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I opened up a Cheesecake Factory and trust me people you DO NOT want to know the calorie counts of their dishes. Some of the pasta dishes have almost 2000 calories by themselves. Just FYI a SLICE of the Red Velvet Cheesecake is 1750 calories!!!
That's what I do when I dine out! If alone, I just eat half whatever they serve and take other half home. If with SO - we order two appetizers, usually some salad - no cheese, no croutons, dressing on the site, and we split the main dish. We try to avoid anything heavy, like noodle with gravy, things breaded, fried, swimming in fat, loaded with extras, stuffed, fried rice, etc. you have the picture. And we never order any desserts. We even split the soup - yes, soups are usually loaded with calories too - especially those thick soups like chowder.
For regular lunch, if I don't bring something from home, I go to 2-3 places where I am known for years, and the cook knows exactly what I like and what not to serve me. Those are family owned small places, where is easy to get something custom cooked than in a chain restaurant. More than often they will make for me whatever they eat that day, which often is not even on the menu. Easy on salt, easy on fat, and smaller portion.
At home, I put away all regular dinner plates. They became huge with the years.
For years now, I only use 8" salad plates (which pretty much used to be the size of regular dinner plates in the 60's - check this link: Push Play Fitness: Portion Control Tips )
This is a great way for portion control. As you can see, a full plate that is only 8" big holds way less calories than the nowadays typical dinner plate.
Did you noticed that restaurants serve food on plates that easily could hold a whole turkey? And the plates are overloaded with food! That's what people want - "food worth their money"!
So, instead of lower menu prices, they just get bigger plates! But don't be fooled - there is no more quality food on them, those plates are filled with more starch, junk and gravy.
In other countries dinner plates are still small, so I often hear people traveling there complaining about how they went to eat and left hungry, because they didn't get enough food.
Same with the "buffet" places. The amount of fresh veggies and quality meat shrunk, and you get a bigger selection of different kinds of potatoes, rice, noodle, fries, canned veggies, more fried food etc. Now even Chinese buffet included enchiladas, spaghetti, or even pizza! Great chafing dishes fillers!
They say, they want to have food for everyone, but come on! when I go to a Chinese place, I don't want to eat spaghetti there!
I know! We have a Chinese buffet place that has pizza. Not even good pizza. Cracked me up to see that there.
I opened up a Cheesecake Factory and trust me people you DO NOT want to know the calorie counts of their dishes. Some of the pasta dishes have almost 2000 calories by themselves. Just FYI a SLICE of the Red Velvet Cheesecake is 1750 calories!!!
WOW. Thanks for tell me that. I only went to one once, and the food was pretty good. Can't remember what I had, but it wasn't pasta because I rarely order that.
I opened up a Cheesecake Factory and trust me people you DO NOT want to know the calorie counts of their dishes. Some of the pasta dishes have almost 2000 calories by themselves. Just FYI a SLICE of the Red Velvet Cheesecake is 1750 calories!!!
I consider Cheesecake Factory one of the worst places to eat, calorie-wise. I've heard it described as a "bastion of gluttony." Maybe they've added some lighter choices in recent years, but I stopped going a long time ago. I do love cheesecake (and many of their other foods) but I will not do that to my body anymore.
I consider Cheesecake Factory one of the worst places to eat, calorie-wise. I've heard it described as a "bastion of gluttony." Maybe they've added some lighter choices in recent years, but I stopped going a long time ago. I do love cheesecake (and many of their other foods) but I will not do that to my body anymore.
They do have what they call a "skinnylicious" menu. Which is such a ridiculous sounding name. I wish these restaurants would just give their lighter menu normal sounding names instead of making people who want "healthier" food to have to announce to everyone that they want the skinnylicious grilled salmon. Its like they want to mock people who want to eat healthy while dinning out.
I consider Cheesecake Factory one of the worst places to eat, calorie-wise. I've heard it described as a "bastion of gluttony." Maybe they've added some lighter choices in recent years, but I stopped going a long time ago. I do love cheesecake (and many of their other foods) but I will not do that to my body anymore.
It might be easier to make healthy choices there if their menu wasn't 117 pages long. By the time I get midway through it, I have forgotten what restaurant I am at.
I opened up a Cheesecake Factory and trust me people you DO NOT want to know the calorie counts of their dishes. Some of the pasta dishes have almost 2000 calories by themselves. Just FYI a SLICE of the Red Velvet Cheesecake is 1750 calories!!!
This is the biggest reason we as a country are so obese. Most would have no idea that these dishes have that many calories.
I opened up a Cheesecake Factory and trust me people you DO NOT want to know the calorie counts of their dishes. Some of the pasta dishes have almost 2000 calories by themselves. Just FYI a SLICE of the Red Velvet Cheesecake is 1750 calories!!!
That place is terrible (calorie wise, taste wise not too bad). We went a few times, mainly on vacation; one of the times the order was taking a while so to make up for it they brought us a free appetizer size Caesar salad. Out of curiousity we looked up calorie count online when we got back - 900 something calories!! Now I know caesar is not a light dish, but come on, it was a plate of lettuce that wasn't even that big - how much dressing and cheese do you need to pile on there to make it 900! calories from like 10 calories of lettuce?? Ridiculous!
Another time I got a brunch dish of just a couple of eggs and toast. The eggs came SWIMMING in butter; like literally, it was disgusting. Looked up calories after, it was something like 600 - two eggs are only 150 or so, how much butter do you need to put on there??
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
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Originally Posted by EvilCookie
That place is terrible (calorie wise, taste wise not too bad). We went a few times, mainly on vacation; one of the times the order was taking a while so to make up for it they brought us a free appetizer size Caesar salad. Out of curiousity we looked up calorie count online when we got back - 900 something calories!! Now I know caesar is not a light dish, but come on, it was a plate of lettuce that wasn't even that big - how much dressing and cheese do you need to pile on there to make it 900! calories from like 10 calories of lettuce?? Ridiculous!
Another time I got a brunch dish of just a couple of eggs and toast. The eggs came SWIMMING in butter; like literally, it was disgusting. Looked up calories after, it was something like 600 - two eggs are only 150 or so, how much butter do you need to put on there??
Your post reminded me of something. When I lived in Connecticut, a restaurant opened called Ted's Montana Grill. It's a national chain (but not in every state) and their appeal is that, aside from beef, they have bison. Well, my (now ex-)husband didn't eat red meat for health reasons -- heart risk in his family history -- but he'd done research and found that bison had less fat than chicken. So off we went. We had bison burgers that were ridiculously delicious. I mean, just amazing. It was ground (like beef) and had a slightly sweeter taste than beef... at a fraction of the fat count. Or so we thought!
After going there a few times, and finding it to be delicious every time, I saw ground bison in the grocery store. What the hey... I can make bison burgers at home. And I did. It was fine. They were okay. Good, even. Not great, though, in comparison to Ted's. I'd make them again -- and I did -- but they just weren't Ted's burgers.
The next time that we went to Ted's Montana Grill, I asked the waiter where we could buy the ground bison that they use. I didn't think that he'd tell me -- but he did -- and then I went on to tell him that I'd gotten bison in the grocery store, but the burgers didn't come out as good. We would like that "less fat than chicken" bison alternative at home sometimes too. He chuckled and said that the supermarket bison that I got would have been the same quality as they had in the restaurant and then he said, "but there's a trick to making it the burger taste like ours." I asked him if he'd divulge the secret. "Sure!," he said, still laughing. "The bun is buttered on both sides before it's put on the grill. And then the burger is grilled in more butter. A lot of butter."
Well, we couldn't be upset -- it's not like Ted's was marketing the stuff as a health food. But still... we were disappointed. More disappointed in ourselves, though, for not realizing that that's exactly what most restaurants do to make their food so good -- they use lots of fat.
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