. I had to remove 2 big lumps which had all stuck together. Luckily I could just stab it with my fork!
Not somewhere I will be visiting again in a hurry

Great place! One of the best locations to have salads in London.
Best place for health freaks! LOVE IT

Let’s be honest I come here for one reason: the butternut, lentil and spinach soup. Never had anything else. Out of this world. One large for £3.75 and you have your filling healthy lunch.
In a nutshell: Enough said

Posh subway — like being on a conveyor belt

Why the bad reviews? I love this place! Don’t go in the middle of lunch hour unless you have 25 minutes to kill, waiting in line. It gets busy. But if you make it over there anytime after 1:30 or so, it’s not that bad, if not nearly empty. The staff could be a little friendlier, but they jam in as many ingredients as you let them, and it always turns out to be pretty good.
A lot of them are heavy handed when it comes to dressing, so if you want a little less, I suggest you tell them in advance. On the contrary, if you want salt added, be prepared to ask them to go back to the pot a few times. The micro-​teaspoon they use doesn’t really cut it, for me. But then again, I am hoping to have full blown hyper-​tension by the time I’m 30, so I’ve got goals to meet.
I always get the quinoa or brown rice as a base. The spicy chicken is weird and yellow, and the pole line tuna just has to be canned, I can’t believe that it’s fresh. They don’t take AMEX, which is annoying for a business traveler like myself, but oh well. They also seem to be shocked and confused anytime I present them with a card without chip and pin. I go here enough (20+ times?) that I know each and everyone one of the cashier staff has helped me at some point. Quit faking surprise and run my card. It’s not that hard.

Great little lunch venue in Soho, serving up fast, fresh and tasty salads. The choice is huge — there are no excuses to get bored here. The queues can often be long, but don’t worry — it moves fast.
Don’t con yourself into thinking these salads are very healthy — unless you’ve chosen the ‘lite’ option — the portion sizes are huge, and most of the dressings are un-​apologetically calorific and fatty. Although, there are a few lo-​cal dressings for those concerned with such things!
The prices are usually between £5−7, but as mentioned before the portion sizes are decent and they don’t hold back with the ingredients.
The juices are also really nice here too!

Went here for a lunchtime treat and came away felling a little cheated.
The queue was massive but luckily i didn’t have to wait too long to be served.
The salad was nice, i had the mexican one, but why did they feel the need to drown it in so much ranch dressing?
I came here for a healthy lunch!
Was pleased to see that the portion size was healthily large,
yes i would definaltly like THAT much lettuce in my salad thankyou?!
Then was asked to pay £7 for the pleasure!
I’m sure there’s plenty of other nicer salad places in Soho, i wouldn’t bother going to this one.

WAAAMP WAAAAAAAAMP (*sad trombone*)
Totally unimpressed with Vital Ingredient. It absolutely pales in comparison to the wonderful and wholly impressive Food Secret just around the corner, a place that fills roughly the same niche but with so much more class, quality, and pizazz.
It’s a make-​your-​own salad place with your bog-​standard salad bar ingredients. Boring, but fine. My salad ended up as almost entirely salad greens and red onions, with so little beetroot, sweetcorn, and mushrooms that I may have well not ordered them. The chicken was a bit… tuna-​y? Weird, and possibly tinned.
If I can get a TRULY ASTONISHING salad for the same price just down the street from this totally unimpressive place, I’m not sure why I would choose to frequent Vital Ingredient on a regular basis. Though there is nothing actually bad or offensive to complain about, there’s also no real songs of praise to be sung.

As a concept, the salad bar is a great idea. In execution (at Vital Ingredient) it can be a little variable.
My negative impressions is exclusively related to an overuse of dressings. This might be down to human agency — which is normally to be applauded. The positive factors outweigh this though (it could just have been an off day).
The ingredients on offer are fresh and generously used. Bases are similarly so and range from cous cous and brown rice to Cos lettuce or mixed leaves. The range of salads on offer is good — around 12 options one of which is a ‘guest’ salad.
Prices are a manageable £5 — £7 for a main course salad. One couldn’t complain really.

A real salad bar in London, I have seen these in New York and it’s great to have them in London. It’s busy at lunch, but for me thats always a good sign and I’m happy to wait 10/​15mins for good food. Go now a get healthy or not if you have the full fat dressings.

Vital Ingredient was one of the first places to introduce freshly tossed salads to London. Pick your base (a few kinds of salad, pasta or couscous), the ingredients you want to add, and dressing. The salads are refreshingly heavy, and they don’t skip on ingredients. They’ve started doing soups and smoothies too.