10 Best New Restaurant Meals
10. #1: Best new food at T.G.I. Friday’s: Black Angus Sirloin Japanese Hibachi Skewers
Hit the JD sauce on T.G.I.'s Jack Daniels Ribs and you’re likely to develop a hangover—the kind that might eventually droop over your belt buckle. In addition to the egregious load of saturated fat, these ribs pack in 177 grams of carbohydrates. (That’s as many carbs as you’d find in 21 Oreos, my friend.) Fortunately, TGI Friday’s Right Portion, Right Price menu allows you to order modest portions of savory foods, and not one item has more than 750 calories. The Hibachi Skewers, if you were to order them off the regular menu, would stick you with more than 1,500 calories. Go with the downsized version and bank the savings.
9. #2: Best new food at Starbucks: Chicken & Hummus Bistro Box
Once you get past the pastries and syrup-spiked coffee drinks, the nutritional pitfalls on Starbucks’ menu are relatively few. That's why it's such a surprising delight to see the new line of bistro boxes, which further expand the chain's conscientious food menu. Bistro Boxes are nutrition-loaded packages stuffed with flavorful foods like chicken, salsa, hummus, cheeses, and dark chocolate. Think of them as lunch boxes for adults and the perfect excuse to never again order a muffin, scone, or coffee cake.
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8. #3: Best new food at Carl’s Jr.: Teriyaki Turkey Burger
The best part about Carl’s Jr.’s new line of turkey burgers is that they're loaded with big-flavor toppings that make them every bit as indulgent as the fatty beef burgers they replace. Even with ingredients like guacamole, mayonnaise, and teriyaki sauce, each burger manages to slide in with fewer than 500 calories. The teriyaki burger pictured here is topped with a thick slab of grilled pineapple, a rarity among restaurant burgers that delivers a kick of bromelain, a network of enzymes that might help ease joint pain and battle inflammation.
7. #4: Best new food at IHOP: Simple & Fit Spinach, Mushroom & Tomato Omelette with Fresh Fruit
IHOP's Simple & Fit menu is a vast improvement on the butter- and oil-heavy foods that populate the regular menu. Not one item eclipses 600 calories, yet they still provide the classic diner fare you expect from the baron of pancakes. For the classic veggie omelette, IHOP managed to slash two-thirds of the calories and 21.5 grams of saturated fat primarily by omitting the hollandaise sauce. By making this Eat This, Not That!-style smart swap just once a week, you’ll shed nearly 10 pounds within a year—without dieting!
6. #5: Best new food at Cosi: Lighter Side Chicken Tandoori Sandwich
Cosi’s menu can be tricky to gauge. For every decent option, there’s a healthful-sounding item bloated with excessive calories. The Lighter Side menu provides much-needed reprieve from the nutritional crapshoot. Use it to protect you from secretly dangerous grilled chicken sandwiches like this one, which has more saturated fat than four McDonald's Hamburgers.
5. #6: Best new food at Denny's: Fit Slam (egg whites scrambled with spinach and tomatoes, turkey bacon, English muffin, and fruit)
Denny’s classic menu delivers all the blights of typical diner food—excessive fats, starches, and sodium. But to accommodate healthier eaters, the chain now offers a Fit Fare menu. It covers breakfast, sure, but it also features lunch and dinner entrées. Items like Tilapia Ranchero and the new Chicken Avocado Sandwich are far leaner than the calorie-dense foods on the restaurant’s regular menu. All Fit Fare items meet two of the following criteria: They have fewer than 550 calories, have more than 20 grams of protein, have more than 8 grams of fiber, and contain fewer than 15 grams of fat.
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4. #7: Best new food at McDonald's: McDonald’s McNugget Happy Meal with mini-fries, apples, and low-fat milk
Right now the average Happy Meal has just over 500 calories. Starting in September, the average meal will be closer to 400. The reason is this: McDonald’s recently unveiled a plan to replace half the Happy Meal’s fries with fresh apples. To put that in perspective, if you could cut your child's intake by 100 calories every day between the ages of 8 and 13, he or she would enter the teen years more than 50 pounds lighter. That’s the difference between a normal-weight and obese teenager.
3. #8: Best new food at Cheesecake Factory: SkinnyLicious Petite Grilled Beef Tenderloin
Cheesecake Factory has long been the biggest calorie offender in the restaurant industry, but the chain is now making strides to balance its menu with reasonable food. The new SkinnyLicious menu features more than 40 items with fewer than 590 calories. The chain remains tight-lipped about the nutritional information for the rest of its menu, but at least we finally have a way to minimize the damage.
2. #9: Best new food at Applebee's: Asiago Peppercorn Steak with herb potatoes and seasonal vegetables
The USDA recommendation for daily meat consumption is 5.5 ounces, so a 12-ounce steak is a massive portion no matter how you slice it. The Asiago Peppercorn Steak weighs in at a reasonable 7 ounces, and for that, it shaves nearly 750 calories off Applebee's New York Strip. Credit goes to Applebee’s Under 550 Calories menu, which features five savory dishes like sirloin, teriyaki shrimp, and grilled chicken topped with portobello mushrooms.
1. #10: Best new food at Ruby Tuesday : Barbecue Grilled Chicken with white cheddar mashed potatoes and broccoli
Traditional restaurant techniques make certain that not even grilled chicken sandwiches are safe. Fortunately Ruby Tuesday has a Fit & Trim line that features more than a dozen items with fewer than 700 calories. And we’re not talking bean sprouts and rice cakes. Ruby’s leaner menu features sirloin, shrimp scampi, and this barbecue chicken, which is as lean and healthy as anything you’d make on your own grill.
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