Body Fat Challenge Check-In, two restaurant reviews

Morning!

Here's where I ended up yesterday:

Breakfast- BPC

Lunch- 1 Quest bar, 5 Publix hot n spicy wings (unbreaded and deep fried)

Dinner- Outback bunless bacon cheeseburger, 1 serving of their seasonal veggies with 1 tbsp butter, salt and pepper, a drizzle of their ranch dressing on my burger

Snack- 1 serving keto chocolate mug cake with 3 tbsp HWC whipped stiff

Water count- 118.3 fl oz

Yesterday was my birthday (hence the mug cake) in addition to being the weekend. Weekends are generally pretty nice for me in the kitchen. Hubby is really good about trying to make sure I don't spend tons of time cooking on weekends, especially on Sunday which is our family day. They're really the only two days of the week I'm not tied to the stove cooking something for someone. I greatly appreciate this.

Due to this effort, we had restaurant food for dinner both Saturday and Sunday evening. It can be a bit tricky to eat out and keto on, so when I do I will post my thoughts for you guys. Hopefully it will help you make good choices when you eat out.

Chili's Bar and Grill

I'm going to tell you right up front that Chili's was very disappointing. It's not an easy place to have a keto meal to begin with considering all the tortillas, chips, rice, beans, etc. However I had assumed that I could just get an order of fajitas, throw out the tortillas, and be set.

Nope.

The fajita meat is lower carb than most of the offerings, although they do have some carbs and I have no idea how you get carbs from pork, chicken, and beef that are seared. The little tray they bring you with all the fajita fixings isn't particularly bad, either. It's the rest of the skillet. Yes, those delicious onions and peppers have over 24 grams of carbohydrates and only a few grams fiber. So be aware that if you choose tortilla-less fajitas at this establishment and are keto, you will be consuming almost your entire day's worth of carbs just by eating the the meat and veg in the skillet. 

Oooof!

I also caution you to be especially wary of their salads. I looked them up prior to going and even the house *side* salad had 12 carbs (and again, only a couple grams of fiber). That's really a lot more carbohydrates than two or three small croutons can account for. Also, avoid their ranch dressing!!! It is also incredibly high in carbs for a mayonnaise based sauce. The blue cheese is best, stat-wise.

Honestly the only menu items I could find that seemed to be easily keto-fied were the burgers and the grilled chicken sandwich. Kill the bun, skip the fries and there ya go. 

So I ordered a bacon and cheddar burger, no bun, no tomato, and a side of celery and blue cheese- which seemed the safest side on the menu. If you like avocado (of which I am not a fan) you can also get a small cup of their guacamole on the side and slather it on your burger or chicken for a negligible amount of carbs (it's less than 1 net gram for the entire cup). 

As far as the food quality goes, I wasn't super impressed. One thing I've noticed since switching to keto is that when you throw out the bread, restaurant portions are actually really skimpy. It's amazing to me how much that bread covers up. My husband ordered a chicken sandwich with the bread and it looked like this GIGANTIC sandwich, but then you could look across the table at my plate and see the actual amount of meat they stuff that huge sandwich roll with, and be stunned.

My burger was cooked to my liking, but the patty was very thin for the price. I make a much thicker patty myself at home. They did give me a decent amount of cheese and bacon, so no complaints there. The burger, overall was tasty. Where I have a complaint is in my side dish. As I said earlier, there really is no choice for salads here while on keto. You could get a side salad but those are very carb heavy at this establishment, and aside from that all the listed side items are things like skillet bread, corn, rice and beans, potatoes, fries. 

Since I knew they carry celery and it is an off-menu side choice (although there was an up-charge for it), that's what I asked for. Let me tell you, this is by far the skimpiest portion of celery and blue cheese ever. No joke, it was one, maybe two standard celery sticks (not stalks, the pre-cut sticks) slivered into four tiny bits of celery. That's what showed up on my plate. And they charged us $1.00 extra because it wasn't a normal side choice. Yeah. 

I would also mention that I did not care for their blue cheese dressing, although it was the ONLY dressing on the menu that was actually low in carbohydrates (negligible carbs per serving). It tastes to me like the Marie's bottled dressing you get in the grocery store, and I am not a fan of that one, as I think it's too sweet and blue cheese, to me, should not be sweet. That's a personal taste issue though, so if you happen to like that kind of blue cheese dressing you'll be fine.

Keto-friendly choices: F

Food quality and taste: B

Overall experience: D

Outback Steakhouse (Curb Side Service)

Last night we decided to order and pick up instead of going out. Hubby really likes steak, however I will confess right now that I am the world's worst steak chef. I am a damn good cook- if I do say so myself- but I just cannot wrap my head around cooking a steak. I attribute this largely to the fact that I do not care for steak myself, and so I rarely make it and it is usually to try and treat my husband (because he's awesome).

Hubby enjoys steak and our local Outback usually does it well, so that's where we ordered from. We used the online ordering system, which was very quick and easy. It also had room to put any specialty instructions, which made ordering a bunless burger a cinch.

As far as the keto-friendly choices go, so long as you avoid their breaded chicken, their burger and sandwich menu is perfect. If you like steak, they've got a good variety of choices there. Their unbreaded shrimp, lobster, and wood-fire grilled pork chops are great choices, too, just be sure to skip the sauces they put on the side. I caution against their "On the Barbie" offerings, as whatever sauce or seasoning they put on the meat when they grill it has a good deal of carbs. If you really want the grilled chicken, ask that they omit the sauce and just season it like the steaks instead.

Once again, the salads are all really carb-heavy. The only one that was kind-of acceptable was the house salad (after removing the croutons, of course). Again, it is a bit carb heavy for salad, but that seems to be largely attributable to the fairly large croutons and tomato that come with it. Their mayo-based dressings were all reasonable as far as carb counts, so side salad is not a completely terrible choice.

Their sides menu is pretty loaded with potatoes. It makes sense; steak and potatoes are a thing. However they do offer steamed broccoli with butter (8 net carbs, which is about normal for the amount of broccoli you get), steamed seasonal vegetables (a mix of carrot, broccoli, and yellow squash, 5 net carbs for a goodly amount), and grilled asparagus (I believe it was 2 net carbs for the serving, but it was $1.00 up charge). 

I chose the bunless Outback burger, no tomato, with cheddar and bacon, and a side of steamed seasonal veggies topped with salt, pepper, and a good tbsp butter. My children begged for an order of the cheese fries, which comes with a goodly amount of ranch on the side, so I used maybe a tbsp of it to drizzle over my burger. 

Once again, the burger looks a lot smaller without the bun. That bread really deceives the eye! But it was larger than the one I got at Chili's. It was also very tasty, as was my vegetable side. And even though we picked it up, everything looked and tasted really fresh and not wilted or overly steamed, which can be a problem with take-out. I was really happy with my meal, and while I think it's a bit ridiculous that restaurants are charging $10+ for burgers, the bulk of which are really the bread, I was full and satisfied when I was finished with my meal.

Keto-friendly choices: B+

Food quality and taste: A

Overall experience: B+