Question: Who has a good salad bar?

        Answer: All the best salad bars I can think of are no more: the one at Prime and Wine, another at a forgotten restaurant on Galbraith Road in the 1980s and at the Cornucopia Cafe in Lawrence, Kan., when a salad bar was a new, exciting concept when I worked there in 1973.

        Salad bars have lost their trendiness, except at grocery stores. So if you really like them, you have to look a little. Here are two that have been particularly commended by the folks who write our Reluctant Spender reviews on Fridays:

        • The Houston Inn in Mason is famous for its salad bar, which includes deviled eggs, mashed potato salad, pickled okra, tortellini salad, olives — 32 items all together. It's a prelude to a meal of Houston Inn's famous fried frog legs or prime rib. 4026 U.S. 42, Mason; 398-7377.

        • Another large salad bar from the heyday of salad bars is at Pusch's in Fairfield. It has 52 items, including good homemade soups. You can add it to a meal from the seemingly endless menu. 495 Nilles Road, 829-5054.

        I thought the salad bar at the Golden Corral Buffet locations was the best part of that buffet, with everything you need for a chef salad, a spinach salad or a fruit salad with cottage cheese. Could be healthy, if you stopped there — though few have been known to do that at the Corral.

       Send questions or comments to dining critic Polly Campbell by fax: 768-8330; e-mail: pcampbell@enquirer.com.

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