Bison is leaner than beef, I’ve written about that before and was reminded of it during a recent dinner at a Ted’s Montana Grill in Glenview, Il.
Ted’s is a national chain started by Ted Turner that specializes in bison items like bison burger and bison steaks. We’ve been there before and enjoyed, so I suggested to my wife that we forego our usual Saturday night salad buffet and go to Ted’s instead. The meal was great and my request for no salt was met, with one rather odd exception.
I ordered the bison fillet as a main course, without seasonings, salt or the lemon butter it normally comes with. That’s exactly what Ted’s suggestions on a special dietary information page on its website. I give the chain credit for having that information but the sad part about it is that the information basically tells you all the things on the menu you can’t eat if you’re on a heart-restricted or diabetic diet. Wouldn’t it be nice if instead everything on the menu was ok for everyone to eat?
The eight ounce bison fillet is 545 calories, according to the Ted’s nutritional info page, and 28 grams of fat. That compares with 64 grams of fat for the comparable beef fillet. I’m assuming that ordering it without salt or seasonings eliminated most of the 2,307 mgs of sodium the nutritional page lists for it, let’s hope so anyway.
I ordered a plain baked potato and asparagus as sides. The plate looked wonderful, not sparse like some other places where I’ve ordered items to be cooked without salt. But the odd item was that the outside of the potato has salt crystals on it, ones big enough to see when it came out. I asked the waitress why they were there. She didn’t really have a good answer other than to say the inside of the potato was plain.
Everything we ate was tasty and well-prepared, thanks Ted, now see if you can clean up the menu some more so people on special diets can have more choices rather than more items to eliminate from what they can pick.
John
The No Salt, No Fat, No Sugar Journal 