Pluto's - good food, bad design

Okay, I really don't hang out at Santana Row all that often, but I found myself there again last weekend after a shopping trip to Valley Fair, which is right across Steven's Creek Boulevard. Since my mom and I had to be in San Jose anyway, we figured we'd grab lunch and a movie at Santana row.

It seemed a good chance to continue on with Resolution No. 2 and try another new restaurant. The restaurant I really wanted to try was the gourmet burger place, The Counter. But instead, keeping in line with my healthy eating kick, I opted for Pluto's a few storefronts down. As it turns out, Pluto's is one of the more affordable options at Santana Row (aside from perhaps Subway) and the food is quiet tasty. They offer large salads with all the fixings, sandwiches and sides. I opted for a green salad with my choice of dressing and toppings. You can pick up to seven, plus a meat. I went with tomatoes, mushrooms, broccoli, eggs, croutons, grilled chicken and corn.

The only problem with Pluto's is the system set up for ordering. The best way to describe it is a really busy college dining hall, where every one queues up and waits for their turn to go through the line and select what items they want - only it's really noisy and hard to hear what the servers are saying and there is not a whole lot of space as three or four servers try to help three or four customers at a time. When I was waiting in line, I got a dirty look from the guy behind me for not hearing the server call for the next person. Apparently he was really anxious to get his salad.

The servers basically toss up the lettuce, toppings and dressing in a big metal bowl and then dump it onto a plate. It turned out to be pretty heavy for a salad. Once I had it, my mom was still in line for a turkey sandwich - the line hadn't moved yet. So I stood holding my very heavy salad while I waited in line. There were a lot of people waiting in a small space for their sandwiches and sides before they moved on to pay.

The only plus of the whole, weird ordering process was that a lot of the tables were empty because so many people were still waiting for their food. I decided to grab a table - and put down the huge salad while my mom waited for her sandwich.

Once we got the food, it was quite tasty. Unlike other salad bars, the veggies were cooked a little so the broccoli wasn't as tough as it can be raw and the mushrooms were sauteed up nicely. The turkey sandwich used freshly carved turkey - we know because the bird was sitting on a counter under a heat lamp. For a large salad, a sandwich, a side of onion rings and two drinks, it was $20, which anyone who has eaten at Santana Row knows is comparably cheap. I definitely would eat at Pluto's again - and next time I'll listen more closely for the server to call on the next customer in line.