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What are your "go to" meals when eating out?

Tannedhaggis

Well-Known Member
Messages
52
I am struggling to make informed choices when eating out. Today I had lunch at The Coffee Club and ordered a low calorie dish of corn and zucchini fritters with bacon as it was one of the few dishes that wasn't in a sandwich, wrap or roll! However when I went to enter the food into my fitness pal, there was no carb count for that dish. When I checked the ingredients I saw it had flour, so there must be carbs in it. When I went to the nutritional panel on the cafes web site it doesn't list carbs either.

Would appreciate your advice on how to keep track or even learn to carb count when eating out? With the festive season well and truely here I don't want to get too far off track with my low carb eating.
 
If all else fails I try to guess. Unfortunately you could find that potatoes, rice or flour are used on a lot of dishes, like for instance a vegetable soup or a quiche. Same thing for oils and fat, or worse than all
refined sugar. Even in pepper dishes
 
If it contained corn it was high carb. Corn and all grains are high carb.

A good book (and app) is Carbs & Cals, available from Amazon. It contains thousands of everyday foods and meals, all in colour photos and served up on a plate. It gives the weight, carbs, calories, fibre, protein and fat amounts in various different weights. It is an excellent book.

My go-to meals are a steak in the evening, or at lunch time a salad with no dressing, then add some real mayo or olive oil if there is any.
 
Omelettes are a fairly safe option and many restaurants will serve them at any time of day if you ask. Steak or chops with steamed veg is good and my personal favorite is prime rib with extra veg instead of potato or yorkshire pudding. Salads with dressing on the side are good as well.
 
We (me and Mr C) almost always go to a carvery if we are out for main meal - that way we get to choose what we want rather than having the fuss of having to negotiate with the server what we can or can't have. If we want a snack type lunch then we'll either go to subway and get a salad or (if hungrier) go to a decent chippy and ask them to lightly batter a large cod or haddock then take the remaining batter off while eating it - usually with a shared portion of mushy peas (I'm in Yorkshire).

I did go to a steak place not so long ago - asked them to hold the chips and requested extra salad. Plate came with chips still on it and the extra salad eventually turned up on a tiny saucer about the time Mr C was thinking about paying the bill. Not impressed. Won't be going there again.
 
Many thanks for the great ideas. I love vegies but not so much salad and I have overdosed on eggs at home. However the more I learn and try different recipes the less mundane my home made meals should be. Last nights heroin chicken was very nice. Maybe I just need to eat all the tasty stuff at home and stick with the plain when eating out. Though I do love seafood and didn't think of ordering fish and peeling off the batter. I have a dinner dance tomorrow night so that will be challenging.
 
Hi Blue, Thanks for the info. I had a look at the book on Amazon I just couldn't find the info on eating out. Does it list US or UK restaurants? Being in Australia we tend to eat Lots of steaks on the BBQ and I love my black pudding ( you can take the girl out of Scotland but you can't take Scottish food away from the girl!)
 

No, it doesn't list any restaurants, just food and some combinations of foods.
 
Nandos is a god send for me, Gluten free and low carb easily acheived and i can have avocardo and Haloumi in the same meal
 
Maybe give some suggestions for your favourite types of cuisine..
My go to meals are:
Chinese - Crispy Duck (no pancakes or sauce) and roast pork
Indian - Chicken Tikka with some form of veg bahji spinach or mushroom
Japanese - Sashimi or yakitori
Pubs.. bunless/chipless burger or steak with green veg/salad if available
Fast food as above - bunless/chipless burger
Chip shop - fish picking off the batter or grilled if they offer it.. salad
Does that help?
 
To add to Bulkbiker's list:
Vietnamese - lots of great fish and seafood dishes prepared with chillies and little else. There is a spinach-like vegetable dish known as Morning Glory, which is pretty safe and absolutely delicious;
Thai - I'm OK with a prawn red curry with coconut milk. I eat it like a soup and skip the rice;
Steak houses - steak and veg/salad; stick to the buttery, cheesy sauces and not the ones like to have been thickened with flour. Avoid the chips. If you can't, have a tiny portion - the fat in them will slow the absorption of the carbs a little.

With new places I tend to order the least "mucked-about" items, so I usually end up with meat/fish/seafood/cheese/tofu with veg or salad.
 
Engineer88 said:
Nandos is a god send for me, Gluten free and low carb easily acheived and i can have avocardo and Haloumi in the same meal
Click to expand...
I never though of Nandos, great suggestion thanks Engineer. That's a smart list Biker, the bun less burger is certainly doable because most places offer a burger of some sort. My Chinese go to is sang choi bau or any minced meat in lettuce cups. Thanks Tabby I ordered the grilled fish and salad today and it came with chips. I would love to say I left them on my plate, but a few jumped off into my mouth!
Joining this forum is the best low carb education ever. I am in awe of your willingness to share and the resourcefulness you have found to make this lifestyle change.
 
My husband and I are both T2 we eat out twice a week we usually go for something like gammon, steak, grilled chicken, fish, burger without the bun and we ask for salad instead of chips.sometimes Nandos or we go to a carvery where we can pick and choose what vegetables we have
 
You can get a burger or chicken without the bun and fill upon the salad bar in Harvester
 
I second Nando's, although I was never a fan beforehand. I had the Mediterranean salad with chicken, which came with a carb-negligible dressing and all the right ingredients, including olives. Not to gross anyone out, but they also do delicious pan-fried chicken livers, (which comes with a roll you could ignore) as you might need a bit extra in the way of protein.
 
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I usually go for steak if it is on the menu, with salad, no chips, and then swipe half a dozen of Mr B's chips.
If I end up with chips on my own plate I find it a Herculean task to stop at just 6.

At a curry house, I will choose something like chicken tikka, or chicken shashlik, no rice or bread, and then have one or two veg side dishes. I actually prefer that to bloating and gumming myself up on rice or naan.

I try to avoid Chinese food. Far too many bad choices and too few good ones. And depending on the quality of the place you can be scuppered before you start. If they put those gooey shiny sauces on stuff, then I am going to feel terrible, no matter whether there are carbs present or not.

Salads are often a great choice, especially if you ask to hold the croutons, or no potato, etc. Just use copious amounts of mayo instead, and they can be very satisfying.

Depending on my mood, I can either feel ecstatically virtuous or despondant and grungy, depending on my food choices - and I would MUCH rather feel virtuous! lol.
 
If you have a smartphone, the MyFitnessPal app has good information on carbs for most foods including meals at major restaurant chains in the U.K. and USA, but I don't know about Australia.

The free version of the app is good.
 
I haven't done it as a diabetic yet, but tapas seems like a fairly good idea, given that you can easily negotiate the odd patatas bravas to get to the chorizo, boquerones, padron peppers, manchego, serrano ham etc etc. And it's a sharing thing, so there's no spotlight on you and how much you're eating - I think it's probably the perfect diabetic restaurant food, in fact.
 
I've had T1 for almost 50 years, but I've just discovered the miracle of going low carb in the last few years.
We eat out A LOT. Sometimes, it can be challenging going into a sandwich shop (grrr), but I've become a bit more bold about asking for a no-bread option. Most places here will put the meat and fixings on a bed of lettuce if you ask, but this could be a local aberration (I live in So. California and fitness freaks abound!).
Eggs are a great way to escape hi-carb burdens. I'm fortunate because I really like eggs and vegetables and those combinations are usually available.
Beware of spaghetti sauce or salsa. Tomatoes really push up my BG even if no other carbs are involved.
The closer the food is in its natural state helps. Sorry to say that corn, jacket potatoes, and peas may be very close to their natural state, but they are loaded with carbohydrates.
When I was originally diagnosed, the diet they gave me had exchanges. I lucked out: I loved almost all of the "free" vegetables. I found this link that may help with your carb knowledge and portion sizes. I know it's not popular today, but knowing some of this really helped me.
 
@Billy_Pilgrim - how could I forget tapas?!? I have a fabulous tapas place not far from me and we have eaten very well there and both enjoyed very good blood glucose afterwards (a couple of glasses of Rioja probably helped too!).

Prawns, chops, fish, cheesy dishes, oily veg, liver and kidneys, salad - oh, yes! Last time I went I even risked a little dessert - a lemon cake made from almonds with a dollop of cream.
 
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