Mac Kelly’s Greens & Things

I can give 5 stars to this place! Salads are so fresh and juices amazing!
Once I came here and now stop every day to grab a plate of fresh and tasty meals with me!
Highly recommended especially for those who wants to be slim and healthy.

It’s a strange place. On the outside, you think it is a convenience store, but inside, it is a salad bar and sandwich bar. But it still feels like you are in a dingy 7 – 11. The price point is good, it is under $ 7 a pound.
There are lots of options, but the place is very cramped and people do not seem to understand the right-​of-​way in a salad bar, and they are always cutting and jumping in line, and god-​forbid, going the incorrect way!!!
The salad bar is big with lots of options, but the quality isn’t that great. It is average at best. They do not clean the mushrooms and sometimes the veggies seem old. They do put out whole hard-​boiled eggs, which I like. For protein options, they have old-​dry chicken, salami, and cubes of ham — none of which is appetizing. recommend.
I guess for a cheaper salad bar option, it is not bad, a little below average. I would probably come here more if the place didn’t seem do dingy, old, and a bit dirty.

Make your own salad with anything you want on it, including corn, peas, chickpeas, whole hard-​boiled eggs, sesame sticks, ham, turkey, fake crab, tuna, and a nice selection of fruit. They’re also pretty quick, since you’re the one piling it on. I can get back to the office before coworkers can grab lunch from one of the places inside our building. They make juice and have other entrée type stuff, but I can’t really attest for that.
Oh, one more thing: this is the only place in Chicago with ripe bananas.

I usually get my salad and fruit here for breakfast and lunch, but lately I’ve noticed that the fruit is not good and the lettuce is gritty. I spend between $ 6 — $ 12 a pop here so at least clean greens and better fruit should be served. I guess back to Walmart.

My first time here for lunch today, and I was fairly impressed. I’m always looking for new lunch options, and this place caught my eye. Its basically a no frills salad/​sandwich bar with a few hot items as well. They charge by the pound, although I’m not exactly sure how much per lb it is. I got a huge (more than I needed) salad and a fountain drink and it was about $ 9. I got too much on my salad though, and didn’t eat about a third of it. Next time I will skip the hard boiled egg, and some of the other heavy items. I would imagine for a decent sized salad alone would be about $ 5. They have just about any topping for a salad that you could ask for though, and mine was very tasty. Lots of veggies, fruit, dressings, and a few proteins as well (imitation crab, and chicken were the ones I saw). I will definitlely be back here again! (I also hear they do breakfast stuff as well, but I can’t comment on that just yet)

Not the fanciest place around but at least you can try for something healthy here. Other than some convenience store goods, they have a warm food bar and a salad bar. Nothing in the salad bar looks particularly fresh, but at least you can combine everything into something palpable. I usually choose Mac Kelly’s when I don’t want to feel too guilty for eating out yet again for a Loop lunch.
Usually I end up with a mishmash of lettuce, canned beets, carrots, broccoli, nuts, and imitation crab. Yeah, doesn’t sound that appetizing, but I keep on coming back for more.

With the preponderance of chain soup/​salad/​sandwich places that exist in the loop Mac Kelly’s a good substitute for those who like to custom build their own lunch. They have a by the pound salad and sandwich bar that allow you to put together a lunch that is about on par quality wise with what you get at a chain restuarant at a lower price, especially if you avoid the dense items such as cottage cheese and hard boiled eggs. They also have a fixed price hot food bar that I’ve only eaten a few times but is comparable to what you could find else where.
That being said there really isn’t anything about this place that is unique. The produce is usually fresh although can be a little old on occassion, but what you end up with it isn’t anything that you can’t put together at home and bring to work in a piece of tuperware. The mark up is about 2x what you would pay in a grocery store, which is to be expected in the loop but still is an expense you could avoid with a little preparation.
So check it out if you’re downtown and are looking for a relatively inexpensive meal, but at the same time know what you’re getting.

Mac Kelly’s has breakfast sandwiches, a build your own salad bar for cheap, a hot bar (sometimes featuring BBQ ribs), and other sundries, notions, and groceries for the Loop Worker Bees.
The salad bar is super cheap. Yay! But quality kind of suffers. Boo. Lettuce and other ingredients can seem less than fresh, beets were obviously from a can, you get what you pay for, I guess.
But getting up to the checkout and getting a salad and water for less than $ 6? That’s a pretty sweet price for a healthy lunch in the Loop.

I got a make-​my-​own salad here for a quick lunch and it’s a basic, decent quick place to go for a quick lunch.

A bit expensive, but you have full control over what you eat here — handy for those of us not excited by junky fast food stuff.
You’re definitely going to find better value by carefully choosing what you buy there vs. bring or get elsewhere… a scoop of something dense is going to cost you big!

So you go to your standard sandwich place and want a salad. A few things – you don’t want this and you want to add that. essentially, you want to make your own salad. And you want to control the amount of salad you get. That’s when you go to Mac Kelly’s.
As Natasha G. mentioned, there really aren’t that many healthy, fresh, and tasty options in the Loop. But, for about $ 5 a pound, you can build your own salad with the large variety of choices offered at Mac Kelly’s. Yum. Also, you can put your salad dressing on the side which is always nice.
For those who enjoy «home-​cooked» meals, Mac Kelly’s is a great option for mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, macaroni and cheese, turkey and gravy, all that stuff you wish you could bring from dinner before that you just didn’t. I’ve never actually tried this side of the bar, but it always looks tempting and often reminds me of my college cafeteria.
Outside of these two areas, Mac Kelly’s offers a variety of snacks (and not just chips), fresh fruit, and juice. This place has the health junkie covered when it comes to these snacks, and not for expensive prices like some other Loop fare. For that fresh, grocery store hot food/​salad type feel in the Loop, Mac Kelly’s is definitely the way to go. And, many would be happy to note that they now do take credit/​debit card!
The only downside is that you can’t eat there – you’ve gotta build your heaping styrofoam box then go! But I guess that’s always nice for those of us that eat while we work.

i fight a battle with the scale nearly every week — the scale at the pay-​by-​the-​pound salad bar at mac kelly’s, that is. here are some things i’ve learned:
— get a small styrofoam container and stuff as much as you can in there. they weigh the container and charge you for it so smaller container = more vegetables for same money (however small the difference).
— lettuce = light; red/​green bell peppers = heavy. they cost about the same at the grocery store, so eat bell peppers at home and spinach here.
— crab salad = yum. honey dijon = yum. peas and corn = fit in tight places around pieces of lettuce in small container.
— sometimes if you get the dressing on the side and smile at the man behind the counter, he wont weigh it. sshh, that’s my trick though.
i NEVER know how much things are going to cost. yesterday i picked up a few nibbles to reintroduce greenery in my life. i should’ve used that money to buy an overly complicated and winter themed soy coffee drink instead. weird thing is, a few weeks ago, i harvested the equivalent of half a garden in a squished styrofoam contained and paid less than 4 bucks. well, the fight continues!

A no frills place in the loop? Sign me up! Everything is fresh. Their breakfast buffet can be a bit hit or miss depending on what time you get there (the earlier you get there, the softer the potatoes will be).
One thing I never really understood is their pricing, though. While some things are cheap, others are unreasonabley high. You can get a cup of oatmeal for a dollar and change, but an orange juice is two dollars.
I understand paying for cream cheese for a bagel, but crackers for your soup? Come on, guys.
I have yet to try their sandwiches, but their salad bar is really good!
One last con is the crowd of smokers that hangs out right in front of the store. Jesus Christ, I don’t care what you do to your lungs, but leave mine out of this, I just want to go get a bagel!

There aren’t a lot of healthy, FRESH, tasty options in the Loop de loop and Mac Kelly’s is an exception. And okay, one more thing: Sugar and caffeine free Guarana?! Get outta here!
Popped in here today for grapes and a make-​your-​own salad and mmm, just as good as the last time. You can’t make a quality salad without quality ingredients, true story.
I loaded up on lettuce, spinach, mushrooms, onions and one boiled egg w/​fat free Italian dressing and it was divine.
Well, okay maybe not divine. Divine would be your creamy Mac and Cheese or your mashed potatoes with chicken, comfort food say what?
And seriously, I just saw your section of sugar and caffeine free Guarana. If I didn’t cut caffeinated beverages from my diet I would have been all over it, just knowing you offer it is enough.
It would have been 5 stars if they accepted debit/​credit cards here. Sometimes I forget it’s cash only and have to run to an ATM — they do have one in here but who wants all those excessive charges? NOT I!

My only real complaint is that the salad selection is so varied that I have ended up with the strangest concoctions. I’ll start off trying to replicate a Greek salad and will eventually go astray. Does a Greek Salad have pineapple, cheddar cheese cubes and eggs? I think not. Oh yea and they don’t have Feta cheese! So it’s pretty hard to be accurate on that Greek Salad thing.
Also, I would not suggest this place if you are a germaphobe. I mean tons of people leaning over my salad fixins’ and potentially contaminating the food is a disturbing thought. Luckily, I loves my germs when they only cost $ 4.30!

Damn it Unilocal!Because of you I have a bevy of restaurants, bakeries and cupcakeries in my back pocket; my winter jeans have become my summer jeans; and the fit of my fat jeans is a lot snugger than it used to be!
If you’re like me you first try to rationalize things — maybe the fat jeans are snug because they were washed in hot water AND dried on the hottest setting, twice; maybe they were too big and I forgot I had them altered, etc. Once I accepted that these were pathetic fallacies I started to take stock of what I’ve been eating (too many cupcakes) and better yet what I haven’t been eating (enough salads, fresh fruits and veggies).
Since lunch is the meal I eat out most often, I decided to take the bull by the horns and start looking for some healthier lunch options. Since one can only eat so much Subway, I was happy to see the green MacKelly’s awning staring me in the face as I exited my building.
I’d always assumed MacKelly’s was just a salad bar with some sodas, drinks, and pretzels. That’s true, but it also has a soup and sandwich bar, hot food items, fresh produce and breakfast items. I love that the hot food items come in set prices, I’ve been to other salad bar type places where they weren’t. Call me crazy, but paying $ 5 for a couple of tablespoons of mashed potatoes meant as a side to my meal is ridiculous.
In the last few weeks I’ve been here a number of times and have been able to pick up a decent sized salad and a piece of fresh fruit for about $ 5 bucks. AWESOME! This place has quickly become one of my favorite go-​to lunch spots and not just because it’s healthier.
TIP: If you go to their website you can get on their mailing list for discounts and coupons.

This is the best lunchtime salad bar in the city. I can NOT GET ENOUGH. I’d like to be thrown into a giant vat of my favorite ingredients naked and left to just stuff myself with greens. Yaa! Salad decadence.
It should be subtitled «Everything Erika Likes» — mushroom, grape tomatoes, olives, celery, broccoli, 3 kinds of lettuce, cheese, cottage cheese, bacon bits, sunflower seeds, SALAMI, ham chunks — yuuuum. And delicious dressing — with vinegar available to add. Most times I’ve been in this venue, it’s been well maintained and clean. I loves me the 1.5 pound salad!

Ok, I hate ‘buffet’s’…I just do. The food buffet tables with the sneeze guards remind me of the feeding troughs with the little roofs on them from the farm… back home. So I rarely make an appearance at anything with the word ‘buffet’ in the name.
that said — I don’t mind the side of this place — where they’re SERVING the HOT food, it reminds me of the cafeteria at school growing up; I also worked there, but I digress… The price is right and the servings are very VERY filling. it’s all I can do to finish a $ 5 plate from them!
Yesterday, I got Chicken Kiev and it was good for institutional type food, it’s quite tastey. Today, Turkey and Stuffing, again, rather tastey.
The establishment, for what it is, is a bit on the small side and when it’s busy it can be a bit tricky to navigate as you’re making your lunch selections. (again, visions of the farm at feeding time fill my head!)
The food’s not High end — but again, it’s just lunch. It’s right across the street from where I work, which is why I like it, in and out pretty quickly too.
They have a cash machine so you can get cash once you go it — because Visa isn’t always where you want to be – they accept cash only.

I usually come here in my morning rush to work. It seems like everytime I get the Nantucket apple juice when I get to work and decide to take a big gulp, it taste like vinegar. It seriously has made me stop drinking apple juice now.
I do however just go in now on occasion and have th lemon poppyseed that hasn’t spoiled yet, at least I hope not.

I’m so terrified by the cash only by-​the-​pound bit that I’ve worked across the street for 6 mos and yet never gone to MacK’s. Well, when the Salad Spinners guy went postal on Unilocal,I decided it was time to sever the SS addiction and head across the street. I pulled $ 20 from the ATM, just in case.
By the pound places make me anxious. I mean, who knows how much your lunch will cost? I think I know most of the tricks– avoid liquids and cottage cheese, fill the thing with salad, go light on the dressing. But still.
Today, my mission was to make exactly my Salad Spinners salad and compare the cost. This was impossible, since MacK’s lacks tofu, artichoke hearts, and hearts of palm. Either way, I made nearly my SS salad, and left with a $ 4.99 1 lb gig.
Here’s where it gets bad, though: there were flavors in my salad of things I didn’t take. Something bacon-​y, something onion-​y. I’m a vegetarian and meat flavors are really a turnoff. I think it’s probably due to people dropping stuff in the containers as they assemble their salads, but it’s still gross. The beets were sort of flavorless, and the salad wasn’t washed well enough and was gritty. Yuck.
So, yeah. Cheaper than salad spinners. But I’m not sure I’ll be back.