Healthy and Delicious Fast Food - am I dreaming?

KnowFat! Lifestyle grille

www.knowfat.com

It appears to be a fast foot style restaurant, but if you EAT-IN your food will be brought to your table on real ceramic plates and you’ll get to eat it with metal flatware. There are burgers and fries on the menu, but the burgers are made from lean beef, turkey or Bison and the fries are Airfries that are baked in the oven. You really know that your are in an alternate universe when you get your receipt - in addition to listing how much money you spent it tells you how many calories your meal was and how much protein, carbohydrates and fat were in each item. Whoa baby - I've never seen anything like this before.

So how does all that fat conscious food taste?

Well, I loved my steamed quinoa with roasted Mediterranean vegetables and lean sirloin tips and turkey tenderloins (591 calories, 60 grams of protein, 48 grams of carbs and 15 grams of fat). There just aren’t many places to get quinoa outside of the home kitchen so I was charmed by the novelty. The meats were lean and the low fat sauces were tasty. It was a very satisfying and tasty experience. On top of all that I knew exactly what I'd just consumed thanks to my handy dandy nutritional analysis on my receipt. Some folks might think that kind of reporting is too much, but I loved know exactly what I was eating.

So far so good. Then I needed to run a more stringent test. I brought one of my daughters. Let’s see how their low fat fast food does against her pickiness. She ordered one of the kids’ meals which came with a huge plate of baked French fries and three breaded (but not fried) chicken tenders and a drink (612 calories, 30 grams of protein, 70 grams of carbs, and 13 grams of fat). She ate it all so it couldn’t have been too bad. I stole a few fries out of sheer curiosity and found them very crisp and crunchy, but the taste was a little off for me. The chicken tenders were really delicious – very well seasoned.

For this second visit I had a chicken teriyaki and broccoli burro – which consisted of the a lowfat, whole wheat tortilla filled with steamed brown rice and the chicken and broccoli (680 calories, 39 grams of protein, 105 grams of carbs and 10 grams of fat). It was fine, although certainly nothing to write home about. I felt very healthy eating it and quite contentedly full after.

So would I eat there again? Yes – especially if they were a choice at the food court or in an airport (they will soon have a store at Logan International Airport). It isn’t the best food I’ve ever eaten, but it beats the usual suspects of fast food places hands down. In a situation where my only choices were Pizza Hut, KFC and McDonalds I’d pick the Knowfat! Lifestyle grille every time. My daughter said it was fine, but she won't be begging me to take her back any time soon.

I love the idea – maybe they could refine the food a little more. They have restaurants opening all over the country so check out their website to see if there is one near you to visit and test out.