A proper diet is the most important aspect of the healthy lifestyle trinity; diet, strength training and cardio exercise. And this is the part where a lot of people fall short or sabotage themselves, their goals and progress. I have seen a lot of people going to the gym then eat a juicy burger with fries afterward and wash it down with a large soft drink. I have seen people crossing the finish line at the 5K race and head straight for the cookies and Gatorade at the recovery table instead of the carrots and water. I have seen people stepping off the elliptical machine to gulp down 400 calories worth of “recovery drink”. And I have heard of numerous people doing a P90X training program but ignoring the nutritional booklet that comes with it.

I can safely say that I am trying to stay on top of my diet. I have no cheat meals, no cheat days, no cheat weeks. I just have healthy eating day in day out. But there are times when you get a curve ball thrown at you and you just have to roll with it. Eating out with family and friends can definitely be a huge curve ball.

Every time we have a birthday lunch at work I get very concerned. I’m hoping that the birthday person will pick something healthy and I would feel comfortable picking a food item off the menu but usually people are quite inconsiderate of my food choices when they pick their birthday lunch. It’s their birthday after all. So how can you cope with this kind of problem?

I could simply say “no thank you” and not go. But somehow I feel that is not the right thing to do. I want to be part of the team and partake in the company lunch. So I am obligated to go. I could always just go but not eat. I have a co-worker who does just that. He will go out with the rest of the lunch crowd and have an ice tea with no sugar and just partake in the social aspect of the lunch. But he definitely gets a lot of crap for it every time. I on the other hand love to go out. But I always fear the menu and I feel like restaurants are like a box of chocolate: you just don’t know what you’re gonna get.

I’m getting better and better at navigating the menus at restaurants and I can put together a mental image of what every item probably contains calorie and nutrient wise. I always try to look up the restaurant’s menu and hopefully nutritional guide on-line before we arrive to the place. If nutritional guide is not available I will try to find nutritional information for a similar restaurant and go with their estimates. I mean a fajita is a fajita and probably contains similar amounts of meat regardless which restaurant prepared it.

Like my favorite Mexican restaurant Uncle Julio’s does not provide nutritional information. But On The Border does. So I am pretty sure I need to stay away from the chips and salsa regardless of which one I end up at. I also know that eating 4 flour tortillas is probably not the best thing to eat and maybe two should be a wiser decision.

Then you also have the situation when you check out their menu and nutritional guide at home, go to the place and they don’t serve what you picked out. Panera Bread claims to be healthy eating. They are, as long as you stick with their vegetarian black bean soup, which is very tasty, and half a Frontega Chicken Pannini. But if you go on a Sunday instead of a Saturday they don’t serve vegetarian black bean soup. Instead they have sugar infested tomato soup or saturated fat horror baked potato soup. So what do you do? You suck it up and roll with it. It is not the end of the world and you just make the best decision you can.

Sometimes I go to a restaurant that I used to visit often but have not been back in a long time, especially since my lifestyle change. These places can be a total crap shoot. You can walk in all confident believing that you know the menu and end up sorely disappointed with the once loved food. This actually happened to me at Razzoo’s just a couple of weeks ago. You can also find a pleasant surprise and find a completely different section of the menu with food selections you would have never considered in a million years before.

Sometimes I end up at restaurants that I have never visited before. And they also tend to be hole in the wall time establishments that don’t even have a website let alone nutritional guides. So you go and fly blind. You hope for the best and you make the best of it. The office group recently visited a restaurant called Yucatan Taco Stand. They make decent burrito bowls and fish tacos but they don’t provide nutritional information. I was going to order something extravagant off their menu had I known the nutritional value but since I was clueless I stuck with a burrito bowl instead and used Chipotle’s nutrition guide to estimate the calories. I have also tried to contact the restaurant via e-mail but they chose not to respond to my query.

So as much as I love eating out nowadays it’s a mixed feeling every time the office party decides to go out. I feel like I’m out of my comfort zone and it puts me into a new challenge every time. I love challenges but I feel the rewards are not always worth it. So how do you feel about eating out when on a diet? What do you do? Do you have any advice for me how to tackle situations like this?

Greg,

I appreciate your feedback but I’m going to respectfully take you to task on a few things and defend myself and Razzoo’s a bit. I noticed immediately that you said you “had doubts” and it seems in my humble opinion that you were in somewhat of a pre-determined mindset. You said that you were “stuck” in Razzoo’s being the dining destination. Wow, I’m already at a disadvantage.

We handle multiple requests for lighter options everyday even though we don’t list such options on the menu. Greg, our food is hearty, authentic and appropriately spiced. But, you stated that “you knew for sure there was no way you could eat anything healthy” at my establishment”. ? Really? I don’t read anywhere that you asked your server anything other than what kind of fish we served.

We work very hard to accommodate guests looking for healthier options. I would suggest a few items that are far from difficult and actually very easy for us to prepare. If our servers are asked for ideas of alternative cooking methods they are skilled at offering suggestions. About 10% of our food orders come in without any form of special instruction or request. At Razzoo’s “the answer is always yes, so what’s the question friend?”. It’s printed on the menu. I would propose:

Blackened Chicken? How about grilled chicken, lightly spiced, with white rice. A green dinner salad, no onions, no dressing or dressing on the side.

Blackened Fish? How about not blackened (It’s Tilapia by the way), lightly spiced or not spiced, grilled with white rice instead of dirty rice? Same dry salad as a substitute fro veggie.

We can boil or grill shrimp instead of frying. We have multiple salads on the menu that can be made as simply as a dieting guest prefers. The croutons can actually be left out. We have pastas that can be served with no sauce or sauce on the side. We have fresh green beans in house that we use for fried green bean appetizer. They can be easily sautéed and served as a side veggie with any item. We can do it. Do it everyday in every single restaurant.

As for nutritional information? I’ll never do it as to not mislead my guests. We are a fresh-prep concept. Subtle differences in ingredient amounts from dish to dish lead to substantial variances in fat and calorie content from one dish to another of the very same item. Those numbers can’t be reliable within an acceptable scientific range. There is enough scientific data on this available so as to not belabor that point.

I want you to enjoy your experience at Razzoo’s or at least have enough information to decide that it is not for you. I believe we can not only show you a great time but certainly provide you a meal that can meet your needs….if asked.

I’ll buy you and your family dinner to prove it. I hope you take me up on it. Let me know.

You can post this or forward as you wish. I realize that some are genuinely interested in productive, healthy discussion and debate and that some just want to pick a fight or argument or engage in “gotcha” contact with businesses. I’m ok with that. I am very serious about responsible restaurant and business management and am very proud of what we do.

I look forward to any further input you have and hope to see you in for dinner with us soon!

Respectfully,

Jeff Powell
President

Pretty solid argument with some fair points but I just wasn’t entirely convinced so I shot him another response.

Jeff,

First of all I would like to thank you for such a courteous and prompt response. It’s not often that you get a real response from a real person especially in such a short time.

As I have written in my earlier e-mail I was a frequent visitor of Razzoo’s before I have decided to shed some fat. I wouldn’t call myself a regular but we probably visited your restaurant half a dozen times a year. I was familiar with your menu and I was familiar with the options in food you had. I never bothered to look further than what was on the menu as I have always managed to find something different that I liked. We liked the tasty and zippy food just as much as everyone else who eats at Razzoo’s. When I wrote I “had doubts” it was an educated doubt based on prior experience. I knew your food and I knew it can’t be that good for you. I want you to know that it’s not only Razzoo’s where I have doubts. It’s practically every restaurant that I re-visit since the start of my transformation into more conscious eating. I always go in with concerns whether they offer anything that could be remotely close to healthy. I attribute the fact that I have found your food overly salty this time to my new eating habit that is significantly lower in sodium than before and my palate have re-adjusted to a much lower threshold level.

I have asked our server, Greg, several times in several ways if you provided nutritional information on any of your food items. It should have been a clear sign that I was looking for something on the healthy side. I agree, I did not ask for a special custom meal, it simply did not cross my mind. I will be sure to remember that in my future restaurant outings. I guess our server could have been a bit more pro-active about the situation but come to think of it the blame is probably just as much mine. I really wish you had been our server that night as the options you have offered in your response sure sound better than any of the alternatives that I could pick off the menu. It’s a real shame that I wasn’t offered any of these options by our server.

Nutritional information for made to order food can certainly be misleading. Even on prepackaged food studies have found that the actual caloric value can be off by as much as 18%. I am not denying this fact. But I am also positive that if the menu showed that the Tricky Fish with dirty rice and crawfish etouffee contains 1,800 calories and 5000 mg of sodium we can agree that it doesn’t really matter whether that 1,800 becomes 1,700 or 1,900 depending on how big of a dollop of butter was used when the fish got blackened. I will most certainly not order it.

As I have reached this point into my e-mail writing another response hit my inbox from Jeff:

Greg,

I’ve read your review after responding to you. I respect your opinion but find it inaccurate, pre-determined and without any fair objectivity. Most disturbing I find your comments about the patrons on-site judgmental and disturbing. Your efforts to improve your health are admirable. Congratulations. I question whether that gives you an appropriate platform to make such judgments or at least inferences about those around you based on their appearance.

Best of luck to you.

Jeff

So I had to respond to his last e-mail as well and I have added the following passage as closure:

I just received your second e-mail as I was writing this response. I might be sitting on a high horse now that I have gotten a handle on my own eating and health. I might be more judgmental of other people around me now that I’m no longer obese. But after eating part of my unhealthy meal I could not help but wonder as to “who eats at Razzoo’s?”. And there was not one person in sight that I would have called healthy looking. It might have been a coincidence but it is a fact. I also just became a US Citizen (hence the celebratory trip to Razzoo’s) and I truly value the rights and liberties the constitution gives me, especially about free speech. I will post your response on my blog tonight, I’m a big fan of “let the other side be heard too” mentality. I think by posting your response I will have provided an appropriate and objective position.

On a side note, I’d like to mention that my blog ranks 16th for “Razzoo’s Nutrition” on Google search as of this morning, a mere 10 hours after my blog entry has been posted.

Again, thank you for your time and response, I appreciate it.

Regards,

Greg

I think at this point we’ll just have to agree to disagree. His statement about the fact that only 10% of orders come in without special request makes me wonder though. Does he consider holding the mayo on a burger a special request? Or does it mean that 90% of the customers are unhappy with the menu choices by default and they have to make changes to it just to make it palatable. I’m pretty sure if Hell’s Kitchen with chef Gordon Ramsey would have a 90% special request rate he’d tell every one of his customers to “piss off!”. If I were a restaurateur I’d probably wonder why 9 out of 10 of my customers want to change the food items and alter my food. But then again, I’m not one.

I also find it perplexing that he mentions that they do special healthier portions for customers on a daily basis all day every day at all his restaurants. Wouldn’t that be a clear sign that there is a demand for it and maybe it’s time to stick it on the menu? I mean I’m not a businessman or anything but this kind of stuff seems to be Economics 101. But as long as people vote with their wallet and mouth and Razzoo’s is doing well who am I to stop them? I’m just saying if you made the commitment for a healthier lifestyle and eating habits you might want to pass on Razzoo’s unless you are comfortable with asking for special requests of grilled chicken with steamed rice.

Update 4/23/2011:

This blog entry is still one of the hottest and most often visited one of my blog. I keep getting replies which give me advice about weight loss, how to eat healthy and how I should probably not eat at Razzoo’s. So I decided to post a bit of a status update for those who fail to check out the rest of my blog.

1) This blog post was written over 14 months ago. Since then I’ve lost another 33 lbs (I’m 160 lbs as of this writing), ran 6 marathons, 4 of them with Boston Qualifying Time, including the Boston Marathon this month and I’m quite comfortable with my current physique, fitness and body. Sure, I’d like to lose another 5lbs or so to finally see my abs for the first time ever and I’m chipping away at it but I could afford to eat at Razzo’s any time now if I chose to. I really don’t need any more advice on how to eat and what to eat, I’m probably as fit and healthy as anyone could get or wish for.

2) I’ve been true to my word and neither I nor my family have eaten at Razzoo’s ever since this incident. I have no intentions of eating there ever again, certainly not until they start providing nutritional information.

3) My blog posts are actually still no. 1 and no. 2 for “Razzoo’s Nutrition” not 16th. I just checked.

4) My blog posts is and was not meant to skew stats. It was posted to point out how ignorant Razzoo’s is when it comes to healthier eating but apparently it’s no more ignorant than their customer base so it is a match made in heaven and Razzoo’s is making money by catering to their target market so it’s really no skin off my teeth.

5) Razzoo’s website, while revamped from the last time I checked, still does not provide any kind of nutritional information or nutrition guide. Until they change that my blog will beat their website in search rankings any day of the week.

So she decided that we should go to Razzoo’s. Razzoo’s is a “Cajun cafe”. They serve fish, crawfish, shrimp and the like with some heavy sauces that have some kick to it. I used to go there and think that the food was pretty good. I enjoyed eating lunch there every now and then. I knew that their general menu wasn’t all that healthy but I had hopes to find something a bit more on the low cal side. I wanted to check their website prior going to get an idea about their food and nutritional information but we ran out of time and with two anxious kids and a wife in the car waiting I thought we better hit the road and go. As it turns out I didn’t miss much by not checking the website.

I usually don’t get too pissed off about restaurant menus nowadays as most of the time at least they’re trying their best with one or two healthy(er) items on the menu and the food I end up getting is usually half decent. But I got so pissed off after I read through the menu at Razzoo’s that I had to send them a letter so they knew how I felt. If you want the Cliff Note’s version their food is greasy super salty junk and I have not seen anything even remotely close to it in the past couple of months since I really started watching what I eat. I mean I’d go to McDonald’s over Razzoo’s any day of the week. Over at McDonald’s at least they have the balls to tell you what you’re putting in your mouth. Well I’m sure it isn’t out of the goodness of their hearts that they post the nutritional information but at Razzoo’s the utter and complete ignorance of having any kind of sensible food choice on their menu and the absolute lack of nutritional information is just not worthy of my, or anyone else’s, business. That was the short version. For the longer version feel free to read my letter that I have sent to them this morning.

Hi,

I have visited your Bryant Irving, Fort Worth, TX location the other night for dinner with my wife and two young children. We used to visit Razzoo’s on a regular basis but four months ago I have decided to lose weight and eat right. Losing weight while eating out is not an easy task so we have limited our eating out for the past four months.

Tuesday night called for a celebration and under my wife’s recommendation we went to Razzoo’s. I had doubts about possible food selections even before we got there but once I took a look at the menu all my doubts were gone. I knew for sure that there was no way I could eat anything even remotely healthy at your establishment. Was it not for our two young children I probably would have walked right out and never looked back.

But with two kids in tow it was no possible. We were stuck and we were going to have dinner at your restaurant. My wife opted for the fried catfish basket, a long time favorite of hers with a good kick of spices. My son ordered the children’s fish with fries and my daughter got the fried chicken tenders with fires. I have asked the waiter if he had information about the nutritional information of your menu items. He said that there is not a piece of paper that he could bring out for me to look at. Neither Chili’s nor Corner Bakery has nutritional information available to give the customers but both restaurants have nutritional information posted on their websites and they can look it up and provide you with the information upon request at the restaurant for any item in question. When I asked our waiter he said that was not possible either. Basically they serve food that they have no clue about. He had to go and ask what kind of fish was in your Tricky Fish menu item.

I thought that I would just go home and check on the least of the worsts that I would manage to pick out and see what the damage was by looking up the nutritional information on your website. Unfortunately your website does not provide this information either. In desperation I have opted to order the Tricky Fish with blackened catfish over dirty rice and crawfish etoufee and green beans. I figured the blackened fish can’t be that bad even though your menu mentions it is “butter basted like crazy” which is never a good sign.

What your menu has failed to mention was that it’s not only butter basted it is salt based like crazy too. Your food was so salty it was almost unpalatable. Our poor waiter had to keep shuttling water to us as if it was going out of style. The rest of the items on the plate must have also been basted in butter as the plate was oozing with fat. I have never seen such a small portion of green beans that were swimming in so much white creamy fat before. I have clearly made the wrong decision. I have passed on 2/3rd of the dirty rice and the garlic bread and the waiter had the gall to offer a to go box for the aftermath that was left on my plate. Needless to say I declined.

My son’s dinner consisted three tiny strips of fish with a large amount of fries. He’s only 5, weighing in at a solid 33 lbs and he was left hungry. Maybe because I did not let them order a soft drink and they did not get any of the empty calories from there. Luckily my 20 month old daughter left enough of her chicken strips to fill him up. Again, there were absolutely no healthy options for our children to eat from your menu.

All in all I was sorely disappointed with your food selection and total lack of nutritional information. Having a general idea about your food and its fat and salt content I can see why you chose not to disclose any of the information to your patrons. And to call a salad with “killer croutons and zippy dressing” topped with fried popcorn shrimp rabbit food is just plain wrong.

I run a weblog at www.gregstransformation.com about my weight loss transformation. I will be posting my review of Razzoo’s along with this letter for all my readers to see. Should you chose to reply I will be more than happy to publish your rebuttal as well.

Best Regards

Greg

Bottom line is that if you’re ever in Texas looking for some Cajun food and you care the least bit about your arteries and general health I’d stay away from Razzoo’s. I know that is what I’ll do. I’m also betting that this post will rank super high for Razzoo’s nutritional information and calories in search engines in no time, I know people looking for nutritional information about Uncle Julio’s seem to end up here. When people search for those keywords they should end up on the restaurant’s site not on a personal blog coplaining about the lack of such information. Maybe it’s time that the Razzoo’s folks rethink their lack of nutritional data on their website. Better yet, they should rethink their food choices. But then again what do I know? Looking at the menu and their patrons on site I’m probably no longer their target market.

UPDATE: I have actually received a response from Razzoo’s to my query. Read all about it in my Part 2 of the Razzoo’s Saga