Some people think it’s gauche to bring your own items to a restaurant. However, wine connoisseurs do it all the time: they bring their own bottle of wine whenever they have a special bottle.
Similarly, you can make a restaurant a better restaurant and more fun for you if you bring some items that improve the restaurant kitchen’s IQ. Because of our efforts, some of our favorite restaurants now stock items that make many of its patrons younger and their meals RealAge-smart. This chapter shows you how to make bringing products to a restaurant painless and even enjoyable.
Making your RealAge younger when eating out is easier than you think. In fact, most restaurants will try to accommodate your needs. Call ahead and ask what is on the menu, and if substitutions are possible. Most chefs are willing, but you have to ask. Remember, chefs want you to enjoy the experience of dining at their restaurant, so you’ll return often.
Sometimes a restaurant simply cannot accommodate all your needs. Or perhaps you weren’t able to give advance notice of your needs. That’s when we recommend bringing some of your favorite products into the restaurant with you. Please don’t bring the whole pantry with you! Some foods, however, will go a long way toward ensuring that your meal is delicious and healthful, no matter where you are. The best way to keep your RealAge younger is to be prepared. It’s not just about bringing in food—it is also about how to prepare before going and how to order.
Before You Go
Before you leave for the restaurant, make sure you’re not ravenous. You’ll eat more at the restaurant if you’ve skipped a meal that day. When hungry, you’ll tend to make food choices that age you (such as snacking on the white bread put before you). We recommend having a small snack before you go out. A piece of fruit, a cup of yogurt, or a handful of nuts (six walnuts, twelve almonds, or twenty peanuts) should suffice. The nuts also provide a little healthy fat before the meal.
Consider taking a few items with you to prepare for the “wait” time. A package of whole wheat crackers or chocolate-covered graham crackers is easy to put in your purse, coat pocket, or briefcase. Also, a small bite of true (cocoa-based, without milk fat) chocolate can ease your appetite and give you something to eat while others are diving into the bread basket. Bread and butter can be hard to resist, especially if the bread is homemade and powder-puff soft. Unfortunately, bread doesn’t get that soft if it’s not made with a lot of butter or hydrogenated fats, both of which have an incredible ability to sap your energy and make you old. One ordinary sized croissant can contain four days’ worth of saturated fat—80 grams—enough to make you more than four days older.
One alternative is to ask your server to bring only whole wheat bread, corn tortillas, or cut-up vegetables and a small dish of olive oil, balsalmic vinegar, salsa, or marinara sauce. (If you’re dining with someone else, it might be wise to ask before trading in the white rolls for whole wheat rolls, tortillas, or cut-up vegetables.) If the bread stays on the table, munch on a few whole-grain crackers you’ve brought with you. We like Whole Foods’ Woven Wheats (all wheat and delicious crunch; and no fat at all!).
You could also snack on some fresh-cut vegetables that you carried in your purse, backpack, fanny pack, or briefcase. (Often, especially if you call ahead, the restaurant may serve cut vegetables instead of, or in addition to, bread. Be a real CEO—chief executive officer—and get what you want by asking for cut vegetables ahead of time, when you make your reservation; this strategy obviously applies only to restaurants at which you make reservations, but it also gives you an extra reason to make a reservation—a call just 20 minutes in advance is all the time needed in a restaurant I frequent for the fresh-cut vegetables to appear).
Ordering
Now it’s time to order. Do you order an appetizer or not? They sound so good and you’re pretty hungry. We’re in favor of making appetizers your entire meal, but we suggest you ask for changes if necessary. Ask for warm tortillas and salsa to replace the tortilla chips (too often, straight out of a 10-pound box, and loaded with preservatives as they are “designed” to stay “fresh” for weeks, but are loaded with aging fats and preservatives that have at best unknown effects on your health!). Ask for sautéed (instead of deep-fried) mushrooms and onions as a side dish or as an appetizer. I love appetizers, sometimes ordering one as a starter and another as a main course. If you do not wish an appetizer, you can snack on some of those fresh-cut vegetables that you arranged for the restaurant to serve when you made your reservation.
Next comes the salad. What kind of dressings do they have? So many choices! To avoid the usual high-calorie, often aging, dressing from the vats, especially high calorie in “family” and “fast-food” restaurants, you can ask for basic oil and vinegar or bring your own. (One statistic that always amazes me is that American women between ages 20 and 40 often get 50 percent of their total calories from fat and other components of salad dressings.) A small bottle of a favorite healthy-fat dressing may be a youth-gaining decision; try several to find one you like.
High-quality balsamic vinegar or rice wine vinegar (try seasoned rice wine vinegar) are great dressings all by themselves. So are lemon and lime juices. Some people use straight Tabasco sauce. You can also carry a small bottle (perhaps 2 ounces) of extra-virgin olive oil, best in a sealed baggie and kept in your purse or briefcase. High-quality, highly flavorful, extra-virgin olive oil is a much better choice than the generic vegetable oil (especially partially hydrogenated vegetable oil) that is too often provided. A restaurant I frequent saw me carrying in a bottle because they had only a generic vegetable blend; soon they started stocking high-quality olive oil instead. They won me over as a more frequent guest.
The entrée is the next challenge. Remember to be the CEO. For example, perhaps the menu lists chicken with cream sauce on white rice; however, you would rather have chicken sprinkled with herbs, or served with the roasted tomato and garlic sauce that comes with the sea bass. Ask your server if the chef would prepare your dish that way. The answer is usually yes, and now your food is delicious and RealAge-smart. Remember to reward good service very well.
Will the kitchen do all this? Yes it will, or it should. If it doesn’t or won’t, you could bring your own dried herb packets to sprinkle on your chicken. Or your own little bottle of dried seasonings, packed in small plastic baggies. We like McCormick’s jerk seasoning, Mrs. Dash’s Grilling Blends, Frontera Foods’ Tropical Spice, and Eden Foods’ Nori Shake to enliven almost all fish and chicken dishes. It is very easy to ask for meals without sauce and season them yourself—maybe even easier than choosing another restaurant. But you should not have to pay for food that ages you and zaps your energy.
Hot pepper sauce is a good seasoning to carry into family restaurants that don’t stock the sauce. It tastes great on baked potatoes and sweet potatoes and can replace the mounds of butter and sour cream that make your RealAge older with every bite. Use hot pepper sauce on poultry and vegetables in place of cream sauces and butter, in beans, and on top of whole-grain and rice dishes. Hot pepper sauce seasons food without adding a lot of calories—only lots of flavor and a little salt and vinegar.
To the credit of Lettuce Entertain You mentioned in Chapter 6, you can act like a CEO at each of their restaurants. This strategy, which first appeared in The RealAge Diet and was first shown to work at the CHEF Clinic, helps you stick to your RealAge goals to train your taste buds or keep them trained even when eating out. And it’s great for family restaurants, too—a great learning technique for the whole family.
Ordering in a restaurant can be intimidating, especially if you have not been to that restaurant before, or if you’re trying a new dish. At most restaurants, the servers are trained to be familiar with how food is plated and served. Moreover, in many good restaurants, servers have learned how the food is prepared and what the options are. Simply asking the server will probably give you all the facts you need. The server will probably describe the features most important for you to avoid—for example, “seared in butter” or “covered in a creamy white garlic sauce.” And it may be less intimidating to try this technique first with your family.
I have found that cooks in restaurants want your business next week, too, and that means making you happy today by giving you exactly what you want. Thus, the number one strategy is don’t be shy when it comes to asking questions and specifying your needs. Usually the servers don’t have the power to change food preparation, but they can ask the chef if changes can be made. So the key is to ask your server how each dish you want is made, and if the chef can modify it to make it healthier. Virtually every time, your request will be honored.
As for the rest of the restaurant selections, we often carry a few green tea bags with us. Although better restaurants tend to have a nice selection of teas, which sometimes include green tea, you’ll be prepared in case they don’t. Green tea has antioxidant properties that make your RealAge younger, so you might as well drink something that is both delicious and age-reducing. (However, to gain all of these green tea advantages relative to regular tea, you’d need to drink about fifty cups a day [and a nearby bathroom], at least according to current scientific estimates.) Enjoy the tea selection you like most: they’re all age-reducing.
These are just some of the products and techniques that work well for us—small packages of whole wheat crackers; small packages of fresh-cut vegetables; packets of dried herbs and spices; tiny bottles of extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and mixed dried seasonings; small bottles of hot pepper sauce; packets of green tea; and a great bottle of wine (for groups of more than six). It’s up to you to decide what is most practical and what you feel comfortable bringing in. Or call ahead and ask the restaurant to have these items for you; most are accommodating. With a little planning, you can eat out deliciously and use food to make your RealAge younger. Bon appétit!