The Salad of Champions

Do you love salads but detest all things worthy and wholesome? Especially those salads that make you wish for a clean and early death while you chew on eternal chaff and humiliated vegetables? Yes? Well my friend we should meet at Schmears for lunch one day!

Schmears is a funny little cafe in the Bermuda triangle end of St Georges Terrace where Bureaucrat-Banker-Mining people come together and gingerly exchange cards and favours. In this unlikely nexus, the little red brick heritage remnants of the Old Cloisters Building harbour a safe haven for lovers of fresh food who like ripe luscious flavour bursting salads but are also in dire need of watching the waistline.

Once there, don't waste any time looking around at the fridges hoarding the same old drinks and sweets (those caramel slices that look like tiles taste like that time you drank a tin of sweetened condensed milk when your mum wasn't looking. Trust me, you don't want to eat that stuff more than once!). Rush straight to the bountiful fridge on the far right where you can make your own salad. Not impressed, I hear you scoff, I can get that at MYO! No, no you can't! Because Shmears comes equipped with a posse of champions, much like the highlanders, who entertain and beguile with luscious salads while battling it out for the one true Shmearslander.

You need to be wily, and to observe. The best of the champions will reveal themselves in the fullness of time (ok, ok you only have a short lunchbreak so I'll tell you; the girl with the ponytail who wears Pinocchio style glasses and looks like a med student is the best! she chops things finely as a true surgeon of salad should... and she doesn't skimp on portions either).

The salads are $8.60 for a small bowl and $9.40 for a large. Go large. This gets you a selection of 7 ingredients plus a green of your choice. Be warned that the mixed lettuce varies in quality and colour and best avoided. Only try when feeling adventurous and devil may care... and by devil may careI mean on Thursdays when the owner's mum comes in especially to wash and chop the salad.

The ingredients are varied and almost always fantastically fresh. A true connoisseur of borderline wholesome salads knows that the salad is not to be judged till the dressing is in and here Schmears shines. You can mix your dressings depending on your mood. On a devil may care day (not necessarily a Thursday!) you can mix ranch with mayonnaise. On being good day you can get balsamic (be warned, it has olive oil in it! still can't figure out why) and on end of month and not yet paid treat day you can get a mix of all dressings as it doesn't cost you any extra.

I am also told that the bagels (it is named Schmears, after all!) are great but much as I'd like to be able to vouch for this fact I'm afraid I haven't been able to unglue myself from the Salad Championships long enough to order a bagel.

Now, some home truths which must also be told:

• The coffee is a mixture of the awful and the vile. Best avoided. Even on Devil May Care Thursdays.

• Do not, under any circumstances, allow the owner's mother to make your salad. You'll know her by her sweet bun hair and white apron. She will take forever to make a wholesome salad and arrange everything just so, forgetting to put all the naughty favourites in. And she is such a darling you won't be brave enough to ask her to correct it.

• You have to get in early (11:55 early) or pick an odd time that does not correlate with working people's organiser meeting times (ie. on the hour or the half hour) because Schmears is popular with the city's knife and fork brigade.

• Don't tell too many people about Schmears, because it is also a good hidey hole if you are a late luncher and need a spot to hide with a good book. The cushioned loungers are heavenly comfy!

• Do not pat the seeing eye dog who comes in daily with the lovely tall vision impaired girl in impossibly high heels. Just don't. I learned this the hard way.