ELAIESE x Salad Atelier: Taking salads & burgers to healthy heights with red palm fruit oil ~ Ex-Cook

You might sometimes enjoy your salads with a shower of olive oil, a splash of sesame oil, or even a sprinkle of walnut oil for a balsamic vinaigrette.

But your next favourite healthy oil could be ELAIESE red palm fruit oil, perfectly paired with two special summery salads at Salad Atelier from now to September.

ELAIESE and Salad Atelier's first-ever collaboration sumptuously brings together a sustainable, antioxidant-rich superfood in ELAIESE's oil with Salad Atelier's bounty of fresh, honest ingredients that represent the earth's most nourishing bounty.

ELAIESE x Salad Atelier also showcases a meatless burger with a Harvest Gourmet Sensational patty cooked with red palm oil, a testament to the oil's vibrant versatility.

If you're curious to try a unique oil that's Malaysian-nurtured and nutrition-packed, here's your chance, courtesy of KL's most enduring salad bar, which runs more than a dozen venues across KL and Selangor, with delivery available on GrabFood.

When we first visited Salad Atelier in The Weld in March 2014, we were immediately impressed with its sweeping selection of ingredients and its satisfying sets of flavours and textures.

We wrote that we hoped Salad Atelier would "show up in several more malls." But the brand has exceeded our expectations, embarking since then into The Intermark, Avenue K, 1 Mont Kiara, Paradigm Mall PJ, The Starling, Sunway Velocity, KL Eco City Mall, Sunway Pyramid, Platinum Sentral KL, Tropicana Gardens Mall, NU Sentral and Setia City Mall.

Every time we eat at Salad Atelier, we're reminded why we keep returning.

You'll find impeccably fresh vegetables and fruits harvested from Malaysia's highlands, bolstered by proteins like roasted beef or lamb, Korean BBQ chicken, shoyu salmon or maguro, spicy shrimp, unagi kabayaki and much more, jazzed up with more than 20 lip-smacking dressings, from avocado lemon to cranberry blue cheese, French onion to Thai sukiyo, mint ponzu to miso vinaigrette.

With everything we could crave from a wholesome meal, Salad Atelier's popularity extends beyond health-focused dieters and gym-goers to families, busy workers and students. If you're counting calories, Salad Atelier ensures convenience even in its delivery menu - you can see, for example, that a serving of grapefruits is 11 calories, tandoori chicken is 93 calories, and roasted jalapeño dressing is 145 calories.

ELAIESE is a name we've only begun encountering this year, but each experience has been a pleasure. We've had this premium red palm fruit oil at a wide range of restaurants, steamed with mackerel wrapped in banana leaves, grilled with prawns in salsa, fried with rice, slickly tossed with spaghetti and smoothly blended in mustards for hot dogs.

The oil, sustainably cultivated by Sime Darby Oils Nutrition, has its roots in a single-origin plantation on Carey Island, Selangor - less than a 90-minute drive from Salad Atelier's first outpost in The Weld.

It promises the utmost in natural nutrients. ELAIESE's palm fruit is collected and processed within 24 hours of harvest for maximum freshness and minimum oxidisation, preserving its extraordinary content of carotenoids, Pro-Vitamin A and Vitamin E tocotrienols, and phytosterols.

Its bodily benefits are far-reaching, helping to combat cholesterol, boost immune health, and bring up hair and skin health.

But restaurants and chefs are increasingly relying on ELAIESE's oil not only for health reasons.

For the kitchen, it's welcomingly practical for everything from marinating to baking.

For patrons, it offers subtly nutty nuances that elevate each dish, light and clean-tasting to complement instead of overwhelming our favourite recipes. Its attractive sheen in its pure form also lends an appealing shade of colour when cooked.

Those characteristics make Salad Atelier confident that customers will enjoy ELAIESE in Summer's ELAIESE Salad and Kale Citrus Salad, two new salads available till 16 September 2021.

Each salad comes with a cup of pure ELAIESE red palm oil, to be mixed with a creamy dressing and tossed with the hearty salad that's beautifully balanced not only for nutrition but flavour.

Summer’s ELAIESE Salad is a vegetarian-friendly bumper crop of garden greens with a base of baby spinach, buoyed by pleasurable proportions of avocado, roasted pumpkin, red onions, cherry tomatoes and sweet corn, plus fusilli corkscrew pasta and feta cheese for a marvellous Mediterranean medley,

Drizzle the dressing of Salad Atelier's house-made thousand island with a full cup of ELAIESE oil, mix everything well, and wolf down this salad that'll fill you without stuffing you silly.

It all comes together wonderfully in this bowl - crisp with baby spinach and red onions, juicy with cherry tomatoes and sweet corn, full-bodied with avocado and pumpkin, with a tender bite from the pasta and a tasty kick from the cheese.

The ELAIESE oil enhances the ensemble with a rich, silky lushness and mellow earthiness, harmoniously wedded with the thick, tangy creaminess of the thousand island dressing.

The Kale Citrus Salad is equally enticing, with roasted chicken over kale and garden greens, popping with pomegranates, tangerine, grapefruit, crunchy cashews and shredded cheese. It's also thoughtfully assembled, with the fruits furnishing a refreshing moistness that sparkles with citrusy fireworks.

If you're avid about antioxidants, this one's for you - the kale coupled with ELAIESE is a powerhouse of Vitamin A, expertly combined with ingredients that promote the body's absorption of nutrients.

Ideal for deliveries, our salads reached us within half an hour of preparation, looking appetisingly lovely. The Kale Citrus Salad is finished with a final fruity flourish of mango sauce, a terrific tropical twist.

Fans of Salad Atelier know the brand is more than salads.

ELAIESE x Salad Atelier also features a Sensational Red Burger, centred on a Harvest Gourmet plant-based patty that packs a punch of soy protein, plus plenty of fibre and iron.

The patty is seared with 100% ELAIESE red palm oil that provides a tinge of maroon to its surface, with a fragrant nuttiness that makes the vegan patty more temptingly savoury.

Layered with lots of butterhead leaves, Japanese cucumber, tomatoes, red onions, cheese sauce and arrabiatta dressing in a toasted bun, paired with nacho chips, it's hefty and tasty enough for burger gluttons to devour guilt-free, a step up from fast food versions.

Salad Atelier's full repertoire offers much to explore, from poke bowls to Nordic-inspired sandwiches, quinoa wraps to pasta such as fusilli with tandoori chicken, crushed peanuts, sautéed mushrooms and cherry tomatoes, well-executed enough to fit in at a modern casual Italian eatery, washed down with the Very Berry Smoothie that blends blueberries and strawberries with natural yogurt.

Salad Atelier also now offers a Mart by Salad Atelier, bursting with raw produce for your pantries and fridge, for your fix of grocery essentials and more, from ice plants to sweet potatoes, teriyaki chicken to Norwegian salmon fillet, sunflower seeds to walnuts, soba to tortilla wraps, vitamin water to UHT milk.

Many thanks to Salad Atelier and ELAIESE for a reviving lunch.