Good food choices at an Italian Restaurant

SuzMcH

I'm going out for dinner tonight to a cosy litttle family run Italian restaurant. It's beautiful food but no nutritional info on menu. In fact they don't even have a website I can link to and prepare in advance.

So I'm trying to think of good food choices at an Italian restaurant. What should I go for and what to avoid ?

Stay away from the bread basket. Avoid cream based pasta sauces. Avoid pasta and go for fish or chicken ???
What should I look for ? Choice of starter ?

Thanks, I'm stressing about it as I had a bad week last week and so far ben good this week so I don't want to ruin it.

crasula

My diet Italian choices which you can commonly find on a menu would include (starters);
Minestrone soup (all summer vegetables, no creams etc).
Mussels with white wine (just make sure they don't make them with cream).
Even the ubiquitous Parma ham with melon is better than the fried stuff!

With main's it's pretty easy i think;
Grilled fish is always safe, they'll often serve it with a gremolata dressing which is just lemon herbs and olive oil.
Same with tuna steaks, always a safe restaurant course.
Pollo (chicken) alla cacciatora is always a good one, mainly just tomato based sause with olives, capers etc.

You could even fit in a little desert, like a lemon sorbet.

I just tend to keep away from pastas, risotto's, fried foods and breads, you could comfortably eat out with a small glass of wine and consume less than 1000 calories.

rose1617

I did the same thing last night.
I used Olive Garden's menu as a base because, let's face it, there's nothing really worse for you than Olive Garden's regular menu as far as Italian goes lol. So I used the family restaurant's online menu vs. olive garden's nutritional info and went from there.

Turns out most of the salads had more calories than the entrees. My best bet ended up being just a simple pasta with meat sauce. Ate half of the plate for a whole 300 or so calories. Lost weight on the scale this morning, so I guess I did ok. I even had two pieces of garlic bread.

eveunderground

I'd go with mussels for my starter, then fish or veal for my main. I'd avoid the bread basket and the pasta dishes. If you do go for a pasta dish, as soon as your served take your knife and fork cut a line down the middle of the serving and don't allow yourself to eat more than half (bring the rest home).