Category: eating out

Streaming restaurant reviews leave a lot out

I watch a lot of streaming restaurant reviews, primarily through Facebook reels, but elsewhere as well. And I’m getting fairly upset about how much basic info they tend to leave out — like when the restaurant is open!

Twice now, and from the same reviewer, I’ve gone to try a place he talks about only to find it closed. Actually, the second time I called ahead, having been burned once. Not only was the place closed for lunch but it only serves its speciality, a giant mozzarella stock, on Sunday.

So even if I had gone for dinner, I would have been out of luck. And this with an out-of-town guest looking for unusual fare.

I’m old so when I try new places it’s more often than not for lunch, not dinner. Night driving isn’t the most comfortable for me these days.

So I want to know when a place is open for lunch and which days of the week it’s open as well.

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My Stan’s Donut Quest Ends Well

Stan’s Donuts is the Illinois offshoot of a similarly named Los Angeles donut shop. It’s been getting noticed around Chicago for years now but every time I try to buy a donut there, I’ve been disappointed. Disappointed not in the donut but in the lack of donuts when I show up at local outlets.

As fate would have it, I always seem to find a Stan’s at day’s end when it’s out of any donuts I would want. It’s become a running joke in my head (since I have no one else to tell about it), “There’s a Stan’s donut shop…oh it’s closing.”

So when I happened to be near Chicago’s upscale Michigan Avenue shopping district on a recent Sunday afternoon and I saw a Stan’s nearby, I assumed it would be closing early that day because I was nearby.

But no! It was open and well-stocked with chocolate-covered donuts, the only kind I like to waste precious calories on.

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McDonald adding insult to injury?

McDonald’s in recent years has been systematically eliminating any menu items that were even remotely healthy. Gone are yogurt parfaits (which were still high in sugar) and McDonald salads (which packed a lot of salt if you used the store dressing).

Stuck at a fast food outlet? Try to find one still offering salads like this one at Buona Beef in Chicago.

Now, according to a report by TastingTable, McD’s is adding insult to the very real injury its menu can cause your health by charging small order fees for delivery. I’m assuming this is in addition to any fees the delivery app charges you too.

My days of loving it at McDonald’s are long gone, In its salad days, pre-Covid, I would have salads and yogurt there two or three days a week. Then I could feel like a normal human being instead of one with heart issues that had changed all my eating habits.

I could just blend in instead of thinking about the two stents holding my arteries open. No more, though.

So I’ve been testing out other fast-food salads and found two I’m enjoying at Chicago’s Buona Beef chain and at the Potbelly sandwich shop chain.

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Experience Unique Waffle Flights at Elly’s Pancake House

Pancake house menus are pretty much all the same right — lots of pancakes, eggs, waffles, you know the drill.

When I go to one, I look for something heart-healthy, like an egg-white veggie omelet.

But recently I discovered a place near my father-in-law’s new retirement home that had a non-heart-healthy dish I simply could not pass up — waffle flights!

If you’ve ever done a beer or whiskey flight, you know the concept — four varieties of something in smaller sizes than normal but each with a very distinctive and wonderful flavor.

That’s exactly what Elly’s Pancake House in Glenview, Ill., is doing with waffles! Exclamation point? Yes, because this flight was really that amazing.

The waffles included are called s’mores, fruitopia, dalmation and apple pecans. You have to look back to the pancake section of the menu to find out what those include, namely:

  • S’mores — oreo, marshmallow spread, graham cracker crumbles
  • Fruitopia — strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, bananas, mascarpone sauce
  • Dalmatian — white chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips

Regular readers know I don’t eat nuts, so I asked for the apple pecan without the pecans and our waitress was very accommodating about that.

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Shame on Costco, its new salad stinks

Costco is sporting a new salad on its food court menu; avoid it like the plague, it simply stinks and is not worth the money being charged for it.

What a sad day for Costco food court customers. The salad there was once not only a meal for one, but possibly two people in its pre-covid heyday.

But since Covid, Costco just like other fast-food purveyors, has been downsizing. This latest version, the rotisserie chicken chef salad for $7.99 in my
Chicago-area Costco, has barely any lettuce. The small container is filled with a dressing packet, likely the bulk of the 840 calories listed for the salad, a packet of hard-boiled egg bits, and a packet of croutons. Take all those off and the container is less than half-full of lettuce as my pictures show.

The sale is not worth the price. Costco broke my heart when it dropped fat-free frozen yogurt from its menu. Then, during the pandemic, it dropped salads all together as well. I think I could live with no salad easier than with this abomination of a salad.

#Shameofcostcosalad

The new Costco Salad, yuck.
After taking out all the packets.
No salad, no value.
The pre-Covid Costco salad. This was a meal, and more!
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A healthy lunch spot & sushi by the pound

While I try to avoid generalities, one I do use is that the less processed food is, the healthier it likely is as well.

That’s why sushi has become an even larger part of my diet than it was before my two stents were put in to unclog my arteries.

Nutritionists do raise a red flag about eating a lot of white rice, but sushi can be found with brown rice and there’s also sashimi which is sushi’s rice-less cousin. But sushi can get expensive.

So I was excited to try a Chicago sushi lunch spot that sells sushi by the pound ($1.25 an ounce) rather than the piece. Grain & Sea is a very neat-looking spot with an almost limitless sushi buffet.

You walk the food line, taking whichever you want and have it all weighed at the end of the line.

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But I only had a salad — with a truckload of junk on it

“Oh, I’ll just get a salad,” is what people worried about gaining weight say when they eat out with friends. Salads are low-cal right?

That depends. Places like the Cheesecake Factory load salads with so many unhealthy things they soon become high-calorie, high-fat and high-salt.

Opt for salads without much added to the lettuce.

Indeed, salads made this list from AARP: 12 Foods That May Cause Unhealthy Weight Gain.

“Salads can be loaded with fiber, antioxidants, vitamins and minerals—but what you put on them matters. Piling on cheese, bacon bits, croutons or creamy dressings can pack more calories than you expect. 

“Tip: Keep your portions in check when using calorie-dense toppings and opt for a light vinaigrette instead of creamy dressings. For an even bigger nutritional boost, go for a variety of colorful veggies and lean proteins to keep you full,” says the AARP article.

Other items on the list, such as nuts which are often touted as healthy, may surprise you too.

Even olive oil, everyone’s favorite fat these days, made the list. Quantity matters is the lesson here.

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Back at Panera, but not for long

Before my first heart attack in 2012, the Panera chain of fast-casual restaurants was a regular stop for me at lunch time. But the overwhelming amounts of salt in most of their offerings meant I couldn’t go there post-heart attack, as I wrote back in 2014.

This week, however, I found myself with little choice but a Panera, so I thought I would give it another try. Panera salad offerings are plentiful and I found one with a reasonable amount of salt if I used my own oil and vinegar instead of a store dressing. But the tiny size of what I received compared to the high price means I won’t be heading to Panera again anytime soon.

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Better eating can seem like a mountain to climb, but here are some small steps to start the journey

We’re into April now, past the time most people give up on New Year’s resolutions like, “this year, I’m going to eat healthier.”

Stuck at a fast food outlet? Try to find one still offering salads like this one at Buona Beef in Chicago.

Eating healthy in a society drenched in high-fat, high-salt, high-calorie, high-sugar foods can seem like an impossible mountain to climb. If you’re like me, you’ve climbed it many times, only to slide back down when you hear the siren songs of your favorite junk foods.

But don’t give up, here’s an interesting piece called 13 Small Changes You Can Make to Eat Healthier Forever that may help.

The steps really are small, like start your day with a glass of water or eat a vegetable with every meal, but they can add up.

Some, like focusing on fiber and adding more omega-3s (found in such fish as salmon), I’m already doing. Others, like thinking about food as a friend rather than an enemy or getting enough sleep, I still struggle with.

Healthier eating is a journey, not a destination for most of us. Keep walking.

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Another Chicago-area fast-food salad option

Regular readers of my blog know that McDonald’s salads, without the high-salt dressings, were a mainstay of my lunch diet over the years. But in 2023, those salads disappeared from McDonald’s menus. victim of Pandemic-related menu changes.

I’ve been searching for a quick-salad alternative ever since, trying Wendy’s and a chain called Zupas among others. I’m adding another option now, a salad at Chicago-area chain Buona Beef, its Tuscan Harvest Chicken salad.

Priced at $11.19, the salad has a nice mix of chicken, cranberries, apples, spinach and romaine lettuce. Eat at a Buona’s and it comes in a real bowl, not a plastic container, a civilizing touch absent at other outlets.

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