Dr. Gourmet's Food Reviews
Restaurant Chains
I seldom eat at chain restaurants. I much prefer to eat great food and it’s worth the time to either cook it myself or find a good restaurant.
Even though I travel a great deal, part of my success in avoiding mediocre food away from home is the same as when I am at home – planning! Both chain and fast food restaurants are now pretty expensive and not only do I save money by, say, bringing my own lunch on the plane, I have a much better meal: it both tastes better and is better for me.
I have reviewed some healthier options from common chain restaurants. Generally you’ll find that the recommended dinner meals will fall under about 500 calories or so. Unfortunately, many such chains do not stint on sodium, so if you’re on a low sodium diet, be aware!
The following are the reviews of those acceptable meals, along with the nutrition information we’ve been able to obtain. Note that many chain restaurants no longer provide nutrition information on their websites, so we’ve posted their nutrition information when it’s available to us.
Notes: Menu selections may vary according to restaurant location. If there’s a chain restaurant you’d like us to review, let us know about it by sending an email to webmaster@drgourmet.com. We can’t guarantee that Dr. Harlan will test all of your restaurant suggestions, but he’ll can certainly try to visit them when he is near one.
Chevy’s Fresh Mex
Back in 2010, when we last researched the menu at Chevys Fresh Mex, it was easier. They made their nutrition information available through a website called HealthyDiningFinder.com. I suppose that was a ploy to deflect bad news on their own website. It makes sense, I suppose: put some distance between yourself and terrible nutrition numbers.
Chili’s Grill & Bar
If anyone wonders why there are so many health problems in America, they don't need to look much further than chain restaurants. "Fast Casual" restaurants, as they are known in the business, are amazingly bad for you and Chili's is the granddaddy of food that leads to illness and the shortening of your lifespan.
Daily Grill
I love living in New Orleans and there are some really good restaurants here. Fortunately, there are more locally owned restaurants here than big chains. Unfortunately, that means that when we want to review restaurants for you, we don't have a lot of choices. Our mission is to help you make better choices, so we took our tastings on the road to find some restaurants that are more widely available. This time we were in the Washington, D.C. area.
Legal Sea Food
I ate at a Legal Sea Foods chain restaurant once and was not terribly impressed. This was about 6 years ago and the restaurant smelled like fish. Fish restaurants shouldn't smell like fish. Seafood restaurants should smell like the ocean. My recollection was that the food wasn't all that great. In spite of my previous experience, we elected to give them a try as part of our recent look at chain restaurants.
P.F. Chang’s China Bistro
Fast food gets a bad rap. Convenience food gets a bad rap. But neither McDonalds nor Hamburger Helper have anything on chain restaurants. By "chain restaurant" I mean places like Applebee's, Chili's, and P.F. Chang's. (What is with all the apostrophes anyway?)
Ruby Tuesday
A few years ago Ruby Tuesday tried some healthy items on their menu. This was in response to surveys they had commissioned that concluded their customers wanted healthier options. The results were pretty dismal. When presented with the healthier option on the menu, people simply didn’t order the dishes.
