New Year's Resolution Chaos Descends Upon Salad Restaurants 

Midtown Manhattan is facing a crisis. It’s not the advent of Amazon just across the river, in Queens, nor is it the state of the subways. No—it’s that the salad places are dangerously overcrowded with New Year’s resolvers.

It’s a scrum out there! A battle royal for your leafy greens! Better gird your loins if you want your salad.

The New York Post took to the streets and produced what may very well be the greatest report from the sidewalks of Manhattan ever written. In the finest tradition of shoe-leather reporting, they went around to a bunch of salad places in the general vicinity of the New York Post office and checked out the scene. It was absolute chaos:

“You guys can go f–k yourselves!” one very hangry businessman in a Patagonia puffer vest was overheard telling his colleagues at lunchtime on Thursday, as he ditched the 100-plus-long line at Chopt on West 51st Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues.

“The last few days after New Year’s have been crazy because of the resolutions and people wanting to eat healthy,” said another business-suited, kale-clutching customer there.

You know, some reporters go their whole lives waiting to catch a businessman in a Patagonia puffer vest hollering, “You guys can go fuck yourselves!” at a 100-person Chop’t line.

They also checked the nearby McDonald’s, which had slowed to a crawl. Same story at the nearby Chick-Fil-A. But cut over to Sweetgreen: “Julie Pastor, 30, had to wait in a line of 50 people to get her guacamole-and-greens bowl.” That’s so many people waiting around for leaves!

While the Post did not extend its investigations beyond the midtown area, given the national surge in gym memberships, for instance, it feels like a safe move for all of our readers to assume that any healthy lunch options will require actual, literal physical combat. Really the move here is to spend this one week eating junk, and then pivoting to salads for the rest of the year once everyone else has drifted away from their resolutions.